Faith vs. Fear

"Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way." ~ James 1:2-4

When in the throes of a crisis, we are desperately seeking solutions, answers, guidance and deliverance. And we are impatient; we want to see our way out as fast as possible. And therein lies the fundamental problem: we say that we trust God, but by desiring a specific and rapid resolution, we are denying God an opportunity to work, to implement his plan rather than ours.

And this reveals the basic dilemma in Crisis Management 101—until we completely, fully and totally TRUST God, we will never achieve the peace that comes from knowing that "All is Well."

When we are impatient, fearful, controlling, demanding, insecure and stressed, we reveal that we are not confident that God is on the throne and that he has a better plan for us than we can design ourselves. We deny ourselves his ultimate blessings as we seek to settle for much less than he desires for us. And we spend our days in panic, turmoil, and pain rather than in peace.

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Family: Our Only True Heritage

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What kind of fruit are you eating?
Whom did it came from?

What kind of seed are you passing on to the next generation?
Of what fruit is it coming from?

What kind of tree do you belong?
What's the root of that tree like?

Simple Solutions

Author Unknown

When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (ink won't flow down to the writing surface). In order to solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C. And what did Russians do?

The Russians used a Pencil!

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One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetic companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem.

Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Thankful And Living Life To The Fullest