God Is In The Hard Stuff

Why, God, Why?


When things are going well in you life, everything seems good with the world:
> The sun shines brighter.
> The flowers are more fragrant.
> People smile as they pass by you.
> There is a vacant parking spot for you directly in front of Starbucks.

Of course, things aren't really that way, but that's how they seem to you because you're feeling good about your situation.
When your circumstances turn south, though, there seems to be an odd confluence with the rest of the cosmos. Everything seems to sour simultaneously:
> You get soaking wet after being caught in a freak rain storm.
> You get a flat tire and don't get have a jack in the trunk.
> Everyone who crosses your path is in a foul mood.
> After waiting fifteen minutes in the drive-thru at Starbucks, you are informed that they are out of coffee.

These are trivial illustrations of how your perspective is corrupted when you are forced to endure a tragic circumstance or a particularly hard situation. But more than your attitude is affected by adversity. your spiritual equilibrium can also be thrown off kilter. Often, the frustration that accompanies your hardship leads to a spiritua misconception: God has abandoned you. While this isn't true, it is easy to see how you can reach this flawed conclusion. First, you start with sound premises, such as:
> God is the almighty Creator and Ruler of the universe.
> All things are under His soverighn control.
> Nothing happens in the world without His knowledge or permission.
> God loves you and wants only what is best for you.

So far, your theology is on track. But here is the point where your logic slips a cog. You mistakenly conclude:
> Since tragedy has entered your life, God must have turned His back on you.
> Of He really loved you, He wouldn't let this happen to you.

This line of thinking is flawed. First, God never promises anyone a life free from pain. so don't make the mistake of thinking that god has abandoned you when hardship enters your life. Secondly, the presence of hardship in your life does not imply the absence of god in your life. To the contrary, you can be sure that God is there and wants to reveal Himself to you when you are experiencing difficulties.

....
God doesn't remove the difficulty and pain. But He will be there with you thrugh it all.

It is almost impossible to see God if your spiritual eyes are closed.

God's continual presence with you is one of His presents to you.

How do you expect to recognize God during times of crisis if you haven't been taking notice of Him when things are going well?

God is with you when the going gets tough, but He's a perfect gentleman. He won't carry your load unless you ask Him to.



taken from the book God Is In The Hard Stuff by Bruce & Stan

Somewhere Off The Coast of Maine

There's nothing much I can say about this book. I have one thing to say though, wherever you are, whoever you're with, always remember that these places and these people are only there to- who knows what?- test you, strengthen you, inspire you, shake you. In the end, you only have yourself to cling to. That's why, there should be no regrets. What's done is done. Live. With what you got, do something with it. Don't go around asking people for an apple when you've already got a berry on your hand.

Distant Shores

Kristin Hannah created a piece with such powerful emotions in the midst of a woman's frustrating dilemma. A lot of people can relate, especially married women, and not excluding young ones with big dreams. This book inspires us to, first and above all, know what we really want to do with our lives. There are lots of things we see along the way, around us, all over us, and it seems like every one of them is so interesting and worth our entire attention for the rest of our lives. But we only got one shot of this life and we have to choose well. Multi-tasking is a talent, just for me because I can't do it well, but it's different when you multi-task your own life. It would be as if you'r not living your own at all because you don't even know which one is it. I didn't mean that we have to be one-sighted, though, life is so vast and the things we see are so diverse we cannot even focus to one. That's what I'm saying about. Yes, life has a lot to offer and seems like a lifetime is not enough. But you know what they say about having priorities. We can have a little of everything that life has to offer but we have to figure out what we really want. Otherwise, we just live each day waiting for our time to end. Empty. We don't like to end up uttering three famous words, "shoulda, woulda, coulda", and shaking our heads side to side. Above all, we must find ourselves and our wants first before other people's. I must say, it's not bad to give up our own happiness for the sake of someone else's, especially if it's a loved one, yes, sacrifice is a virtue, but it's not good to live in misery for the rest of our lives just because of our actions, either. We have to let ourselves speak and be heard; let that someone understand. Now I know this is where most arguments emerge. But we have to learn to argue without getting offended. According to my favorite priest, "Nothing good comes easy." Indeed. Even a simple talk is quite difficult to achieve without the other party getting offended and walks out of the room. Respect is the key. It has always been, and will always be.
Well, anyway, about the characters in the book, I kind of don't like the attitude of our heroine, Elizabeth Shore. She knows what she wants, but she just keeps it in, afraid of something, maybe of her husband not being happy if she pursues her passion. In the contrary, she said that her husband is so busy finding his old self back and his happiness that he didn't bother to ask what she wanted to do, when in fact, her husband wanted her to talk and speak out, but she disengaged. I salute to her husband. He knows what he wants, goes for it, and still has time to do a little effort, little but still an effort, to talk to his wife about what she wants. Not to mention that he's fighting back the ghost of his not-so-nice past slowly coming back to him. Although he failed one, I considered it not counted. Maybe you'll agree with me if you read the book. He's a good man. It's just this wife of his that is in a serious dilemma of her own and now she's frustrated.
But in the end, I'm happy for Elizabeth, everything turned out well- for her andfor her husband, as well. Bottomline: Life doesn't slows down even if people's bodies get drowsy. And, age is just a digit. There is never "too late" for someone who knows how to use his time and there is no "wrong path" for someone who walks well.

My Bookboard

Quote Bucket

"It's possible to take bravery to the point where it becomes insanity."
Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn

"Only the known is safe. Only the known is tolerable. The unknown is a vulnerability." -Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn

"When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve whenit comes to an end."
-Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn

"The future is not set on stone. Things change."
-Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn

"Pain is something to master; not to wallow in."

"Deafeat is only a phase. One must conquer, live."

"The only regret i have in dying is that i can't sing at my own funeral."

"The greatest tragedy in life is not hunger or disease, but to feel unwanted."
-Mother Teresa

"One day, your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it's worth watchng."

"It's not sugar that makes coffee sweet, but the stirring you do after adding the sugar."

"Explaining why you love someone is like describing what water tastes like."

"Someone can make you feel that you are special, but you'll never know if it's their hobby of making everybody feel that way."

"It's not what you say. It's how you say it."

"One uses one's weaknesses. One can make something of them."

"What a relative thing beauty is, and that each man has his own individual response to it."

"No one comes to progress and success without sacrifice."

"It's not how much you do, but how much love you put into what you do that counts." -Mother Teresa

"The common skeptic has to see in order to believe. A person with a vision has to believe in order to see."

"You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving."
-Mother Teresa

"Life does not consist in what a person possesses, but in what possesses him."

"The only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is the way you use them."

"If you have something you can't do without, you don't own it. It owns you."

"Reflect on your illusion of life for just a little longer. Savor your innocence. It's never appreciated until it's about to be lost."

"Sometimes, we reveal the most when we are least like ourselves."

"Happiness is not having what you have, but wanting what you have."

"What is good for the goose is good for the gander."

"A man may not have much, ut when it is shared, somehow it looks like more."
-Ain't No Mountain High

"A poor man free is still richer than a slave wearing someone else's clothes."
-Ain't No Mountain High

"If you want something different, you're going to have to do something different. Keep doing what you're doing and you're going to keep getting what you're getting."
-Ain't No Mountain High

"When elephants fight, they say that it is the grass that gets trampled."

"You don't have to agree with everything a person said, or approve the condition of his soul, to show some simple consideration."
-Prodigal Summer

"There's always more to story than a body can see from the fenceline."
-Prodigal Summer

"You can stare at a thing knowing that you personally have no place in its heart whatsoever, but keeping it out of yours is another story."
-Prodigal Summer

"Once a crack appears, it is almost impossible to preserve the whole."

"No sense teasing the beast. Feeding works better."
-Prodigal Summer

"When human conversation stops, the world is nothing but quiet."
-Prodigal Summer

"You learn what it is by knowing what it isn't."
-Prodigal Summer

"You get to a point to where you just start wishing you weren't living, and it's worse than being scared."
-Prodigal Summer

"The wrong words are impossible when there are no words."
-Prodigal Summer

"Some things could be wrougth by horsepower that were beyond the power of horseflesh."
-Prodigal Summer

"The loudest sound on earth is a man with nothing to do."
-Prodigal Summer

"If you handle love too much, it goes flat, like overkneaded bread dough. You have to give it room to rise and breathe."

"Sometimes we are forced to put things behind us. People too. There are choices we make that change our lives forever."
-Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine

"Words had too uch power. They had to be handled with fireproof gloves or they'd burn you to the bone."
-Distant Shores

"A cliche is just something that's commonly true."
-Distant Shores

"Some fires just went out and left you icy cold."
-Distant Shores

"A new location is no more than a different stage upon which to act out the same old scenes, say the same old lines."
-Distant Shores

"Tough love. Sometimes a friend had to strong-arm you. That was all there was to it."
-Distant Shores

"Promises were a lot like impressions. The second one didn't count for much."
-Distant Shores

"There are worse things inlife than being alone." -Distant Shores

"The truest expression of art can't be found on the tip of the brush. It's in the artist's eye."
-Distant Shores

"Time. It was the rack everything hung on: life, loss, hope, love. So often, it seemed to slip through your fingers like silk. But sometimes, you could reach back into what was aänd take hold."
-Distant Shores

"It's dangerous to quit something because you think you're not good enough. That can be an ugly pattern that repeats throughout your life."
-Distant Shores

Tuesdays with Morrie

Funny how i associate books with colors. You know, when i get to buy a book, the first thing i'd have to consider is it's cover. The more appealing it looks to me, the greater it's chance that i'm gonna buy it- never mind the cost. It's just recently that i began to see things differently, especially that reading books is probably my top hobby, so i might as well not choose, especially its looks, so as long as it is a book and not a magazine. So, i started to examine each bookshelf there is in my apartment and found this not-very-much-my-type figure of a book- Tuesdays with Morrie, and i was like, "Hey, this is the book everyone's been talking about when i was in college." My friends always mentioned this man, Morrie, and talked about this book of which i was always out of place every time they'd pop it in their conversations, and i'd have to fake an interest about it. So, i took the book and started flipping the pages and i found out that it's sort of a journal of the book's author. I convinced myself to have at least an average level of interest on this book, since it's "The International Bestseller". I was just halfway reading and i feel like, "aww..". that's all i can say. This book's worth the talk of the town, indeed. Pity on me, i only get to know this book as of today. Shucks, it's a shame. Well anyways, the book is about a man's journey towards the last days of his life, but actually, he's in his last moments already. This old man, Morrie, has a degenarative disease called ALS. In the layman's language, this disease is like when you've stepped in a quicksand. Slowly it devours your body, from bottom to up, until there's no room for air to help you. I would say, an agonizing way of killing a person. But this old professor, Morrie, didn't fret, unlike most of us would if it happens to us. Instead, he lives his to the fullest and looks at dying in a different view- which made him famous. He's favorite student back in college came to visit him one tuesday, and later did he realized that he was taking another course with this old professor again. A course that needs no textbooks or reports or grades- only pure heart to heart talk about life and everything in it. And so did their classes went, every tuesday, in Morrie's home, about love, marriage, forgiveness, aging, regrets, dying, and everything but life. The book is overwhelming. Morrie told the story with real clarity on how you deal with life's common problems which is basically caused by our own human values. He told his student how we hold on to something so much that we often forget that there were other things within the periphery, waiting to be embraced and experienced. He was but one quintessential man. His student put down his words into a wonderful thesis. As easily as you may find the words in this book to understand, it's also as hard doing so. But Morrie related it just simply and plainly. Maybe because there is so much more to see about life and people through a dying person's eyes, than what meets a middle-aged healthy man's eyes. A lesson that taught us to never say there's no more time. A question about what are we hurrying up for? A bunch of words that could be summed up for but one thing - Love. It all springs out from love, and it all goes back to it. Just like what Morrie said, "Love each other, or perish."
A stupendous story that leaves your eyes moist and eventually wet, and your heart deeply moved... and just for the record, i finished reading the book today, and it's tuesday! ,'-)