Update:
I spent the day on Wednesday working on the wedding ceremony I am to
perform on Saturday afternoon for Steve and Carol. I also began working on my message for
Sunday church and worked updating some records that I have left attended for a
while. I also stayed off of my foot to
rest it after the busy day yesterday.
The AWANA Awards ceremony was held on Wednesday evening. AWANA is our church’s mid-week children’s
program for pre-school through high school that runs throughout the school
year. Prior to my amputation, I helped
run the program for 3rd-6th grade boys and ran the game time for older
clubbers. I never felt like I had enough energy in the evening to go back to
help after that, so I left Randy, our leader, and Kent to cover for me. But I told Randy that I would do the
devotional message during the awards ceremony that closes out the year. So I helped out Randy by doing that for him
last night.
Immediately after the awards ceremony, I had a ride along scheduled
with a police officer in Altoona. With
that ride, I am officially back in service with both police departments and the
fire department that I serve as chaplain.
I am thankful to my congregation for allowing me the opportunity to have
a dual service to my church as pastor and then to these departments as
chaplain. My denomination has a number
of chaplains serving in the military and a fair number of chaplains in nursing
homes, etc.; but there are very few of us who have the honor of serving our
communities as police or fire chaplains.
This has been a good fit with my background, gifts and ability. One of my bachelor degrees is in Criminal
Justice. After the military and prior to
seminary, I worked as a part-time weekend employee of a small sheriff’s
department as a jailer/dispatcher. While
in the military I probably should have been an MP but the army in its wisdom
thought otherwise. If I hadn’t decided
to become a pastor—I probably would have stayed in the military or became a
cop. So I am very comfortable working
alongside these fine men and women to assist them and those in our community
whom we serve.
Thought for the Day:
Have you ever been emotionally stuck?
Author Les Brown says, “The good times we put in our pocket. The bad times we put in our heart.” For whatever reason, negative events tend to
stick with us and affect us more deeply than the positive ones. Sometimes those events hurt us so badly that
we get emotionally stuck and we can’t seem to move on. One example of that might be a person who has
suffered a painful marriage and divorce.
That person will often put up barriers and wall in an effort to protect
themselves from others getting close enough to harm them. In the process, those walls also won’t allow
the person to love deeply and build a healthy relationship with someone
new. They are emotionally stuck in the
past.
“It cannot be denied that our lives are filled with loss. Some losses are great; some are small. And the losses we face affect our mental
health. Some people handle it well,
while others don’t. The quality that
distinguishes a successful person from an unsuccessful one who is otherwise
like him is the capacity to manage disappointment and loss. This is a challenge because losses can often
defeat us mentally… Harry Neale, the coach of the Vancouver Canucks in the
1980’s said, ‘Last year we couldn’t win on the road, and this year we can’t win
at home. I don’t know where else to
play!’ …As losses build up, they become
more of a burden. We regret the losses
of yesterday. We fear the losses of
tomorrow. Regret saps our energy. We can’t build on regret. Fear of the future distracts us and fills us
with apprehension. …We need to expect
mistakes, failures, and losses in life, since each of us will face many of
them. But we need to take them as they
come, not allow them to build up. As
printer William A. Ward said, ‘Man, like a bridge, was designed to carry the
load for a moment, not the combined weight of a year all at once.’” [John Maxwell, Some Times You Win, Sometimes
You Learn].
How well do you deal with loss and failure? Are you able to shake it off and bounce right
back? Or does defeat hang on and build
up, weighing you down more and more with each passing day?
I’m obviously not going to answer every question and give every
solution in this short thought; but here is the foundation piece that must be
laid in your life. You can choose what
you will dwell upon and ultimately what will define you. You cannot change your past, nor can you
eradicate pain and loss from your future.
It is like playing a game of cards.
Life has dealt you with a hand—you have to decide how you are going to
play those cards.
Where most of us struggle is in forgiving ourselves (as well as the
others who have hurt us) and moving on with our lives. For Christians, this is a bit easier since we
have learned forgiveness in the example of God towards us. We recognize that Christ paid for the sins of
the world with His very life. Not only
did He pay for every one of our sins; He paid for the sins of everyone who has
every harmed us or hurt us as well. We
are told that we are to mimic God, in forgiving others who have harmed us.
Colossians 3:13 “bearing with one another and, if one has a
complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you,
so you also must forgive.” (ESV)
That is often the easiest part compared to the next thing that we must
do. We cannot continue to dwell upon
those events. It is only natural to
continually go over the events that transpired that got you emotionally stuck;
but that continued reminiscing is not healthy for you if it keeps going on and
on. Eventually you have to move on. You do that by remembering that you already
forgave the other person (or yourself) and now you need to stop dwelling upon
it. You choose not to keep thinking
about it. You force your mind to think
about other things. As you continue to
focus your attention elsewhere, you eventually come to the point where you
don’t automatically keep coming back to your emotional “ground zero.”
A car that just spins its wheels and digs a deeper hole for itself
isn’t doing anybody any good. Likewise,
people who are stuck emotionally don’t do themselves (or the others around
them) any good. Do yourself a favor and
work at getting unstuck so you can move on and enjoy life.
Philippians 3:13b “…But one thing I do: forgetting what lies
behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,” (ESV).
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