Make use of opportunity

You and I have only one life to live and we are the ones who determine just what we make of it and the legacy we leave behind. Even for the persons that believe in reincarnation they do return in the same form when they are reincarnated so it remain one life to make an impact and leave something behind. Life is grand and for those who open up their eyes there are limitless possibilities while those who so choose can remain obscure or focus on achieving their own selfish goal.
We are not the ones who determine our ultimate end but we can determine whether we become the contents of an unmarked grave/crematoria urn or the one who have a memorial built so that those following may visit and be inspired. Courage is not achieved by remaining in the safety of home and comfort but by those prepared to go out and face danger on the battlefields. A sword is not tempered in ice but must go through the furnace fires and be hammered into shape. So too can you and I have the opportunity to master life and go out to make an impact on our world.
What will you and I be leaving behind for those coming after us? There are endless possibilities but we must be willing to pay the price. Life is not all about money and the goods we acquire for money and wealth at times take wings and fly away. The education we gain goes to the grave with us although it is possible to pass on the wisdom and knowledge that we have gained to those coming after us.
There is no hard and fast rule as to what you and I will have to pass on to those coming after us but the reality is that each  of us will get an opportunity to leave a legacy and the choice remain ours as to what we shall leave.

Will anyone remember me

What becomes of the contents of the crematorium urn? Life is so ironic that if we are fortunate enough that we continue to live one of the few sureties that we have is that one day we all are going to die. The big thing then is this, will anyone remember us after we die and what are we leaving for those we shall leave behind? 
To be buried these days and be given a tomb or a headstone is becoming a big thing. Hopefully the tomb will have a marker to say who body lies there. There are many persons that die and their bodies are cremated and no one really care what becomes of their ashes  and after a time the urn and its contents are forgotten.
This is in direct contrast to the efforts that are made to ensure that others whose presence have graced this earth are immortalized and their names and memory live on for ever.
There are many ways that you and I can ensure that our names lives on and that when our body dies it is not as if we had never been present on this earth.
Each of us today can look at what we are accumulating so that we have something to leave for those coming after us. It is not enough to have lived on this earth and then die but there is nothing to indicate that we ever existed on this earth.

Winners and losers

History is being cheated by those who aspire to be at the top but they are not playing by the rules. One of the more notable occurrence of this is in the world of sports. Fame, accolades and worship are being heaped on cheaters and the truly deserving are regarded as losers because the earth only worship winners. The true winners will never be know because many cheated their way to the top and later these winners are thrown into the garbage bins while the wrongs these so called winners commit can never be righted.
History is also just in that often it is years later that a man's worth and work is really appreciated and the due honor is bestowed posthumously. The very reason for which one generation executes a man cause another generation to declare the same man to have been a hero.
Money is good but most time bring prestige when it is amassed and stored. Only a few men's money will last for multiple generations. The things  that are counted as worthy for men to embrace and emulate are the real legacy that is worth creating.
What is it that have cause the great men of yesterday to be revered and allow them to continue to inspire men of the present? What will I leave for future generations to remember?
I can be a winner in my own mind and later history will prove me to be right.

It is never too late

There is a common mistake that many persons are settling for and that is listening to the naysayers that it is too late to begin. Quite often those who go about declaring that it is too late for others to begin striving to achieve their dream or creating their legacy at the same time boast about their own achievements.
It is never too late to begin pursuing your dream because you did not control your past neither do you control your future. Some persons will not agree with this statement but most of us will agree that there are circumstances every day that is outside of our control. It is a willingness to go forward that is needed.
Many persons see legacy as money to be left for those coming after but the reality of this is that unless that money is deposited shrewdly those getting it may just waste it.
On the matter of creating a legacy of money some persons got educated and then have a family while some had their family first and then get educated. Each may be right in their choice.
It is never too late to start because lacking the strength of youth may be compensated by the wisdom of years.
Some of the greatest bequest to mankind is not money and could not be tallied until the death of the person.

How things change

Last year round about this time I was a complete mess. I was unemployed, despairing and depressed with everything seemingly going against me. The only companies willing to hire me were the insurance companies and every  time one made me an offer circumstances conspired against me.
It was out of desperation that I took a look at writing. A social dating site had allowed me to experiment with writing poetry although this was not totally new to me because I had been writing poetry for many years.
In the poetry I had written in previous years I was to find inspiration because circumstances was not done with me as yet. It was when I was down and out flat on my face that I learned so much. I have expanded into writing short stories, novels and religious writings. Things have not stopped there because now I have begun to explore other fields as offshoot from writing and have a number of people ready to assist me in carrying out the ideas.
Looking at my life just now I do not think I have been in such a wore position before but I am not hopeless because I have never seen so much possibilities in the future at any time in my life.

Happy Mother's Day

I got up at 4:00 am to pen these lines for Mother's day. Happy Mother's Day to any mother that take the time to read.


Only Mother

I observed   a mother and could not understand

How so much could be transmitted through those gentle hands

Or her ability to transmit such patience and tenderness

And her saying to a child "I love you" through a smile and caress

How every sound that from a child that is heard

She is able to comprehend and put into words

I could not understand how every time the baby fusses and cries

Her ears is able to interpret and analyze

Or when the baby is sick and not well

How she knows the doctor what to tell

I could not understand why beauty, charm and grace

Are always in season and never out of place

And throughout life she continues to impart

Strength of character from a noble true and loving heart

Small Talents

It is a lazy man that bemoans and laments what he has been given. Each of us as we seek to develop what we have will find that we expand and acquire more.
One of the exciting challenges in life is to develop the small talents that we have. Consistently working on the small talent with which we have been blessed will raise us into the ranks of the super talented. Soon it will be difficult to tell the difference between the really talented and the man who had to work at building his craft.
Think of this coaches get fired when teams do not perform up to expectation. why?
I never did figure out why. What if the coach was given a no good team?
May be a good coach should be able to make great a team with little talent. It may be up to the coach to move the mediocre to great.
This may be my legacy to take my mediocre gifts to great heights.

Capturing thoughts and ideas

It continues to be fascinating what we can acquire, store and leave for posterity. One of  the great blessing of life is the individuality of each person. it is said that a person has about two thoughts every minute. It then becomes what will a person do with his thoughts? Will he make all go to waste? It is thoughts I believe that leads to ideas so ignoring our thoughts will also lead to a shortage of ideas. Ideas not acted upon is a waste of  valuable resource.
For many years I have been challenging older persons to write down and record their memories. I believe that the older persons have wisdom of years and that is one of the things that they will always have over the young. I cannot honestly say no one has acted on this because I have no way to know how I influence those with whom I come into contact.
Here is a challenge. always carry with you a pen and writing material and when a thought occur write it down. Do I do this for myself? The answer is, yes.

The endless possibilities

A great debate rages in Christian circles as to whether it is the Lord's will whether one should marry or embrace celibacy. There is nothing in the Bible to support the idea of celibacy and the first blessing that man had on him bestowed was that he should pass on his genes, This may be his greatest legacy. Many who for various reasons reject marriage use as an excuse that the Lord desire for them celibacy. I find it interesting that many are not afraid to tell lies about and on the Lord.
A wasted life is the life that when it has ended there is nothing to pass on to a succeeding generation. How sad should a man die and no one can recall that he had been on the earth or that during his life he impacted not even  one person.
Wealth may not be the only legacy one can create. It would be nice if parents have wealth to leave for their children but even more valuable will be if the parents leave the means of obtaining wealth. The majority of us will not have wealth to leave to our children but there is the even greater legacy. Life should not be limited to our own family but the opportunity is available to impact those outside our immediate circle.
Presently life is fantastic and the universe has become our immediate world. Ours is the opportunity to impact the world for the world still need original thinkers. Children are sent to school and universities to be shaped and molded into what society expects. Society expects fitting into its mold but society may or may not be ready for world vision and many are impacting the world with their visions. this too can be an opportunity to create your legacy. Do not say all of opportunity's doors have been closed because the man who truly desires, doors will open to him.
Wealth is not necessarily money.  The supply of Money may come to an end but think  about what  can you leave on this earth that will continue to impact humanity  even when you are gone and into the next millennium.
Just imagine the endless possibilities of creating a legacy that can last.

What's in a Name?

What’ in a name

     Probably the most important gift that a parent gives to a child is a name. Every child is born into a family and it is assumed has the right to the family name and also the privileges that comes with belonging to that family. Giving the child a name involves the hope and aspirations that the parents have for the child. It is the designation which the parents hope the child will go by for all of his life time. Then to identify the child in the family the child is given his/her personal name which is different from any other name in the family and later to ascribe credit to a particular individual.

      It is debatable but in naming the child the parents were being prophetic because they were bestowing on the child what they wanted the child to become later in life that is when the acquired the status of being a man or woman. Many will debate whether a child actually becomes what his name means. This somewhat depends on the culture in which the child is born because in some cultures as soon as the child knows the meaning of his name and how his name make him different from other children then he begin to learn to act out the meaning of his name.

     Parents that just arbitrarily name their child leave the child to search to define himself and to find out who he wants to be. The child is left to be anything when the parents had the option of bestowing that gift in naming the child when the child was born. It is just as bad when parents name their child and the child realizes that he can be more than the parents expects or designated. The child has to continually struggle to reverse what was bestowed by his parents or go about changing his name. Some parents have concluded that the name given originally to their child proved to be hindrance to the progress of the child and have gone about and changed the child’s name to one more acceptable. The Bible contains some of the oldest records that are available to man and in the Bible we have some interesting name changes.

        Abram and Sarai had their names changed to Abraham and Sarah by God. We are not told the name Moses’ mother gave him but the Egyptian princess named him Moses. Jacob had his name changed to Israel by God. Oshea had his name changed to Jehoshua (Joshua) by Moses. Simon had his name changed to Peter by Jesus. Joses had his name changed to Barnabas by the Apostles. We are not told how Saul got his name change to Paul. The name changes indicated change in calling, destinies or character.

        Different cultures have different ways as to how they go about naming a child. In some cultures the child was named after the day on which it was born or to commemorate significant events that happen at the same time that the child was born. In modern times many children are named after sports personalities and television characters. Television characters use stage name and this often that children are given. Unfortunately these persons have nothing to commend them either on stage or in their real personal life off stage. This is one of the reasons that many hope that parents naming their children are not being prophetic because television character lives are a mess both on and off the screen. The same can be said for many sports stars and many celebrities and persons in high office.

         Some parents have chosen to name their children after some particularly bad or evil character who existed at the time of the child’s birth or historically.

 In modern times the United Nations has list of rights to which every child that is born on planet earth is entitled. Near the top of this list is the right to have a name. Previous mention has been made that one of the reason for this is to distinguish and identify particular persons. There have also been steps taken to distinguish individuals especially in a world where there may be hundreds of persons in some instance that goes by the same name.

       Probably the most ancient records we have of names are found in the Bible. The preservation of name and the passing on of name and genes were very important. Such was the importance of this that provisions were made hundreds of years before Moses incorporated it into the law for a man who reached adulthood and got married and died before he fathered any children. When such an event should happened then the man’s brother or his next of kin was to marry the widow and the first child they have would be regarded as the man that had died child. The worst scenario that could happen was for a man’s name to become extinct because there was no male to propagate the family name.

There were instances that men had transgressed against God and he removed that family name by destroying all the males. The ultimate curse in the Bible was for all the males of a family to die out. The ultimate blessing was to have many sons propagate the family name.

 

       One of the wonders of modern inventions is the ability to keep records. Some of the advantages of record keeping are;

1.      It allows you to trace and know who fore parents were. The ancient people of Israel were very careful about their genealogy and in modern times many are seeing the advantages and checking on their ancestors. It is no longer sufficient to say that I am alive so I am not interested in who were before me.

2.      Records also keep alive misdeeds as permanent blots. Many think that the day the die that is their end. Unfortunately we die but our records lives on. It is sometimes years after death that a person’s worth or contribution is recognized and the deserved honor is bestowed post humus. This is one instance that the designated name identifies exactly who is being honored.

3.      Records are being purged and the names of undeserving are being removed and their names are in some instances being replaced with that of the deserving. One of the examples is sports where some cheated to get to the top and their names are being removed. This is not a case of the name being removed but the name of the person will always be remembered with disgrace and infamy.

 

      One of man’s greatest desires is to be immortalized. Everyman knows that he has a limited time to spend on the earth. The fact is he knows that there are so many to die that death may come at anytime so his desire is that when he dies that is not his end but that there is something that he leaves to remember him by. The thing that he is given to distinguish him from every other person on planet earth is his name. A person dies but his name does not die. Even if a man should set out to make a name for himself he cannot say for sure how history will record his name.

      There are men who have been dead for hundreds of years and even now attempts are being made to clear their name because every time their records are checked there is a blot. If the man is dead and is no more then succeeding generations should not care as much about clearing the person’s record.

       History refuses to forget its brave and noble Children. From ancient times it cheers and honors the selfless, courageous and noble. Some have just recently died and some have been dead for hundred of years yet they continue to speak by inspiring the living to rise to a more noble cause because if they in their time and circumstance stood tall those in the present face less dire circumstance so they can do it too.

       History has its nefarious, ignoble and evil characters also who will always be remembered with contempt and whose name will never be mentioned among those of the greats that have blessed this earth. Forever condemned to be objects of disgrace and contempt.

       Very few really want to be neutral and want to have lived here on the earth and pass into oblivion and to have impacted the earth in no way. No one really want to have been on the earth lived and died and the earth was no different for his having been here.

 

      Life then has hand out some rather harsh sentences and have not been very just if when a man dies that is the end of him. That process by which man came into being also designated that he be given a name so that there is a difference from each other. The body dies at death and no man recalls the body and very few are interested in what a man’s body looked like when a hundred years later he is studied. For The name becomes important for it identifies the one who was in the body and it was not so much the body but who was living in that body. The basic idea is that the man body dies but who he was lives on and continue to affect and influence the living. He is also remembered so is he really dead?

 

This brings in the question of religion and science.

     The evolution theory make man the product of an accident or at least began as an accident, survived the chaotic stage and now have become highly organized and developed. Now it is only man’s body that dies because his name is kept on the records and from time to time some record are revisited. The man is not dead in the sense that he is remembered and continues to influence the living. It is evident that it is not the man’s body that is alive. It is not unreasonable to believe that the very part of man that continues to be remembered could also continue to live somewhere else. Science has no proof that this is not so.

         Some branches of religion say this is not so also because there is a God to face after the body dies. These religionists admit that there will be a God to face sooner or later but reject the idea that there could be an aspect to man (soul and spirit) that continue living after death.

      The name with which a man has been designated has so much importance attached to it that in the prison system in some countries when a man enters a penal institution his name is replaced with a number. The basic idea being that he has violated the right to the use of the name and so that right has been removed.

    

The Name of God

       The most significant name in the Bible is the name of the Lord God. The Lord God is big, mighty majestic holy powerful among so many adjectives that do not adequately describe him that no one name says adequately who he is. In the Bible as different people experienced his might and power they added new names to describe him. Also there were the personal names that God used to designate himself. It is because of this that we have a number of names but they all referred to the one God. There were also the times when God chose to refer to himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These were the people that the ancient people of Israel revered as the father of their nation.

       There are a number of names by which the Ancient Israelites knew the Lord God among them El Shaddai, El Elyon, Adonai, El Olam, Elohim, Jehovah. The name Jehovah had sixteen compound titles that went with it.

         In the list of the Ten Commandments that the Lord God spoke to the people of Israel the third commandment forbid taking the name of the Lord God in vain. Many have struggled with the interpretation of exactly how this command should be obeyed especially in light of the fact that there are many names for God in the Bible. Some have gone so far as to interpret it that the name of the Lord God should not be erased (as in the case of writing or typing and there is an error or misspelling).

The name of God must be borne in mind that the names of God speaks to God’s character and the names of God represent the highest being in the universe. Also it must be borne in mind that the names of God speak of his justice holiness mercy and truth.

        When the Lord God says do not take his name in vain it speak among other things of not using his name with disrespect, contempt or in any way that is not in keeping with his character. It also involved one being fully aware of what is in involved when one is under oath and swears, using God’s name, to tell the truth.  That is, should he not be truthful in what he says he is calling on the highest being in the universe to administer punishment as the ultimate all knowing judge of the universe. It is dishonoring the Lord God’s character in those instances when he is called upon to elevate his character to be on par with that of the Lord God. The same principle applies when a person makes a solemn vow before the Lord God and not follows through with the vow.

        The name of the Lord God represented his character and who he is. Any disrespect for the name of the Lord God was disrespecting the owner of the name. The Lord God would have the ancient people of Israel to know that he would not lightly on those who lightly viewed him and were disrespectful and lightly used his name. Neither would he take kindly to those who insulted his name.

 The ancient Jews had such a high respect for the name of God the scribes would never write the name of the Lord God for fear that it may be mispronounced or pronounced in a disrespectful way while being read. This partly explains YHWH which the scribes would use whenever they encountered the name of the Lord God. This was the most important name for God but over time it pronunciation was lost.