Checklist

Recently, I accompanied my mom to the nearby supermarket. All that she wanted was a packet of washing powder. But as most times, we went through every bay and picked up stuff that we liked. I even got a pen. Why? I don't know, it just looked good. And after a while mom said,"Oh, I need washing powder." and she went in search of it. There are times when she would come home and say,"I forgot to buy that!" or at times, she would look at the bill and recall,"A few years back, your dad would take me only to that particular store near our house. I would have already made a checklist of what all to buy and when we go there, I would not even look at any other product. I would get whatever is there on my list and get back." Well, it is no longer like that.

Most of us live our day to day life like this these days, forget just the shopping that we do. Technology has literally changed the way we approach life. It has made the world a super market. Choices everywhere. Everything looks pleasing to the eye and more often than not, we get engrossed in trying to buy the stuff that the world is selling, to such an extent that we often forget the purpose for starting the journey. 

There have been times when I would tell myself before going to bed,"Listen, you've wasted enough time today. Tomorrow is going to be a new day. Start afresh." Next day morning, I would be all charged up to do something worthwhile and by evening I would have realized that I had failed AGAIN! I would think,"I just scrolled up, scrolled down,and again scrolled up and scrolled down and it's been two hours?" (I know, there are some of you out there nodding your head too. :-))

So, what did I do wrong here? I was just so carried away by all the wonderful stuff that the Internet has to offer that I forgot why I came online in the first place! Now, that's a perfect super market. I just forgot to take my checklist along with me and thus, found myself in the wrong bay or found some advertising strategy very enthralling!

We just get caught up with all the buzz of life that we forget what we have written down in our checklist. Oh wait.. By the way, did we even make one?

I know, this is way too difficult - to make a checklist that shows what we will do with our lives, to set boundaries for ourselves and to ensure that we don't cross them. But just as we decide to make that checklist, we will either not know what to put in there or will just never find time to sit down and make one. But God says that His strength is made perfect in our weakness. So, instead of us, trying to make that checklist on our own by making our little brains to think like God and fail miserably at it, why not just ask God to help us make that list? It is going to be easier if we have to ask Him how He wants us to live and put in those points out there! He might just write it like this for you: 

• * Put your faith in Me today for I am the Way, Truth and Life.
• * Don't be discouraged today. Be patient. I make all things beautiful in My time.
• * Enough of following people on twitter. Now, follow Me. Add Me in your friend list and spend time with Me .
• * Smile. Don't just exist. Live. Make a positive impact on someone's life.

         This list might not tell you what should be done today to increase your worldly knowledge or your wealth and fame but it is certainly going to feed YOU.

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" - Mark 8:36 

 How we live this life determines where we spend our eternity, so why settle for a passing happiness instead of eternal joy??

(Video : Song 'Lose My Soul' by Toby Mac. You can find the lyrics here at http://www.lyricstime.com/tobymac-lose-my-soul-lyrics.html )

So.. have you made your checklist today?

Accept people for who they are..

     This post was on its way for a long time now. Maybe, it had to wait a little while because I didn't have the right incident to relate to. So,the incident that triggered this post - the demise of India's most celebrated(really?? In what way??) painter, M.F. Hussain. 

     I was always told that Mr.Hussain was India's Picasso and so I would try hard to like his paintings when I got an opportunity to see them but honestly, I never knew what people liked in his paintings. Okay, now that is all the taste I might have in paintings and so his Bohemian ways never caught my attention. Argh! I digress. 

     I am no journalist or a follower of his art works but with my little knowledge about him that I gained from reading about him all over the Internet and in the newspaper, this is what I figured out. Mr.Hussain lived his last few years in exile as he was forced to leave India in the face of intimidations and harassments even to the extent of vandalizing his art exhibitions by a certain cult citing his depiction of their deities as the reason. I am not sure how he depicted them but it doesn't really require an analyst to state that it was our country's shame to have not given a 'HUMAN BEING' a sense of home and force him to spend his last few years in exile.
    

     As I was pondering over this, I was reminded again on how Jesus dealt with such 'acceptance issues'.

     When Jesus lived on Earth, he did a lot of travelling. During one such journey from Judea to Galilee, He passed through Samaria. The Jews in those days made a detour around Samaria to avoid contact with the Samaritans as there had been a long running conflict between the two groups, basically, a religious conflict. But Jesus took the Samaria route and even got into a conversation with a woman by a well. This woman was not someone with a great reputation. In fact, she had an ominous record when it came to relationships, having 5 husbands is ominous enough, I believe! So by taking the Samaria route and by getting into a conversation with the woman, what did Jesus(who was a Jew Himself) want to teach all of us?

1. Jesus first asked the woman for water as he was weary of his travel to which the woman said,"How is it that you, a Jew, ask me a Samaritan for a drink?" because Jews did not share things in common with the Samaritans then but Jesus showed how religion, caste or creed didn't matter to Him and how much He wanted to break that barrier that existed. 

2. The woman then interrogated Him to which Jesus patiently responded which shows how 'people' mattered to Him the most, irrespective of their background.

3.  As they were conversing, Jesus asked her to call her husband to which the woman denied of having one. Now, that Jesus is omniscient and that he knew her life history, He could have easily condemned her for what she had done. But Jesus doesn't work that way. He found an opportunity to spot the good in her and at the same time convict her of her sin. He replied, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true." Wow.. how remarkable was that reply? What would we have done if we were in His place?

I thought, much similar to this was the story of M.F. Hussain. I am not saying anything about how good or detestable his paintings were. All I want to say is that, all of us are bound to make mistakes as human beings but the key lies in learning to accept people for who they are and make them feel loved and secure. After all, that is what separates us from the other creations of God, right?

Caste and creed, don't lay the seed, Love and peace, that's what we need!

If an omniscient, pure and holy God can accept us the way we are, why can't we reciprocate the same to our fellow humans and spread some love? What if we were a little more like Jesus??!!