Minute Meditations

Here is a new twist on an old saying: “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly—until you can learn to do it well”. 

Far too many of us will not try to do the difficult until we feel that we can do it well, and we will never do it well until we first start by doing it poorly. Imagine telling a swimming instructor that we refuse to get into the pool until we can swim properly. Unless we jump in and splash around and put our head under the water and try to swim, poorly, we cannot ever swim well.

Randolph Hearst, the multimillionaire newspaperman, was a great collector of art. One day Mr Hearst found a description of some valuable items he wanted to own. He ordered his art agent to go abroad to find them. After months of searching, the agent reported that he had finally traced down these valuable pieces of ancient art. They were in Mr Hearst’s warehouse. Hearst had been searching frantically for treasures he already owned. Had he read his own catalogue, he would have discovered he already had that for which he was looking.

Satchel Paige, the baseball philosopher is credited with the saying, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was”. There are some fairly young people who would give an age much beyond their actual years and there are some elderly people who would say that they were in their mid-twenties.

Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf, was asked, “What would you say is worse than being blind?” She replied,“Having sight without vision”.
Solomon says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he”.

Someone once said, “When it comes to helping others, some people stop at nothing”. Do we jump in to help when needed? Doing nothing can never be right. James tells us, “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin”. Jesus commends the actions of those who, “When I was hungry…gave me food”. We need to do more than just think of others; we need to act, to do them good, to be known for our kindness to others, as Solomon reminds us, “Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right”. Nehemiah over and over asked God to remember him for good. 

We’ve all heard the saying about being up a creek without a paddle. It refers to being caught in a predicament with no resources with which to extricate ourselves. But even with a paddle, the paddle has to be used, and used properly, before the goal is reached. 

Think of your life as a ri…