Soap Box

I have recently lost two friends, both totally unexpected, one from accident and one from a massive heart attack, one day they were here, the next day they were gone.

I was looking at a band picture from my old club days and realized that every member of that band, except me of course, had passed away.

Now this is not some morbid piece about the inevitability of death and how close or far away we consider it to be, but rather about life, how precious it is, how fleeting and how we tend to take it for granted, not realizing that each separate day is a unique blessing from our Creator, and should be taken as such, appreciated, cherished and lived to the hilt.

Dissension, hate, envy, jealousy and an unforgiving nature are all thieves of peace, and although it takes us many years to realize it, peace is our ultimate goal in life.

Financial security, living in a safe neighborhood, a stable government, availability of good health care, saving for retirement, all just boil down to peace of mind.

Personal relationships have a great effect on our peace of mind and holding a grudge is a sure way to take it away. Forgiveness is the gateway to the path of personal peace, and forgiving doesn't mean that you agree with whatever the other person has done to you, but that you have released yourself from a heavy burden that could well torture you every waking hour and even rob you of sleep.

Such is the nature of unforgiven slights, they tend to grow into obsessions.

And knowing that you have done somebody else wrong and have let your pride and selfish reasoning prevent you from asking forgiveness can be just as damaging.

Unbridled pride and runaway ego breaks up friendships, marriages and eventually isolates those who exhibit it, as eventually nobody wants to be around them. The Bible says that pride goes before a fall and sometimes the fall can be a great distance.

It seems that, to some of us, being ourselves is an extremely difficult thing to do and I think basically comes from us not liking ourselves very much and feeling that we have to build a
facade around ourselves because we don't believe anybody else could like the real us either.

Why do I dispense this advice with such confidence?

Simple - as the saying goes - been there, done that.

In my young adult single years, before I settled down and married and had a son, I sought not peace but excitement, my idea of a successful party was a room so full of boisterous people that everybody had just enough room to stand up and hold a drink in their hand.

I didn't seriously attempt to save any money, I just spent it all on whatever tickled my fancy, be it
clothes, restaurants, bars, trips or a friendly poker game.

I've lived through and caused dissension, been jealous of others and held grudges against people and slighted others going for extended periods of time being on the outs, until I learned two magic words.

�I'm sorry.�

Those two little words, when sincerely said, can sooth a lot of hurt feelings and telling somebody you forgive them, regardless of how the other person reacts, can take a load of unnecessary strife off your shoulders.

I have been through periods when I didn't think the natural me measured up and tried to present a different, more appealing persona until I found out that trying to be something you're not is a foolish and empty endeavor.

We - or at least I - have tended to complicate our lives with letting our superficial selves take over and eventually push us into a corner where we have to take a long, introspective look in the mirror and decide what kind of person we want the person staring back to be.

And when we decide to give up the pretense and start realizing that God never made two people exactly alike and start capitalizing on the particular set of unique talents He gave us, realize that always getting the upper hand by hook or crook and that being unforgiving hurts us worse than it does the object of our scorn, we grow up a little and realize that life is too short to be lived under such circumstances.

Many years ago, I told my son, "You can tell me anything, because you're never going to do anything I haven't already done."

I've lived a lot in my eighty years and have come to about the same conclusions about life as the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Holy Bible.

�So, I commend the enjoyment of life, for there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 8:15

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, our police and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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