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''The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going'' - David Starr Jordon
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''The bee that makes the honey doesn't hang around the hive.'' - E. C. Mckenzie
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''The poor man is not he who is without a cent, but he who is without a dream'' - Harry Kemp
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Have you ever paused to ask yourself the all-important questions: Who am I? What am I doing here? And, Where do I go from here? In his simple statement, Jesus answered all three statements with the confidence of a man who knew that he had a date to keep with God. Jesus knew he was not an accident of birth - do you? Jesus knew his whole life was to fulfill a divine purpose; a divine destiny, but do you? Do you thank God for who he has made you? Or, are you forever wishing you were another person? [''To this end was I born'' - John 18: 37]. God made you a unique creature with a unique personality and unique potentials for some specific purposes.
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Ida Scudder was only a teenager, a missionary's daughter in India, when she had to face the question of life. In one single dreadful night, she witnessed how one and another Indian man approached her home and sought her help (not her father's who was a medical doctor) for the life of their dying wives. Each of them flatly refused male help, because of cultural taboos. ''Alone in her room, Ida wrestled with the pain, the sorrow, and the rising conviction that if she were a trained doctor, she could have done something. 'But there is nothing I can do', Ida said. 'Nothing? With three women dying less than a mile away for want of a woman doctor? With millions more...?' She struggled with the voice of God all through the night. In the morning, she sent to inquire after the welfare of all three young women, they were all dead! Ida felt she could die. She fell down before God, then rose up and announced to her father and mother, 'I'm going to America to study to be a doctor so I can come back to help the women of India.' Conviction rang in her voice, she had answered one of those questions of life - the purpose of her existence. Around 1900, Dr. Ida Scudder did go back to India where she lived, served and died in her late eighties. As she neared the end of her busy life, Dorothy Clarke Wilson interviewed her to write her biography. Mrs. Wilson asked, 'Seeing all this and remembering how it started, don't you feel a great satisfaction?' 'Oh, yes, yes,' she replied fervently, 'God has been very good to me. God called me, and God knows best how and where a life should be spent.'
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Think about that: God knows best how and where a life should be spent
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Mary Crowley lost her job because her Christian beliefs conflicted with those of her employers. That was in 1957 when the great depression was on. After the initial shock, she rose up, armed with simple faith and grim determination to start her own company where ''I could set the standards I wanted upheld,'' she said. She eventually made multimillion dollar sales and employed several thousand staff. Quoting her words, ''See yourself as an achiever, a queen/king. Reject the idea that you are handicapped in any way. Imagine yourself as a co-worker with God. Expect that great things are going to happen, and then work to bring them about. Two ten-letter words can change your life: 'If it is to be, it is up to me'.''
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