The Dot

           Here’s a convicting story. A preacher was once addressing a group of men. He took a large, blank sheet of paper, placed a black dot in the center with his pen, and held it up before the men.

            “What do you see?” he asked.

            One person responded quickly, “I see a black mark.”

            “Right,” the preacher replied. “What else do you see?”

            Total silence.

            “Don’t you see anything other than the dot?” he asked.

            No reply.

            “I’m really surprised that you have completely overlooked the most important thing of all—the rest of the sheet of paper.”

            His application was this. Life is full of blessings and possibilities. Too often, we allow the relatively fewer and smaller, dot-like disappointments or painful experiences to distract us.

            In our lives, we have so much to be thankful for—and so much possibility with what is yet to come.

           

19 Praise the Lord; praise God our savior! For each day he carries us in his arms (Psalm 68:19.) NLT

Source: Our Daily Bread

You Think You’ve Got it Bad?

We still have a few folks left who remember life in the 1920s. It was tough. Most people had to heat their homes by firewood or, in the north, awake at 4:00 A.M. on frigid winter mornings to open the furnace and shovel coal. (Failure to do so meant frozen pipes.)

In 1920, the typical workweek was sixty hours minimum. Women worked even longer hours in the home. The leisure industry was non-existent because few people had time for leisure.

Fifty percent of the population eliminated their wastes in a privy in the backyard. If you were a man in the 1920s, you could expect to live fifty-four years.*

Long for the good old days?

Think we’re blessed today?

*data supplied from the book-- HUSTLING GOD by M. Craig Barnes, page 90.