“I am not on this earth by chance. I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain…not to shrink to a grain of sand. I am natures greatest miracle. I was conceived in love and brought forth with purpose.” The scroll marked IV Og Mandino.
OK so after 16 weeks of reading Haanel’s Master Key and repeating aloud multiple times each day the appropriate scroll from the Greatest Salesman I have learned many things and yet I have learned that I still know so very little about what makes everything tick.
Take Og’s statement above, “I was conceived in love”…well maybe I was, I like to think so, but what about those who were conceived ‘by accident’ on a one night stand, or far worse as the result of a rape or even a systematic sexual enslavement of one people group by another. Is it possible to watch the news on television and think that every child is conceived in love? Maybe it is better not to watch the news at all and actually I do avoid it as much as I can, but because I choose to guard my heart and mind by not dwelling on them that doesn’t make the atrocities go away does it?
What about the millions of people who live from cradle to grave under the power of darkness, and dare I say, Satanic ideologies or other forms of physical or mental slavery. People who never have any possibility of free thought and even less chance of freedom of action without fear of the worst kind of reprisals. Children are abducted and forced to be soldiers, young girls are forced to become brides when they are hardly in their teens. Are these things too far away to be of concern in such a small world?
In the ‘civilised’ West: and I am talking about less than an hours drive from my house young men of one certain persuasion are given cash incentives if they manage to get a young girl from the indigenous population pregnant. In a town only 60 miles away at least 1400 children were systematically, sexually abused over a number of years right under the noses of local authorities who were too scared to act. I know it is hard to believe but I have lived long enough to know it is still happening.
So am I expected to believe that the world is making progress but it is just not perfect yet?
Or am I supposed to accept that all their misfortune is the result of people’s own thoughts and they have ‘attracted’ to themselves the terrible life they are living?
Well, I don’t believe it and I cannot accept it.
Am I now going back on all I have previously written in my blog posts? I have tried to be so positive. Well every lamp must have a positive AND a negative wire before it will give its light.
So I am not going back on anything previously written…I have come a long way and learned so much of value but one thing I believe remains the same and no amount of reason has been able to move me from it. Good and evil do exist side by side and if anyone were to deny it I think they would only be choosing ignorance for the sake of convenience.
Imagine the architect of the universe as mere electrons firing together to form atoms which in turn form cells who act individually or group together with all their different tasks to perform. Imagine that a few trillion of them contrived to form you. You are a spirit being, your have a soul, (your mind, your will, your emotions) and you live in a body. Can you believe all that just evolved from some lesser life form?
No intelligent design, no benevolent creator who said “Let us make man in our own image” whose heart is filled with love for mankind. Some would have it as a series of chance happenings that took place in a previously vacant universe.
I don’t want to be rude but I have to laugh.
You see my imagination doesn’t stretch that far and I am not convinced that science will ever prove that things can come from nothing. Words and thoughts are not nothing, they are something so I can more easily believe that by mixing words with faith an intelligent, supreme being called those things that were not as though they were.
I believe in a God of Love. If we are to accept the Bible record we must accept it in its entirety, yes, some of it may be allegorical but there is sufficient hard doctrine for us to accept that God is a good God who desires only good things for men but that He has a malevolent adversary who hates mankind as much as he hates his creator.
In the 51st Psalm King David expresses to God his deep sorrow and very real remorse for his own terrible actions…he writes
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.
This is the man about whom God had already said, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do.’ Acts 13:22
He does not write, I was conceived in love and brought forth with a purpose…but rather I was conceived in sin and brought forth with iniquity.
And yet his purpose became clear…and he achieved it too, uniting a people and continuing the blood line and the prophesies that brought forth the Christ. Emmanual, God with us, you shall call His name Jesus for He will save His people from their sins. Not just a carpenter, not just a great teacher, not just a prophet but The Prince of Peace, all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form and the propitiation for our sins, the only way to God.
No man comes to the Father but by Me, He said it Himself and if He lied about that then we have to believe He lied about other things too. But He cannot lie and He is the same, yesterday and today and forever.
So however it came about that you were born into this world, be it in true love or in lust or in violence… the new birth, the birth by the Spirit is from God and he gave you a purpose that was known to Him from before the foundation of the world.
Let me say again, however you were conceived, your creator came to find you, to purchase you for himself and the price He paid was His own blood. That was the kindest act of all.
This fits perfectly with Haanel. The spirit world is very real and permanent. The things of earth are temporary. The laws of the universe and the laws of the mind work for all people, God makes His sun to shine on the righteous and on the unrighteous. Evil people may prosper for a time and they will manifest what they think about because the laws of the mind work for them too but David in another place (Psalm 37:7-9) says this
Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath;
Do not fret—it only causes harm. For evildoers shall be cut off; But those who wait on the Lord, They shall inherit the earth.
Don’t fret…Be at peace.
For two weeks, as part of our Mastermind program we have been thinking about Kindness, noticing kindnesses and trying to do kindnesses without getting caught or looking for credit, the greatest kindness we can do comes in this. To help a fellow human being to see that, whatever the circumstances of his birth, whatever his life history to date, no matter where he has been and what he has done, God loves him with an everlasting love and wants him to come home. To simply ask is all that is required…there is no work to do…there is no cost…Jesus has already covered that…just come with Gratitude. Enter His gates with thanksgiving in your heart.
You will see that Gratitude is indeed a cause not an effect, and that we can actually change our own life and much more than that… if we can reach even one of those enslaved in darkness we might be opening a door allowing light to flood in and change a nation.
How can we do that? Well first we must pray…they are not the enemy, they are people who God loves in need of our help. We must give without expectation of reciprocity from those we seek to bless…we are in the flow.
Let’s leave the last word to Og from scroll 2. With love I tear down the wall of suspicion and hate which they have built round their hearts and in its place I build bridges so that my love may enter their souls.
I greet this day with love in my heart.