Getting Yourself Together to Give Yourself Away

This week’s “Strength” is prompted by Jon Gordon. See: http://www.jongordon.com/newsletter-072610-itsaboutyou.html

 “It's not about you.” “It's about you, however, it's not just about you.” Gordon intentionally amended Rick Warren's deliberate introduction to mega-selling The Purpose-Driven Life.

 Gordon's emphasis parallels what I learned in Cedar Springs, Washington in 1974 from camp speaker Pastor Bob Stone:

 God's purpose in your life is about “Getting Yourself Together to Give Yourself Away.” 

 http://shorelinecc.com/about-us/our-team

 Since then, I have come to believe that phrase expresses three things the Maker elevates:

1. The value of change toward Health/Balance in life.

You and I Can Change. (Honestly, we need it.) 

2. The value of the individual as an Ambassador to others about the possibility of change.

You and I can bring Hope of Change as we change. 

3. The value of Stewardship/Investing what you have to bring about good in the future of others.

Changed, you and I can Help Bring Change by extending ourselves to others who need change.

 D. T. Niles said, “Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.”

 As we change, let’s bring hope of change, and extend the resources for change every day to the people we serve at home and at work.

– Chaplain Robin

 

What A Friend

If you are older than two, you have likely experienced loss and not simply missing baby teeth.

Joseph Scriven watched in shock as the body of his fiancée was pulled from the lake. Their wedding planned for the next day never happened. Reeling from tragedy, he left his mother in Ireland and immigrated to Canada.

Several years later when his mother faced her own crisis, Joseph wrote her a comforting poem. She passed it to a friend whereupon it became a popular hymn, published anonymously.

Meanwhile, Joseph experienced tragedy again when his second bride-to-be died of tuberculosis before their wedding.

What song came from the life of a man who experienced such sorrow?

   What a Friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and grief’s to bear!

What a privilege to carry, Everything to God in prayer!

Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh, what needless pain we bear.

All because we do not carry Everything to God in prayer!

 Tomorrow, on the second anniversary of a personal loss of two dear ones from my own life, in addition to sharing with others, I will do well to take my loss to my Maker in prayer.  http://jaredstorer.blogspot.com/2008/08/crash-site.html http://www.kirotv.com/news/16980886/detail.html

Source: “Then Sings My Soul” Robert J. Morgan, Thomas Nelson Publishers

 – Chaplain Robin 

Cheerful Generosity

Weekly Strength

July 16, 2010

 

I work with great people. Day after day I experience the warmth and caring of generous people who extend themselves in cheerful and creative ways that truly make a difference.

 

They make a difference to staff. They make a difference to patients. They make a difference to family members.

 

They remind me of a couple of Proverbs that tell of a contrast:

 

  One gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty.

  A generous [wo]man will prosper;

[s]he who refreshes others will be refreshed.

Proverbs 11:24-25 rsV J

 

The simplest principles are commonly most precious and perhaps most difficult to establish into the patterns in our lives.

 

I want to take this space to thank and encourage those that deliberately extend that precious cheerful generosity. May you be refreshed!

 

 rsV = Robin Storer Version

 – Chaplain Robin

Empty Egg Cartons - Shared

Weekly Strength

July 9, 2010

4^th of July weekend on the farm was our family’s first extended visit to the home of my wife’s childhood. As we tided the house to leave, Dawn picked up a stack of empty egg cartons in the pantry where her mother had left them. A surprise tsunami of grief overwhelmed her with the unwelcome realization that her mother would not return to fill those recycled cartons from her now vacant chicken coop on that western North Dakota farm. Acute leukemia took her life two years ago.

 

Grief surprises us. It comes in unexpected waves. While coastal waves have great power and can destroy, their action may be cleansing to the shoreline they touch.

 

When that wave of grief collided in Dawn’s mind and washed over her heart her impulse was to share her pain - with a sister, a daughter-in-law, her husband. Grief expressed in an atmosphere of love diminished its power and deepened her support base. Her action turned the power of the wave into cleansing.

 

Let’s share our struggles and find in one another the available refreshing afforded by transparency.                     

 

 – Chaplain Robin