World Brightening Behavior # 1

Greet People Warmly

“Good morning. It is good to see you”. Become an enthusiastic and, fanatic greetor (sic). Greet everybody, whether or not they make eye contact—say “Hello”, “Good Morning”, Great to see you!—anything, to send a pleasant message of noticing them. A greeting is a connection. It is knocking at a door saying “I notice you... You are valued… You are somebody!’ That is a simple, clean, blessing, everybody needs. There are no exceptions.

(In the process notice how it makes you glow, how it brightens your own life).

Five Key Essentials Vital for Every Caring Person to Know

1. I have the capacities, qualities, and abilities that can brighten another person’s life, help them gain confidence, and feel hopeful about life.

2. Everyone can be helped by my encouragement, kindness, interest, and friendliness. No one is exempt.

3. My warmth, friendliness, and kindness, when another feels it and sees it, makes them feel there is goodness and care in this world. .

4. When I show any form of loving-kindness toward anybody it is like showing it to Jesus, himself.

5. The care and kindness I give to others is infectious. They will catch it and pass it on, to help keep the ripples flowing, making this a happier world.

BONUS: The benefits others gain from my care and kindness are matched by the positive feelings I experience, in and from the process of offering such love.

ANYTHING WE SHOULD ADD TO THIS LIST? ----- Jim Kok

A Powerful Statement about Living for Jesus

Ponder These Words. They are so Important!

“Every act of love, gratitude and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the Gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world—all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. by N.T. Wright Surprised by Hope

Everything good contributes to the new creation, the new heaven and new earth, to be fulfilled when Christ comes again. We start, right now, to anticipate that perfection. Nothing is wasted. What we do is the beginning, no matter how small it is.

BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD

BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD

Getting away from it all works wonders. Quiet, time alone, solitude, beauty, creates space for reality to regain proper perspective.

There is a way of knowing that goes beyond logic and deductive reasoning. In a scientific age such knowledge is seldom given credence. Still, of all we believe and hold true, a great deal comes from the anecdotal accounts of other people. Unproven, untested, but believable because they said “it happened.”

Knowing God and Jesus Christ falls into that special, personal, subjective, category of knowledge for many.

Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell talks of his confrontation with knowledge that transcends reason:

When I went to the moon, I was as pragmatic a scientist-engineer as any of my colleagues. I’d spent more than a quarter of a century learning the rational-objective-experimental approach to dealing with the universe. But my experience during Apollo 14 had another aspect. It showed me certain limitations of science and technology

It began with the breathtaking experience of seeing planet earth floating in the immensity of space – the incredible beauty of a splendid blue-and-white jewel floating in the vast, black sky. I underwent a religious-like peak experience, in which the presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes. This knowledge, which came directly, intuitively, was not a matter of discursive reasoning or logical abstraction. It was not deduced from information perceptible by the sensory organs. The realization was subjective, but it was knowledge every bit as real and compelling as the objective data the navigational program or the communications system was based on. Clearly, the universe has meaning and direction – an unseen dimension behind the visible creation that gives it an intelligent design and gives life purpose.