Ecclesiastes 12:10

  Lots of men suffer from the things they did in war but for Major Henry Rathbone what drove him to insanity was what he didn’t do.     Rathbone would spend the last 27 years of his life in an asylum for the criminally insane after attacking and killing his wife Clara as she tried to defend their children from his deranged attack. It wasn’t the stress of his job in the U.S. Consul in Hanover, Germany that drove him over the edge, it was the stares. As Clara put it, “ In every hotel we’re in, as soon as people get wind of our presence, we feel ourselves become objects of morbid scrutiny … Whenever we were in the dining room, we began to feel like zoo animals” . Henry imagined the worst when it came to what those people behind the stares were thinking.     What more could he have done that night?     He’d almost died in his effort. No one was expecting the attack. The enemy came in a whisper and had succeeded before anyone knew w...

  There is an old Russian proverb, “Dwell on the past and you'll lose an eye, forget the past and you'll lose both eyes”.   This time of year is one where we do a lot of looking back as we also look forward. Where we have been, where we want to go and why we are where we are. The past is an excellent teacher but can be a burdensome travel companion. We need to learn from it but we can’t stay in it.   Sometimes however, we try. ‘Back in the day’ or ‘we used to’ are only good thoughts if they are trying to help us learn what to do now. Getting stuck in the past doesn’t work. That was then not now.   Yet in our desire for progress, we would be fools if we don’t consider the failures and successes of what came before.   I don’t want to walk backwards but doesn’t mean I’m not shaped as I go forwards by the road that I once trod. The past isn’t a map but more of a compass. It doesn’t show you where to go but more of the directions you need to head. ...

   In math it doesn't make a lot of sense but in life there really is such a thing as addition by subtraction.  It is when you gain when you remove something from your life. The Bible is full of examples. 1 Corinthians 15:33   “ Do not be deceived: "Bad company corrupts good morals." Proverbs 13:20   “He who walks with wise men will be wise, But the companion of fools will suffer harm.” Ecclesiastes 9:18   “Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.” Hebrews 12:1   “ Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us ,” Ephesians 4:22   “ that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit ,”    In our lives, we all ha...

Crazy hypothetical: Words That Could Change The World* You have a machine that can send a twitter length message (140 Characters) to any person at any time in history. The person receiving the message will not believe it is from the future (even if you try telling them) and will be delivered in a way that will seem ordinary to them. The message will be treated like any other message the person might receive, so the more famous or influential person that receives it the more likely that might ignore it. (So if you send a message to Abraham Lincoln telling him not to go to Ford’s theater, it will be put in with all the hundreds of other messages he received in a day and he might not see it till it is to late.) The machine will only work once. Who do you send a message to and why? What effect do you think it will have? *Crazy Hypothetical is a mental game that gives you a conditional choice that gets you thinking about a subject. I used these for several years as discussion...

  Do you think that baseball players can’t hit nearly as well as they did when you were younger? Do you know that schools were much tougher when you attended? Are you sure cars were made so much better “back in the day”?   Well then you may suffer from “good old days” syndrome. “Good old days” syndrome is the tendency to look back on the past with nostalgia and forget about the reality of what went on.   It often happens when we look at a future task and dismiss it by saying things like, “We used to have a great…” or “If we only could do it like we did back then.” It makes the past perfect and therefore leaves the future to do other than disappoint.    So i s “good old days” syndrome a bad thing?       Well Ecclesiastes 7:10 tells us:  " Do not say, "Why is it that the former days were better than these?" For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this." A wise person does not dwell on t...