What outside force is most likely to upset your contentment? Since God does not always change negative outside forces, what can be changed in you so that contentment is possible?....(Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1636).
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Philippians 4:4-8 New International Version (NIV)
Final Exhortations (from Paul)
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
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Matthew 6:25- 27, 33 (NIV)
Do Not Worry (Jesus points the way.)
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?... But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
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Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine, p 130. (Shirzad adds the science.)
Once the amygdala determines that there is credible danger, the brain shifts primarily into survive mode. This results in a cascade of neurochemical events, including the release of the stress hormone cortisol. Few people realize that when you go into fight-or-flight mode, the mind – not just the body – becomes narrowly focused. It begins to selectively look for negative signs of danger while ignoring positive signs of opportunity....
The good news is that positivity is also self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling. Positive emotions bathe our brains in serotonin and dopamine. These chemicals have multiple effects. They make us feel good. They energize the learning centers of our brain, which help us in organizing, storing, and retrieving new information. They facilitate making and keeping more neural synaptic connections, which in turn help us think more quickly, be more adept at complex and big-picture problem solving, and generate more outside-the-box creative possibilities.
Many hold almost instinctively that in order to avoid fear, we must continually be in escapist (or fighting) mode. Since fear is well known to everyone, it is possible that we can spend most of our time trying to escape. Ironically, escapists activities (like reflexive aggression) usually only make the problem worse. Then, like one escaping with substance abuse, when we return to reality we find everything worse and more stressful than before. Another way we can try to escape is by relying on modes of behavior that seek to unrealistically control the situation. For example, I can make a habit of constantly blaming others for every problem. This obviously does nothing to face the problem creatively. Jesus, Paul, and Shirzad Chamine point the way to a mental climate that makes possible exploration, enlightened creativity, and constructive patterning of complexity. More and more it appears that science and spirituality share common views regarding the nature of man.
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What does it mean to you to be a citizen of heaven and an heir of God's kingdom? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1635).
In a famous passage Jesus says that one should render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. This was a brilliant response to a trap. However, it is a difficult rule to put into practice if one's conscience dictates primary allegiance to the leadings of the Spirit. In other words, Caesar could theoretically ask that I commit adultery. My conscience would not allow this. Therefore I would simply not render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's but rather render unto God the things that are God's.
Conscience can offer a great loophole through which anarchy can pass. This must be avoided. That is, conscience must be informed by the Greatest Commandment and that which is likened unto it; namely, that we should love God and love our neighbor. The United States is not an arbitrary ruler. This is a democracy and is founded upon individual rights. It is an American tradition that conscience to the maximum extent possible be honored and respected. Therefore I have little anxiety about living in America. There is little chance that the government will at gunpoint force me to do something against my conscience. The coarsening of American culture concerns me primarily because it obfuscates the clarity of conscience as a principle of action. When profanity and falsehoods inflame a culture, the provisions for conscience are mocked. In my view the greatest threat to our nation is not external, but the relentless internal and pervasive propaganda glorifying idols of escapism.
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What do you look back on as the happiest days of your life? Were they really that good? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1635).
All I know is that I am very happy now. The question can be asked however, are the days now really that good?
This morning I arose early and went to the blood lab because my regularly scheduled doctor's appointment is next Wednesday. The general elections were yesterday and the results are in. There was a gathering of about eight people waiting for the doors to open at 6 AM. The cynicism of the people there – even those whose candidates won – was an eye-opener. They sarcastically ridiculed even their own winning candidates. One lady worked at a high school. She just shook her head and said that people have no idea how it is in high schools these days. Profanity fills normal discourse and respect of students even for each other is lacking. Parents blame the schools. It is apparent that hope is not the opposite of cynicism. The opposite of cynicism is character. It's a foreboding thing that character seems to be disintegrating within a diseased culture. There is plenty of blame to go around for our present crisis; but we should start with ourselves, our home and work, and ask what character is being expressed there? Is there an environment of truth and humility...or is falsehood and arrogance predominant?
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What is the best thing that happened to you this week? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1635).
I consider this a "got you" question. I do so because I immediately rack my brain to think of what most pleased me this week....when the obvious fact is that I have no clear idea whether what pleased me most was the best thing that happened to me – after all, it could have been the worst in actuality. Similarly, there can be things of which I am completely unaware that were God-sent. Perhaps that aggravating delay saved me from otherwise experiencing a serious traffic accident – who knows? I don't know and you don't either. So the only straightforward answer that a person can possibly give to the question of "What is the best thing that happened this week?"...is that I have not the foggiest notion.
One of my favorite stories follows:
{"The Stallion Story" quoted from Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine, Greenleaf Book Group Press (2012), page 73. I highly recommend this book.}
The Stallion Story
And old farmer lives on his farm with his teenage son. He also has a beautiful stallion that he lovingly cares for.
The farmer enters his stallion into the annual country fair competition. His stallion wins first prize. The farmer's neighbors gather to congratulate him on this great win. He calmly says, "Who knows what is good and what is bad?" Puzzled by this reaction, the neighbors go away.
The next week, some thieves who heard about the stallion's increased value steal the horse. When the neighbors come to commiserate with the farmer, they find him again very calm and gathered. He says, "Who knows what is good and what is bad?"
Several days later, the spirited stallion escapes from the thieves and finds his way back to the farm, bringing with him a few wild mares he has befriended along the way. To his neighbors' excited rounds of congratulations, the old farmer once again says, "Who knows what is good and what is bad?"
A few weeks later, the farmer's son is thrown off one of these new mares as he is trying to break it in, and his leg is fractured. As the neighbors gather to commiserate with the old farmer, he once again reminds them, "Who knows what is good and what is bad?"
The following week, the imperial army marches through the village, conscripting all eligible young men for the war that has just broken out. The old farmer's son is spared due to his fractured leg. The neighbors no longer bother to come to the old farmer to congratulate him. By now they know what his response will be: "Who knows what is good and what is bad?"
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Are you more likely to strive for excellence in your secular life or your spiritual life? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1635).
Take most any statement, for example: "This is what I've always longed for." Obviously, the tone in which this statement is said can span a great divide. By tone alone the speaker can indicate sincerity--this is a long-sought achievement. On the other hand, the speaker can sarcastically by tone twist the statement to mean the reverse--this is the last thing I've ever wanted.
Now tone is closely allied with spirit. The first person in our example had a spirit of sincerity and gratitude; the second had a spirit of acidic sarcasm. Just so, spirit precedes the secular by determining meaning itself. So when we make the statement – "We will do our utmost to succeed!" – this can mean a dedicated reliance on parameters such as honesty, humility, and fairness; on the other hand, it can mean that by hook or crook no matter who gets hurt we are going come out on top. Thus, in the end, spirit or tone determines the basal structure of "due diligence." It is for this reason that spiritual life precedes and governs the dynamics of secular events.
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In your dreams of the ideal life, are you more like the pioneer (always pushing on) or the settler (settling down)? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1634).
The priority for me is to have a stable base of operations. Once this is established, I am given to reaching out in new endeavors. For example, at the moment I am taking a course in special education at the University of South Florida and taking guitar lessons. Additionally, I am tutoring in two different schools. I like the sense of adventure, but only when it is grounded in stability. In a sense this question is like the question regarding risk--are you risk adverse or a risk taker? I like to take risks, but only if I can plot a satisfactory fallback position if the experiment fails. No one wants to be considered a "stick in the mud." At the same time, no one wants to be considered foolhardy. The secret lies in establishing a steady rudder--a steady base of operations--that one can depend upon when setting out upon adventures. I suppose an investment analogy would be the observation that the deeper one's pockets, the greater the risk one can afford to take; or psychologically, the stronger ones's convictions, the more openly one can embrace the unknown.
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Then we'll come to see all that life can be:
(Jehovah Witness Hymnbook, "He Will Call", song 111).
Has it ever occurred to you that insanity is the most appropriate mental profile available when one is confronted by the gratuitously cruel chaos that can imbue the world? Those with a ready grasp of envisioning "all that life can be" while concurrently witnessing the wrenching absurdities of life – especially when impacting children and the innocent – find the sanest reaction the sentinel option of madness. We come to the stark conclusion that insanity signals sanity while staying intellectually cool necessitates nothing less than a spiritual and intellectual frigidity yielding a form of phantasmagorical delusion set in ice.
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