Are you stuck?

I read recently about a new, hi-tech water fountain. Now, most water fountains you walk up to, find the handle, turn the water on, bend over, and drink, right? This water fountain you simply walk up to, bend over, and drink. It has an infrared sensor or something like that which picks up your presence when you bend over and switches on the water.

What’s amazing is how many people look for the handle or button, search all over the fountain for it, and not finding it walk away, still thirsty; thinking, “Somebody needs to fix that water fountain.” All they had to do was bend over and get all the water they wanted. They were so stuck in their usual way of getting water, they couldn’t get their thirst quenched.

What “usual way” of doing something are you stuck in? Are you open to trying something different, maybe even more convenient?

The fact is many of us choose to stay stuck. So today, do something differently like drive home a different route. And see if God is on that path, too, as you listen to life and make a life, not just a living.

What are you Learning?

Here are some more lessons I’m learning as I listen to life:

It’s a lot easier to talk about someone than it is to get to know them.

Sure there are some mean people in the world, but I don’t have to be one of them.

Love overcomes fear even in times of terror.

There is a direct correlation between not going to the gym to workout and how much harder it is to get out of bed in the morning.

Prayer definitely changes things…and people because the more I pray, the more I change.

Puppies melt the hardest of hearts.

The only person I can control is myself, and frankly sometimes I’m not so sure about that even.

Everyone loves to laugh and the best way to get to know someone is to laugh with them.

God wants to bless us with everything our hearts can hope for and more than our minds can imagine.

Do you know enough to worry?

Let’s say I give you an apple seed. It’s a seed from a Washington Red Delicious. You love and have eaten bushels of them. You’ve even picked them. You know a tree-ripened apple from one picked early and sprayed to ripen. You make your own apple pies. You know just about everything there is to know about apples…

…except one thing. I ask you to look at that apple seed and tell me how many apples are in it. You can’t. And of course you can’t. You don’t know what the future holds. It’s reasonable to assume that seed contains bushels and bushels of apples in it, but it may hold none. You don’t know enough to say.

Just as you can’t look at that apple seed and tell me how many apples are in it, you don’t know enough about the future to worry. You can’t look at a life situation and tell what it contains. Sure, you can worry about a lot of possible outcomes, but you can’t with certainty say what will happen. 

When you start to worry today, remember: God knows. And God is in control.