To consider what God wants for me is the best news

Consider your situation with contemplation

In the sermon I heard in church yesterday, the preacher asked what each of us would consider the best news ever to receive. Thoughts raced through my mind like someone who had met with a genie that could grant three wishes. How we can so rashly lose advantage in the face of a great bounty.

The child in me was ready to blurt out an ephemeral desire, but my better angels constrained me to think deeply about what it is that is indeed the news that would best be fulfilling of a desire, a wish, a hope, the news that would keep me beaming stronger than the midday sun in the tropics.

In the scheme of things, some would desire winning the lottery, so much money coming into your possession, it neither defines wealth nor health, many have had more money than can be counted and have had no peace, no health, no happiness, or no contentment to enjoy what they have. They are miserable and miserly, depressed and full of despair, the momentary thought of things taken care of can also be the suddenness of the better things taken away.

Something life-threatening suddenly solved

No, it was not the lottery I wanted as the best bit of news for me, useful as it might be, I saw a story I never wanted written about me. He won so much money and had no life with which to live and enjoy it. Cecil John Rhodes was said to be probably the only commoner apart from the royal family that could bring London to a standstill when he visited. On his deathbed, despite being one of the world’s most influential men of substance of his time said, “So little done, so much to do.” [Quotes: Cecil John Rhodes]

His health failed him at the age of 48, he had won the stupendous lottery of money, but it could not save his health.

Which brought me to another thought, I am facing prostate cancer, a condition that somewhat exists in a place I can neither see nor access. It presents no pain or discomfort, but the doctors in their conversations among themselves without telling me, until I read it in their notes had assessed it as malignant. Heck! It is cancer in a seemingly little place that can so easily kill you too.

You can imagine, I then thought having dismissed the good news of winning the lottery that I wanted to be totally healed. In one moment, every trace of cancer and infirmity obliterated in an instant and wholeness, nothing missing nothing lacking nothing broken – this being the full meaning of Shalom that we usually translate glibly as a greeting of peace. If only we knew in truth what peace and the peace of God really meant.

Surely, there is more to desire

Yet, I felt something was still missing from this thought, it was desire fed from my situation and circumstances, no less valid but still wanting. I could have my full health but then have no means or capacity to do the amazing and pleasurable things of life. I find myself thinking many times that there is more to life than this.

Jesus hung on the cross for more than just us getting by and still we barely enter the fundamentals of the goodness of why God gave His only begotten Son for the world, but we should dare to personalise it. If the King of Heaven thought I had this much value for Him to willingly sacrifice Himself, how is it that I am desperately failing to understand and appreciate it?

It might seem I was so long in thought, but I soon realised where I should set my hope, my desire, my need, and my fulfilment. It is in the Word of God, saying what God thinks, says, and desires about me. It came to me in these words, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” I was thinking in King James English, and it had much to say to me. [Bible Hub: III John 2]

It has unparalleled completeness

It addressed everything I could ever desire for the best news, a full life of blessing in spirit, soul, and body. Another translation, the New Living Translation, says, “Dear friend, I hope all is well with you and that you are as healthy in body as you are strong in spirit.” How can you not want wellness in your soul, health in your body, and strength in your spirit? The prosperity of the soul includes the fullness of your years too. There are more reinforcing translations of the same text to confirm purpose and intent.

I will take that every day and be thankful for every moment of the goodness and mercy of God following me all the days of my life. The Psalmist concludes the 23^rd Psalm with, “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” [Bible Hub: Psalm 23:6]

The import of that message is as grand as we so easily dismiss its meaning. Nothing can touch you in the house of the Lord even as you are well cared for and catered for by the very best that the universe has ever had to offer.

To think it alone is mind-blowing and yet there is every means to live it from this moment onwards.

You can only play the cards you have

The things that I watch

I am a fan of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that anytime I light up my Amazon Fire Stick 4K*, I log on to YouTube and catch the most recent episodes that were recorded within the last 24 hours. The kind of insight and commentary he brings to the issues of the day usually has me applauding from my sofa in awe.

One section of his monologues that intrigues me is the lead-in to his Meanwhile polemics, it is made up of two counterintuitive deliveries almost nonsensical yet quite studied, I have myself wishing I could write like that. Then again, talk shows have writers, so these are more a confluence of crazy ideas than the individual genius of one, though the innovation itself might just be that of one person. What do I know?

The cards you’re dealt

Anyway, in another segment that gets played every few weeks, a guest is invited to participate in the Stephen Colbert Questionert, a series of 15 questions that presume to give a better knowledge of the person being interviewed. On this occasion, it was James Taylor who for the last question, Describe the rest of your life in five words, answered, “Play the cards I’m dealt.”

Now, I am not a card player, I only barely know anything about hands in poker even as I have if I remember correctly written code to randomly deal cards to present a winning poker hand, 2-Pair, Royal Flush, 4 of a kind, that sort of thing. I doubt I would ever have the proficiency to play cards for money and not that I would countenance that level of folly.

Any fool’s poker

However, I understand a few principles around the game, when cards are dealt, you cannot choose what you get, that’s just luck or fate, depending on how you view things. When the betting starts, reviewers might suggest the hand you have has more chance of winning the pot than the other person. Then other cards are put on the table, so that between the 3 you have in your hand and the 2 that end up on the table, you come to a decision, on who has the better hand.

Forgive my amateurish descriptions. Sometimes, you’ll fold because you do not think you have a chance, maybe you can raise the ante because you are surer about what you have got, then, there is a bluffing where you suggest you have the best hand and dare the other person to call your bluff, beyond the basic skill, it becomes a game of wits. Someone with the right kind of resolve can win over a good hand and this happens.

Fundamentally, whichever way the game goes, you can only play what you have got, never what you wish you had. Then even if you had everything in line but your bluff was not up to standard, the game might end early without you getting others to commit more to the pot for a bigger win. Let me exit the stage left at this point.

You can only play what you have

In life, we analogously in a card game where by fortitude, destiny, luck, fate, or blessing, we are dealt an experience of life that we have to live to the best of the capabilities and possibilities we possess. Nothing is perfect and even the perfect goes awry. We are left with having to live life as we find it and make the best of it to the squander or the prosper, then it could just be average and that in itself may not essentially be bad, just do your bit.

We can daydream and wish we were living another life, get into a transponder and be translated into that alternate universe where all those dreams are living realities in the midst of the same faces and issues of life. A good hand in a bad setting of a paltry pot for the winnings. You begin to realise the futility of it all, for no matter the number of infinite universes we might visit, the same human issues will exist. We might as well stick with the universe we know rather than the one we are introduced to as newly arrived foreigners in a strange land.

This is not against the march of progress, we can do a lot with what we have, we can have dreams, live with hope and march towards the realisation with purpose and determination. We can only do that with what we have rather than what we wish for. And so, I could well understand what James Taylor meant by “Play the cards I’m dealt.”, for life whichever way you live it or refuse to live it would always be, what you make it. And from the music, according to Leon Patillo, ‘all of your dreams can come true.’

Blog - The bird in hand is all you have

* All my media content is now delivered through this device to my Smart TV, I switched off my TiVo device over 2 months ago because it was just consuming electricity, the device allows me to download all the apps I need to watch everything I am interested in.

Birthday Renewal Invitation Anniversary Nativity - VII

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Every day we work at it

It wasn’t as I had hoped and planned, to spend this special day with an extraordinary man from afar; who has been the main participant in the most exhilarating time I have had in my life for the past 18 months.

A long-distance relationship with all its strains, constraints, and inconveniences that we have worked through with communication, encouragement and hope, leads us on to the expectation of greater and more wonderful things to come.

From my heart, I pray so fervently for the fulfilment of dreams well beyond anything we could have ever imagined, as we are astounded and astonished by goodness, mercies and favours from near and afar that heaps blessing upon blessing on his life.

Happy Birthday, Brian

To this man whose smile lights my world and sets my heart on fire with unquenchable love, I wish the happiest of birthdays and this the beginning of better, more beautiful ones to come.

I have never loved anyone like I have loved this man Brian and I look to the day when there will be no distance between us, when the sun shall not set on any time apart, when we seal it with more than a kiss to live happily together, free to explore the whole world as our oyster.

Dear Brian, much as I hoped that we would spend this day celebrating together, I am no less thrilled for you and about you, you mean the world to me and when all is said and done, I know I have been loved so deeply beyond words or deeds can fully express, many happy returns of the day, my dear, my man, my love.

Happy birthday!!!

The 7 days of falling in love

Blog - BeausResiding in Accommodating Nirvana - VI

Blog - BeautifulRomantic Intimacy Attractive Nascent - V

Blog - BrianReally Is Adorably Nice - IV

Blog - BashfulReticent Introverted Amusing Naughty - III

Blog - BeginningReaction Indication Affinity Notable - II

Blog - BeliefReview Interest Anticipation New - I

Brian, you're the best, the very best, have a wonderful day, I am so in love with you, darling.
❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤎💜💙💚💛🧡❤
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