This one is from an email floating around the Internet:
Sometimes we wonder, what did I do to deserve this, or why did God have to do this to me? Here is a wonderful explanation!
A daughter is telling her Mother how everything is going wrong, she’s failing algebra, her boyfriend broke up with her and her best friend is moving away.
Meanwhile, her Mother is baking a cake and asks her daughter if she would like a snack, and the daughter says, “Absolutely Mom, I love your cake.”
“Here, have some cooking oil,” her Mother offers.
“Yuck” says her daughter.
“How about a couple raw eggs?”
“Gross, Mom!”
“Would you like some flour then? Or maybe baking soda?”
“Mom, those are all yucky!”
To which the Mother replies: “Yes, all those things seem bad all by themselves. But when they are put together in the right way, they make a wonderfully delicious cake! God works the same way. Many times we wonder why He would let us go through such bad and difficult times. But God knows that when He puts these things all in His order, they always work for good!
We just have to trust Him and, eventually, they will all make something wonderful! God is crazy about you. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, He’ll listen. He can live anywhere in the universe, and He chose your heart.
Hope your day is a “piece of cake!”
The best place to be during a graduation is with the seniors lining up before the ceremony.
There was a positive energy, with a hint of happy anxiety, that filled the air at last night’s graduation. The students were beaming. Of course, there were a couple seniors whose body language and attitude showed that they were there only to go through the motions, but the vast majority of students were excited. It was infectious. And as the seniors (and us teachers) entered the church for the commencement ceremony, you could feel even more energy from their family and friends.
As I told some of my (now former) students, high school graduation was not so much for yourself, but more for your family and friends. Your college graduation will be for you. Throughout elementary and high schools, your family had been there with you and for you. Your parents made you go to school. They were there for the good times and the bad. Most of your friends had been with you too for the last four years, and many of them longer than that. High school graduation becomes a celebration of everyone’s achievement to see you through school. College, on the other hand, is your accomplishment. You have to work for that graduation. Sure, your family and friends will support you, but it is only up to you to see to it that you make it through college. So, high school graduation is for your family; college graduation is for yourself.
So, bon voyage to the Class of 2003. I wish you well on your journey through life. I pray for each and everyone of you to have a long, happy, prosperous life in the light and love of the Lord.
I was driving down the interstate this morning and began to thing about control. Within all the rush hour traffic, I realized that the only control I really had was the space in front of me, that space between myself and the car in front of me.
Sure, I was controlling the steering wheel, how fast to drive, and even what lane to travel in, but any true freedom was restricted by the flow of traffic. Any rational decisions I made were limited to maintaining a safe distance and to maintain speed. Once I chose to get on the interstate, I relinquished most of my control to follow along that path until I chose to exit.
Further more, how much control did I really have over the space in front of my car? If I maintain a reasonable, safe distance, then at any time, a car in the next lane could easily cut over in front of me. I would have to react to the situation. More loss of control. Control becomes an illusion. Actually, I would have the freedom to choose among several options, like ride his bumper, flip him off, or back off to a safe distance. Only one option is a logical choice; therefore, control becomes very restricted in this situation.
The point is, we have the freedom to choose a path. But once a path has been chosen, that path sets up a sequence of events that must occur. We loose most of our control while on that path; until, at least, we reach the next decision or exit point. Some paths have easy exits at many points. Some paths are more restrictive and offer few exit points. And some exit points, maybe the only exit point from some paths, could be very unpleasant.
Now, why we choose a certain path is for another discussion.
Once on a trigonometry test, I accidently transposed the letters “c” and “x” in sec x (read as “secant x”) as sex c. (And the spell checker missed it too!)
One of my calculus students asked me recently if I will remember him. I replied, “Well, let’s see. When I’m an old, decrepit man, sitting in my wheel chair in some nursing home and somebody mentions the name ‘Bart’, I will remember math, goats, and sex.”