Love, Actually | 愛、実際に | Verus Diligo

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"PEOPLE ARE OFTEN UNREASONABLE, ILLOGICAL, AND SELF-CENTERED;

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"LOVE THEM ANYWAY..."

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If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Thing big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.

Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway.

-Dr. Kent M. Keith, 1968

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|…admittedly the last four weeks have been a blur.  Twenty four hours before what I can only hope is my sixteenth birthday and I’m all cried out.  Medical problems, legal problems, work problems, money problems, you name it. Yes, it’s certainly been a rough month – yet through it all, the hand of God, so gentle, so loving, so firm, I remain – surrendered.  Finally, fully and sweetly; of this I am sure, because the bowling alley in my head is finally closed (for now).

     What manner of God is this that takes away every area of self reliance from my life?  A loving God, a merciful God, a kind God, a busy God, a God who only wants for me what I refuse myself – love, mercy and tolerance.  You know you’re off the AA beam when a homeless three time felon tells you that you’ve got character flaws (the exact wording has been edited for our PG13 audience).

     A wizened old timer once told me:  “You never realize that God is all you need till God is all you’ve got”.  And so it is with me…however, the lesson I am learning is that to get God’s grace in its fullest measure, I first have to go to his kids.  Love them, trust them, and accept them, warts and all.  For it is often only my warts that I cannot see.

     Amazing Grace, indeed.  Now I understand.  I’m coming out of one of the deepest dives of my sobriety, and I remain grateful, oh so grateful, for Grace.  It is the fount of redemption.

     And so it goes.

COG, 1^st Cl.|

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