Tag: focus

Cyber Attack Brings Issue Into Focus

When it is within one’s power to re-consider the situation in which he or she may find themselves, maybe it is possible to re-focus their outlook on whatever life has thrown at them. Recently, while in the Middle East and the Mediterranean part of this world a seemingly innocuous even provided the opportunity to take such a moment and re-focus. The eastern religions might say that it is karma, good or bad, that has come back around to the individual. There was a cyber-attack on the area where I spent some of my time while there and without thinking much about its impact, most went on about their day unaffected. When that attack or some related event took out sensitive material that was important to me, then the event took on a new meaning. Before it was just an event within the world sphere; it did not effect me, so I had little reason to notice it. That is the way it is for most folks, I assume. when an event does not directly impact us, we travel on, oblivious, often, to the plight of others. It is true if we took on every world problem, there would be no time left for life but just as God allows us to recognize certain things of beauty in this world; He also draws our attention to those concerns that He desires us to have a part in its solution. That does not equal, however, that if we have had our head buried in the sand and therefore took notice of anything, then that God has excused us from the duty we have to Him to impact His issues as He directs us.

Jerusalem blooming
Desert Blooming

 

Notice that I did not use the words fix, solve, or correct. That is not our task. When God assigns us a task to complete, most of the time it is for us to impact the issue, direct it to solution, drive it to completion or send it toward destruction. The final disposition is for God alone to decide. So, as we have the opportunity to see the desert flowers that somehow find their way into our consciousness; allow it to re-awaken in you a focus on what God has given for you to do.

To Lamaze Survivors ~ the fathers

Rev. Ross L. Riggs, D Min.      Riggs Ministry Minute: When there’s only a minute for ministry http://www.docriggs.com

                “Breathe… teeth together, hiss like a snake in short bursts…. Ok, now blow through it… puff out the cheeks, push the air, get past the pain, focus, focus…” If you, Dad, were a Lamaze coach for your lovely wife, the mother of your children, then you said those things in that first sentence. I know you did because I did too, so many years ago. In the Lamaze classes, we dads were subjected  to talks, exercises and videos that no dad-to-be should go through. It’s almost medieval! I still suffer some form of PTSD every time someone says the word “wink.”

Okay, dads let me ask you this. If you’re like me, it’s now about thirty years later, ‘Are you facing some kind of serious, perhaps daily physical pain?’ For me, it’s my back and today is one of those days. If you are like me and you have some kind of pain, like I do, I would imagine that you will agree that the pain we have, as bad as it is, still could not equal that of childbirth. Am I right? Stick with me on this. Now, imagine yourself in one of your worst pain days. (I love the hospital or doctor’s 10 scale: ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst, how would you rate your pain?’ THIRTY-FIVE!) Here you are on a ‘35’ kind of day and here comes your loving wife. She gets right down in your face and holds up a pencil, inches away from your nose, which now, without your bifocals, it looks like a telephone pole! A blurry telephone pole, but a telephone pole none-the-less. And now, your well-meaning wife says, while holding this telephone pole up inches from the tip of your nose, “Focus… breathe through it…. Hiss like a snake… (Imitating the hissing noise)…. Okay, blow… puff your cheeks…”

You probably have never, ever hit your wife in anger in all your years of marriage. That is about to end! Am I right?

What were we thinking all of those years ago with the Lamaze thing? By our third child, we had gotten well beyond the trendy Lamaze and now, the hue and cry from the ‘labor and pre-delivery room’ (Sounds like something you’d find on a loading dock, doesn’t it?) is much more in line with our own thinking when the painful days are upon us… GIVE ME DRUGS!

My youngest daughter just gave birth to her first baby. The appropriate application of the right amount of the correct drug at just the right time made for a wonderful (okay, bearable) experience of childbirth. There are times, when the pain level is up there, that we need to do what the doctor has prescribed, take what he or she has ordered and quit beating ourselves up for when those days happen. We did not choose the painful path, we can only react or respond to those days when they occur. My prayer is that when I am in the grip of pain, I will have the same composure, the patience and the grace for my family when they try to help as my dear wife had for me during those early Lamaze days. I am quite surprised that I have not gone through the last thirty years with a #2 pencil impaled in my forehead. I love you, honey.

%d bloggers like this: