The Bible says that Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
I have been reminded today of what my true treasure on earth is. My true treasure is the love and friendship that has been poured into my life from all over the world. Truly I am a very blessed man indeed. If the Lord blesses me with another fifty years I still wouldn’t have enough time to show you how much I am truly touched by your love and friendship.
Most of us are familiar with The Little Engine That Could. However, it occurs to me that some of my international friends may not have been told the story as a child so here is a summery.
The little train engine was loaded heavy and faced a long stretch of tracks up a steep mountain. The climb was hard but he kept repeating “I think I can. I think I can.” Over and over until he was over the top. It’s a preschool classic tale about the power of positive thinking. Proverbs 23:7 tells us that the Heart’s thoughts forms us into what we are as a person. In other words, how we identify ourselves determines how we behave. Do we see ourselves as the happy one? The fun one? The smart one? Maybe we see ourselves as the one who has a good heart but is always being taken advantage of. Whatever it is it’s that self identity that influences what we will do in any given situation. Even if the choice is being made subconsciously we are still making a choice. What forms that self identity can be pretty complicated but as I understand it we get a lot of this from the opinions of others. I once witnessed one of the cruelest pranks known to mankind when working in a prefab housing factory. The short version is that multiple people who was in on the prank simply asked this person if he was feeling okay. No suggestion of what might have caused the question was to be made. After several inquiries the otherwise healthy young man left early claiming he felt ill. The opinions of the group had so much influence on his opinion of himself that he manifested symptoms of illness. The next day he was told by several people that he looked well and that his recovery was amazing and he had one the most productive days ever! It was all done by manipulating his opinion of himself. And that brings me back to The Little Engine That Could. By repeating to himself that positive thought over and over he brought out the best that was inside himself and overcame the obstacle before him.
I try to keep these two stories in mind when I’m feeling down. One of them I learned as a child and the other I witnessed first hand. The lesson I learned was that positive thoughts can improve my quality of life. Also, with the rise of social media we’re more likely to encounter people like the coworkers who made a person sick simply with the power of suggestion. Keep that in mind when listening to the negative opinions yourself and others that might be floating around out there and never hesitant to give a kind word to someone who might need it to get through the day.
Have you ever had that feeling that you were being watched? I’m often amused by the reaction of wildlife when the human walks into their domain as if he owns the place. I’ve noticed that animals seem to go out of their ways to watch the people. The little moth in the feature image it only wondered out of her hiding place in broad daylight but actually landed in font of my lens and leaned out from the blade of grass as if to say “peek-a-boo!”. We expect our pets to have a personality and it’s not surprising to see larger mammals exhibit playfulness but I never expected that from an insect. She did her little peeking routine for me a few more times and then fluttered back into the trees. I hope my next excursion into nature is just as fruitful.
Summer is definitely in full swing in West Virginia. The smell of campfires and the sound of treefrogs are filling the evening air. The best thing about a campfire is the conversation that abounds as friends and family come together. Sometimes in the back of my warped imagination I can hear cave parents fussing with their cave kids that they will never be successful in life if they don’t stop sitting around the campfire all day. “You’re never going to be able to provide for your tribe if if you don’t stop playing in the fire and go out to learn how to be a hunter gatherer ! Says papa caveman. That child probably grew up to be the first blacksmith or Goldsmith. 😉 But I digress. The important thing was that the campfire was the center activities for untold millenia. It was the original social media. Charcoal from the fire was used to create artworks on cave walls and solidify the record of the stories told at the fire pit. Now that I think of it I have to wonder if any of those cave drawings are actually the first meme? You see, I don’t believe that humanity has really changed all that much since the beginning . Yes, our technology is more sophisticated and that has lead to more opportunities but our basic needs and drives are still the same . Come to think of it, we’re all not so different from each other today. Yes we have different styles and solutions to problems but it’s all problems that stem from the same basic needs. The internet is really just a very sophisticated campfire which we gather around to share stories and art. And hopefully make a friend or two.
Along with tonight post I do have some housekeeping to address. I have returned from to my Appalachian Mountains from a week at Oak Island North Carolina and I’m still selecting and editing the photos. If you’ve reached this article on Facebook the odds are that you clicked on a link that I have shared to one of the groups that have graciously allowed me to share to. Most of the time these groups are about life in Appalachia or specifically West Virginia. Because my Beach photos don’t really follow the theme of these groups you will only be able to see them from my Business page.
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It’s only right that the skies should turn grey and the rain fall softly.
It’s only right that tears fall into the pooling rain.
The ripples that form on the water are a metaphor for our lives.
The ripple emanates on long after the individual droplet has disappeared.
So it is with ourselves and the lives we touch. The effect lives well past the event.
From where you now stand you see so much more than I can.
You fully understand the true nature of it all from beginning to end.
We mourn the loss of your presence in the echo of the ripples you left behind.
Save me a seat near the throne brother. I’ll see you again one day.
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