Jack’s Winning Words 4/14/14
“We can’t always control what happens to us, but we can control our perspective.”  (Nataly Kogan)  Nataly has created  “Happier app” where people post things that make them happier…like writing a “gratitude note” to someone, a “spur-of-the-moment” gift to a charity.  It’s been found that sharing happy thoughts with others can make them happier, even healthier.  What “happier” thought might you share today?     ;-)  Jack

FROM TARMART REV:  Spent last evening at the hospital and throughout the night thinking and contemplating the consequences from a fatal accident taking the life of one of our young mothers . . . the family was coming home from a Sunday trip to South Dakota and not far from home when they were broadsided by a semi at an intersection south of Willmar, both thinking the traffic light was in their favor. I had to tell the very young children the mother wasn't able to survive the impact. Heaven is sounding like a much happier place at the moment!! 0;-/====JACK:  With perspective and enough time, those children will understand that a pastor was with them in time of need. 

FROM TRIHARDER:  When something alarming occurs to me, I try to take myself out of the moment and try to perceive how I will look at it weeks or months from now.  It's so comforting to know that the very vast majority of occurrences that take place in ones life are so much more meaningful (good and bad) in the moment and that down the review mirror of life, they are much less significant.====JACK:  "The very vast majority...." is true.  But, it's the ones that don't fit into that category (like when the pastor had to tell some young children that their mother wouldn't becoming back) that stay with us.====TH:  I'm not trying to be flippant, but even those kids move on and adjust -- eventually. But, yes, very painful.

FROM EEC IN MICHIGAN:  That's neat! I have a book called THE HAPPY BOOK I'll have to show you-I think you'll find it interesting!====JACK:  Sharing a Happy Book certainly is a way of making people happier.

FROM MICHIZONA RAY:  This quote is an example of the existential "given" termed: Responsibility. We always have the "ability" to "respond" to circumstances, even though we don't always have the ability to determine them. Freedom identifies our accountability for those responses we have chosen. Hence, nothing "makes" us happy; we simply choose happiness or something else we freely decide. In this Holy Week, we are reminded of Jesus command to "Love one another; as I have loved you, love one another." Jesus connotes the same sort of Freedom and Responsibility for the same. Love was His chosen response to all circumstances in which He found Himself. He tells us to do the same -- not necessarily as we might "love" one another (which requires a good reason), but as He loves us. Hence, Love never has condition. The phrase "unconditional love" is merely an example of a term used by one who doesn't know that Love can have no condition by its nature. Think how "happy" we would be to love one another as we are loved by Him who commanded us to do the same!====JACK:  God's grace is an example of unconditional love.  Perhaps choice was one of characteristics of Jesus that indicated his humanness.

FROM BM IN MICHIGAN:  April 15th comes only once a year!====JACK:  Looking on  the bright side...If someone happens to be in the business of preparing taxes for others, it's a big payday! 

FROM RI IN BOSTON:  Another way of expressing control of our perspective, I suppose, would be "the power of positive thinking."====JACK:  Some may think that Norman Vincent Peale invented Positive Thinking, but way back in the 1st century Epictetus said, "The thing that upsets people is not so much what happens, but what they think about what happens."====RI:  You just gave me an "aha" moment.

FROM JT IN MICHIGAN:  I'm grateful for your friendship.  Thank you.====JACK:  And it goes with many happy memories.

 FROM JT IN MICHIGAN:  I'm grateful for your friendship.  Thank you.

FROM PLAIN FOLKS CHESTER:   Spring has sprung.====JACK:  Thanks for the happy note.  The daffodils are poking out of the ground.

FROM JB IN M ICHIGAN:  I painted a sailing ship on the back wall of my classroom  with a similar saying - "I can't control the wind, but I can set my own sails" I used it a lot with the students when things didn't go their way.====JACK:  I wonder how many of them had ever been on a sailboat?  There's more to teaching than what's in the textbook.

FROM DB IN MICHIGAN:  My happy thought: taking time to draft a letter of my good wishes and joy to a younger cousin who are about to marry! :)  It makes me happy! (Even though I can't be there  :(  - out of state) So, its the next best thing to being there! -- giving a part of myself ... ====JACK:  A personal letter is even better than a text or e-mail.  There's something exciting about receiving a stamped envelope and wondering what's inside.