Sometimes what we see is not necessarily what happened. What do you mean? You are in a hurry, not paying attention and you do not hold the door open for the person behind. You realize what happened, you stop, go back and apologize. The person calls you a name and says you should have been paying attention, with no give.

When we learn better, we are expected to do better. Many times I have heard the saying, “You know my heart” used just before we give our unabridged opinion to someone. This is used as a “get out of jail” ploy if you will. Rarely are we aware of another’s heart. We do not have the capacity to do so. After 52 years of marriage, we still miss read each other’s intentions.

It is hurtful because you tried to make it right. It does not feel good to be misunderstood or misjudged. And the closer we are to those we offend or those who offend us, the more painful it is. You might expect them to know your heart, but it was not captured.

We as humans will always make mistakes no matter how hard we try to do otherwise. Our “get out of jail card” has to always be in how we give others the benefit of the doubt. Tempering our words with kindness, thinking before we speak, and not being so ridged in our determinations to keep count.

The Bible agrees that God knows your heart. God said to Samuel that He sees not as man sees: “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

“He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteous he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.

Jeremiah said this of the human heart:” The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer.17:9).

Jesus said, “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person” (Matt, 15:18-20).

That said, are we to give up on humankind? No, because he has not, and will not give up on us.

Have you ever made a decision that you regretted almost immediately after you had done it? In 2002 I purchased a new red Ford Ranger (I wanted black), it had two doors (I wanted four), it had a single cd player (I wanted a combination cassette/cd player), and it had clear back door windows (I wanted tinted ones).

In the interim I had transportation to independently attend classes without inconveniencing my wife, but that was the only caveat. It was more than I could afford at the time and the feeling that I desired for a new vehicle was not there.

One evening as I was sitting on the ramp to the road that I had to get onto, I was hit from behind and pushed into a 22-wheel dump truck. The truck I did not like was totaled. It had less than 3,000 miles on it, and my wife had never ridden in it. No one was injured.

It was a blessing in disguise. Luckily, I had gap insurance that paid it off. I could have been saddled with the rest of the $22,000. Two weeks later I was blessed to find a three-year-old Black Ranger with 40,000 miles, all of the amenities that I wanted, and it was only $7,000 dollars. I was given an extra $400 to replace the missing tailgate.  

Moses made a reckless decision that cost him greatly. His poor choice, however, involved a lack of water. The Israelites were without water in the Desert of Zen, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses” (Numbers 20:2).

God told Moses to speak to a rock and it would “pour out its water” (v8) Instead he “struck the rock twice” (v11). God said, “Because you did not trust in me…, you will not [enter the promised land]: (v12).  

When we make reckless decisions, we pay the price. “Desire without knowledge is not good—how many more will hasty feet miss the way!” (Proverbs 19.2).  

Some Experts say the human brain spends much of its time wandering, whether it be while working or performing routine tasks like running errands. Mind wandering occurs when a person is thinking about something other than the task, such as past events or things in the future. Printed on August 27, 2022 Mental Health.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines Wandering as walking around slowly in a relaxed way or without any clear purpose or direction. Mind wandering can be filled with negative thoughts, worry and rumination, or it can be filled with positive thoughts. Positive mind-wandering associated with imagination and fantasy are essential elements of a healthy, satisfying mental life.

The thought of not having to go to work anymore might be tempting but boredom can often follow close behind. Some retirees feel lost, unsure of who they are or what they should be spending their time on. These feelings can lead to inactivity, increased alcohol consumption and depression. Aim to see retirement not as the end of something, but as the start of something new.   

When I was a youth, the elders made sure you stayed busy. Had they said that it came from the Bible, it might have had more validity. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece. An evil man/woman sow’s strife; gossip separates the best of friends. Wickedness loves. (Proverbs 16:27-29)

This should be the antidote to hopeless wandering, “Because our hearts, our minds, guide and direct everything we do, and if we do, and if we do not guard and protect them from the ungodly ideas, beliefs, and entertainments, they can cause our spiritual downfall” (Proverbs 4:23-27).    

Experts say follower’s motivations fall into two categories—rational and irrational. The rational ones are conscious and therefore well-known. They have to do with our hopes of gaining money, status, power, or some other intrinsic desires. Many would call this the norm.

Many times, it is the irrational motivations that lie outside the realm of our awareness and, therefore, beyond our ability to control them are what we are seeing now.  For the most part, these motivations arise from the powerful images and emotions in our unconscious that we project onto our relationships with leaders.

After practicing psychoanalysis for a number of years, Freud was puzzled to find that his patients—who were, in a sense, his followers—kept falling in love with him. Although most of his patients were women, the same thing happened with his male patients.

Freud finally realized that his patients’ idealization of him couldn’t be traced to his own personal qualities. Instead, he concluded, people were relating to him as if he were some important persons from their past—sometimes a parent.

Freud called it the dynamic “transference.” Even today, identifying and dissolving transferences are the principal goals of psychoanalysis. But as important as it is, the concept remains little understood outside clinical psychoanalysis.

Jesus says “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny him/her self and follow Me” (Luke 9:23).” His path was one of self-denial and suffering. But to be His effective disciples, we too are invited to put aside selfish desires and pick up spiritual burdens daily serving others first instead of ourselves.

The phrase comes from a phenomenon that became fairly common during the First World War. Soldiers sometimes shot themselves in the foot in order to be sent to the hospital tent rather than being sent into battle. I even heard of people doing other self-harming things to avoid going into the military.

To do something without intending to which spoils a situation for yourself. To hurt inadvertently oneself or one’s interests or chances for success. This colloquial term alludes to an accidental shooting as opposed to a deliberate one.

Dr. Steven Stosny, Ph.D. says we shoot ourselves in the foot again and again. If it feels like you make the same mistakes over and over, you are not alone. Everyone on Earth is capable of repeating the same mistakes again and again.

We can repeatedly shoot ourselves in the foot for one simple reason. Under stress we tend to retreat to habits of emotion regulation formed as far back as toddlerhood. Our thought processes become self-obsessed and our feelings veer toward the volatile, if not a full-blown rollercoaster. Let it go.

Sometimes we can figuratively shoot ourselves in the foot with misguided ambition. We speak too quickly when we should be listening. Or we take on a cause that is not necessarily our own but we are trying to help someone we view as an “underdog”. A simple fix, stop talking, close your mouth.

” James and John, two of Jesus’s disciples, knew what it meant to ambitiously seek something great, but for the wrong reasons. They replied, “let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory” (Mark 10:37). Jesus replied, “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 19:28), so it is easy to see why they made this request.

The problem, they were selfishly seeking their own lofty position and power in Jesus’ glory. Jesus told them, you do not know what you are asking. Jesus said, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” They could not.

When you know better, do better. The Apostle Paul said, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you” (Romans 12:3). Be blessed.

It is easy to turn back to what’s familiar when we face difficulty. When I graduated from college with a degree in Sociology and a minor in Political Science, I had no desire to go into Mass Retail Management. However, I needed a graduate degree to go into the humanities. Circumstances did not allow me to continue my education. Loans were not easily available as they are now.

It is not always easy to change career paths. In my nineteen years I tried many times to find a job that got me out of retail management and get a job that paid almost as much as I was making. However, there were no jobs that paid similar except other retail jobs. With a wife and two teenagers, I could not afford a pay cut.

I had to hit rock bottom with the present job and find other retail jobs in order to break free. With this feeling of hopelessness, I was able to make the decision that I wanted to make for years without being afraid. Any decision would have been an improvement. This gave me the encouragement to attend graduate school.

After finishing graduate school and moving to another state, I found myself looking for another job. I was looking for jobs that were commensurate with the education that I had acquired previously and not my job experiences. I did not want to go back into retail management. With the children graduating from high school and on their own, we were able to get by with less money.

You guessed it. I ended up in retail but less responsibility. One day while on a lunch break, I picked up a magazine and read an article about a lost soul who became a substitute teacher while he was finding himself. It inspired me to do the same. I still worked part time in retail but now in education too. In the end Special Education won.

When the Israelites felt the distress of an upcoming Assyrian attack, they crawled back to the Egyptians their former slave masters for help (Isaiah 30:1-5). God predicted that this would be disastrous, but He continued to care for them although they made the wrong choice. Isaiah voiced God’s heart: “The Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore, He will rise up to show you compassion” (v.18).

This is God’s attitude toward us, even when we choose to look elsewhere to numb our pain. He wants to help us. He does not want us to hurt ourselves with habits that create bondage. Short term gratification snares the lot of us. God wants to provide authentic healing as we walk closely with him.

It is my prayer that you do not take as long as I did to learn. He can fix what is broken in your life. “He is the fairest of ten thousand, He is the altogether lovely One.”

One of the greatest gifts I have received from the Lord has been that of a teacher. A role that I never thought I would play. Many teachers I have talked to over the years told me that they knew they would become a teacher from the time they were five or six years old.

Not me. I wanted no part of it. James 3:1 says, “Not any of you should become teachers, my fellow believer, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” Teaching is a necessary and valuable part of life. We come into this world ignorant, and we must be taught: language proficiency, motor skills, cultural norms, social customs, manners, moral values, and a host of other things.

Since teaching is a key element in acquiring information and developing knowledge, it is no wonder that the Bible has so much to say about teaching. Teaching is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that the logical end of effective teaching is that the pupil becomes like his/her teacher.

To really appreciate teaching, I believe it has to be a calling. Why, because you are never going to get paid enough to go through the grief and toils that today’s teacher has to endure. It is not an eight-hour job where you punch in at a certain time and go home when you are supposed to, and start afresh the next day.

Many would say that it is a thankless job where you are merely going through a ritual hoping that you will last until the school year ends, and you get a contract for the next year and so on until you either get fired or fed up and quit.  

One of the greatest gifts I received while fulfilling the role of a teacher was not a monetary gift. It was from one of my students who stayed in trouble all of the time at school and at home. He once emptied his mother’s checking account.  Many days my soul was tried.

At the end of the first semester around the time when students were getting ready to go home for a long break and enjoy being away from school, he gave me an envelope with a greeting card that was hand made.

On the card was a cartoon and the words scribbled at the bottom that said, “I know I was terrible. Thank you for your compashion (compassion).”

When I was teaching, I constantly taught my students to always consider mercy and judgment in dealing with each other. Why, because we (myself included) constantly make mistakes. We each played a role in how the lack of classroom behavior rules affected us all. I could not accomplish my job as required, and they could not focus as needed to learn with all of the distractions.

The way we accomplished this was to go over the school rules from day one. These rules were discussed in detail and a discipline test was given. Each student had to acquire a 100% score. Both verbally and in writing. This took care of those who may have had reading deficits, language issues, and different parenting.  

Each morning we looked at the rules on the wall and repeated them out loud. Despite doing this there were still infractions.  Why, because of the feeling that the rules did not apply because of certain circumstance that someone felt that it was justified. They included the following statements.

It was not my fault. They did it to me first. I did not think about that. I did not feel good. You did not see what they did to me. The rules are too strict. Can I have another chance. I don’t care. I am going to tell my mother. All but the last one sounds like the same excuses adults make. Except “I am going to call my attorney.”

Except for fighting, or other altercations that the school district determined to be out of the teacher’s control, we might have a discussion to determine what the consequences should be. I would ask each student what they thought the consequence should be. Each would suggest swift punishment for the infraction.

I would then discuss with them the fact that when the next person was found to have done the same thing, I would have no choice but to give them the same consequence. To my expectation each student would lament how unfair the sentence seemed to them—despite having deemed it appropriate when it was intended for the other.

They were showing the kind of judgment without mercy that God warns against.  James reminds us that instead of showing favoritism to the wealthy/others, or even to one’s self, God desires that we love others as we love ourselves. Instead of using others for selfish gain, or disregarding anyone whose position that does not benefit us.

James instructs us to act as people who know how much we’ve been given and forgiven— and extend that mercy to others. Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be sown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13).

Have you ever met someone or know someone, in your mind, that never does any good or never thinks of anyone but themselves? Sure, they say the right things and appear to do the right things, but deep down it is just a façade. In today’s society that seems to be acceptable, and we praise those who do.

If you have never worked with children in a real special way, you have no idea that the adult that you see or deal with was once a child. They did not just wake up at age fifty and decided to be that way. It started a long time ago. Mother or father may not have caught it. There was no grandfather or grandmother to catch it. The village that was supposed to act as a buffer was too busy.

However, our Creator says that we have to deliberately try to find that moment to address it. “They are just different” is not acceptable.  Constant criticism is perhaps all they know.  Someone has to carefully catch them doing something right and applaud them for doing it. If not, they may never grasp the thought of change.

The scripture mentions someone like that; Manasseh, king of Judah. Second Chronicles 33 outlines some of his atrocities. Building sexually explicit altars to pagan gods, practicing witchcraft, and sacrificing his own children. He led the entire nation down this terrible path. The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention.

Eventually, God got his attention. The Assyrians invaded, put a hook in his nose and took him to Babylon. Next, Manasseh finally did something right. He sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself. God heard him and restored him as king. Manasseh replaced the pagan practices with worship of the one true God. 

Perhaps you know someone like that. Liking or being happy with somebody involves agreeing with them. To love somebody is to feel affected by them and accepts them in all their strengths and shortcomings. You may have someone you love, but you may not love someone you like.