I have challenges every day!
For the majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, jihad is a word that literally means “to struggle.” It’s a concept within Islam that represents a commitment to serve God, to be good to yourself and to your neighbors.
~ Carol Kuruvilla Associate Religion Editor, Huffington Post, 03-28-16
I have challenges every day!
Struggling or having challenges in life is something we all face. We struggle with writing papers and articles, with taking tests, with driving in traffic, doing our jobs and many other tasks and relationships.
Just because we find ourselves in these very human modes, doesn’t mean we are going to go berserk or crazy. Sometimes it does, but in most cases we turn to a friend, or our version of God for help. We oft times turn to a higher sense of purpose within ourselves to give some perspective to our struggles. And, isn’t that key to our healing?
I joined a Medical Mission to Tanzania in Africa in 2007, and did a little research on the area and Africa in general before I embarked on the mission. I found the average earnings in Tanzania annually is $365. That’s a dollar a day. How many of us could live on a dollar a day in this country, or even $5 a day? Few of us I would guess. I remember being in my teens and reading all these articles of exploring Europe on $5 a day. But $1 a day, and many with families!
Muslims and Christians live together in peace in Tanzania, and religion is a large part of life. Yet, when I got there, while I saw dirt roads, and simple structures, I was amazed that the majority of the people that we treated were only grateful. Grateful for everything in their lives. I some cases their clothing was thread bare, but their spirits were always high. They were loving, warm, and outgoing, and the children were always curious. It didn’t seem like they even knew the word poor. They were living life! And, they addressed their challenges one at a time.
Are you grateful for where you are? Would you be willing to reach out to God when you are challenged?
~rev jim starke
www.spirit-edu.com
#aworldthatworks
Are you happy where you are?
There is a lot to be said for finding a new place to live. The problem, many times, is that we are moving to get away from something, and as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Wherever you go, there you are.”
What this meant for him was, when his wife died, he lost his faith and ran away from the truth of his wife’s death rather than confronting it, blamed it on God, and left his church, moved to France and found that his issue was still there with him. It was then that he realized he needed to not only allow himself to grieve, but to also confront the demons of his own making, in order that e could once again be happy and live his life as the uplifting, productive person he had always been before the tragedy.
I can understand where he’s coming from, because I have been on the same boat trying to get away, but I haven’t been able to get the boat to move, because I wasn’t dealing with life changing event. I wanted it to just go away, and of course it wouldn’t because I kept giving it life.
That realization alone is life changing.
If you can somehow be happy where you are, you can be happy anywhere. It will be at that moment that your life and location may reveal itself to you.
~rev jim
spirit-edu.com
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My HolyDay Wish for All!
Beyond all the thoughts that would seek to extinguish this flame,
“May Peace prevail on Earth!”
The Fire Within
“It’s right underneath your fingertips baby. That’s all you have to understand – everything is right underneath your fingers.”
-Ray Charles
That’s it! All of It! The joyous creativity of Spirit, of our soul, responds from within each of us to just where our creativity lies! For Ray Charles it’s from beneath his fingertips!
I know in this moment for each one of us that Spirit births from within each one here and now that mental equivalent of our desires, our demands, our dreams. In that inseparable place of the One, our creative arena, the medium within us, from which outpour our creative impulses, that right here, and right now is the perfect place for peace to begin. I see this Peace in every part and parcel, in every fiber of my being, and know the same exists not only within each one of us in this prayer, but in the extension of that One, all of humanity! I know this peace is perfect in every way, because It is the Peace from Love that is beyond all understanding. It is that Peace which extends from the Soul, from the God within each and every one of us and cries out to be heard. This Peace knows no borders, it knows no boundaries, it knows no ethnic, racial, language, or spatial differences as It comes from the Source. It comes from that universal field of potentiality we call Spirit.
I rejoice in the potential power of this idea, Peace. I am enheartened by the primal nature of this creation and I know this field of potentiality expands geometrically, taking into itself all the Love, and all the Joy, and all the Happiness that the ever expanding field of infinite possibility could absorb.
I smile blissfully with the gratitude of this knowing. I feel the warmth of this Peace we have brought into this field of potentiality, and I know I need only bask in Its warm glow, for the fire has already begun, and just as the Phoenix rises from the flames to be reborn, Eternal Peace rises from within each of us in this season to be born to and as us.
To this I simply say, Thank you Spirit.
and so it is.
rev jim
republished by the author from spiritinspires.com
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