bad day

No Bad Days

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“As long as your heart’s beatin’
There’s no bad days
You got something to believe in
There’s no bad days
As long as you’re dreamin’, reachin’, seekin’
Make no mistake
As long as you’re breathin’
There’s no bad days” (Django Walker/James Slater/Patrick Davis/Jeff Cook).

My old boss used to say, “Any day without a toe tag is a good day.”

My take on that is that any day you wake up is a day that you still have a purpose and a reason to be here.

Any day you open your eyes to the new morning is better for you than many who won’t get the chance to experience the new set of 24 hours.

Every single day you’re alive is a blessing.

To be sure, I do believe that to be absent from the body is to be present with Jesus.

I also believe that life isn’t something where you pass the time until you die. It’s something you get to live only once.

One of my favorite lines from the movie Gladiator goes something like this: what we do here and now echoes in eternity.”

Your small acts of love, your random acts of kindness, you’re showing up and not giving up on a daily basis causes a ripple effect that will be felt long beyond your earthly years.

So make it count.

Oh yeah, and remember to keep things in perspective. In my own life, I’ve found that most things aren’t worth getting upset over. You waste too much time and energy fretting about what you can’t control and what ends up being transitory.

You can’t control most of what happens to you. You can only control you and how you choose to respond to it, Better yet, you can choose to surrender to the God who not only controls it all, but works it all together for good– your good and His good.

That was for free.

 

My Monday in Perspective

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

I had a Monday kind of Monday. If that makes sense to you, you probably had the same kind of day I had.

First of all, I went to get in my car only to find that my driver side door was frozen shut. No amount of pleading, begging, cajoling, or muttering would cause it to budge. I had to crawl in from the passenger side door. Not my finest and most graceful moment.

Then I got to work, only to discover that my computer was disconnected from the company network and I couldn’t do any work. I really hated that. I know you can tell how much I really really hated that. I had to sit there and drink my Mello Yello, contemplating all that work that wasn’t getting done. Yeah right.

My shining moment was when I went to press the elevator button to go up to the 4th floor. I pressed and I pressed. I flashed my badge just so this elevator would know who it was dealing with. Not just any bum off the street, but a bona fide employee. Then I realized the problem was that I was already on the 4th floor. Fail.

A little perspective: my driver side door was frozen shut, but I still have a car, albeit a “vintage” model that is old enough to have its own driver’s liscence.

I have a job. It may annoy me and cause me some un-Baptist thoughts at times, but I haven’t had the stress of being out there job hunting for a long time. And for that I’m grateful.

When I think of the homeless guy at Room at the Inn, many of whom are struggling to make it from day to day, never sure where their next meal or bed is coming from, I call myself blessed. I really do have so much that I take for granted.

In fact, from a global perspective, the fact that I had a full meal, access to clean water, transportation, shelter, adequate clothing, and actual money in my pocket makes me rich.

I still don’t like Mondays. I think they’re a terrible way to spend 1/7 of your life. But I’ll take any Monday where I am still alive and breathing and healthy and blessed over any other day of the week where I’m not.

As I heard it put so well, any day without a toe tag is a good day.