Little Things Accumulate - The Warrior's Journey®
 

Little Things Accumulate

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Little Things Accumulate

 

Yes, I admit, I have an addiction to Diet Pepsi. I don’t notice it much – except when I occasionally see the number of 44-ounce Thirst Buster cups I’ve accumulated – in just one month!  It’s scary to see how much caffeine and other poisons I’ve guzzled down in so short a time.  And each cup represents only a portion of the Diet Pepsi I drink. Little things certainly add up over time. Of course, the same “piling up” process takes place with our poisonous words and actions. How high will the pile be by the end of life?

Fortunately, it’s not only the bad things that accumulate in our lives. The good accumulates as well. Perhaps a goal in life should be to lessen – day by day and year by year – the measure of hurtful and hateful things and increase the measure of helpful and healthful things. Decrease the number of hurtful words we say and the hateful deeds we do – because their pile is always increasing. Instead, let the rate of kind and loving words and deeds ever increase, so that our lives will be defined by the help we give rather than the hurt we inflict. 

At the time he retired from coaching college football in December 1982, Paul William “Bear” Bryant had achieved the greatest winning record of any college football coach. The statistics he chalked up included 323 victories, 85 defeats, 17 ties, 27 bowls, 12 Southeastern Conference championships, and 6 national titles. Yet despite all these accomplishments, when asked how he would like to be remembered, Bear Bryant answered, “That I helped more people than I hurt.” 

What will the final tally of your life be? The Scripture says, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Please make it your quest, that your life will be spent in helping and healing – not in hating and hurting. God grant that we will help far more people than we hurt. 

 

PRAYER:  Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. 

    Where there is hatred, let me sow love; 

    Where there is injury, pardon; 

    Where there is doubt, faith; 

    Where there is despair, hope; 

    Where there is darkness, light; 

    Where there is sadness, joy. 

Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek  

    To be consoled as to console; 

    To be understood as to understand; 

    To be loved as to love. 

For it is in giving that we receive; 

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; 

And it is in dying that we are born to 

    eternal life. 

 


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