Encouraging Words April 22, 103

 

Don’t wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel, run down there and light the bloody thing yourself!  -anonymous

   Time for a new week. Time for more positive happy news.  Okay guys bring it on…

    Cricket…..cricket…

   Another week of finding my own happiness to talk about, huh? Are you feeling like that lately? With all the bad things in the news and the news media only talking about the bad things you begin to feel the world is horrible. Well, sometimes it is, but really for the most part people are trying to be good and are helping other people.

    My quote this week focuses on doing…not waiting for others or the news media to report on it, but doing good ourselves, being the light at the end of the tunnel.   If we get nothing out of the events of the past week it should be, look at all of the people who rushed in to help those injured people! And they weren’t just First Responders although each of those people deserves a medal!  But other people helped too.  Why aren’t their names in the news? Why do we even NAME the people who commit these terrible things?

    Let’s begin looking at the good in people, the people who go exploring down dark places and remember to bring a candle, match or flashlight so they can illuminate the way for those following! Are we like them?

    To be a leader these days means having a lot of courage. It takes guts to not only stand up and run into a burning building, a place where bombs could go off, but also to know your values and morals and not be afraid of being make fun of for speaking up or against things that go against those values.  To not be afraid of being considered a “judgmental” person or a non-tolerant person because we believe in certain morals truths.

    That light at the end of the tunnel, the one we help light is there to lead people on the straight and narrow way, not the lemmings falling to their deaths in the sea of moral waste!

   That tunnel in the quote reminds me of a long, unending tunnel I biked through several years ago while on a ‘rails to trails’ path in Southern Illinois.

    My family loves to bike and about ten years ago we packed up the bikes and headed to the Vienna, Illinois bike trail, an old railroad line that had been turned into a walking and biking trail. It’s about nine miles long and it goes through absolutely beautiful country, meadows, woodlands, and crosses bridges with waterfalls and rivers. It is gorgeous! At the northern end of the trail is a tunnel. A very long old train tunnel which, if you were traveling by train, you would get through much more quickly than walking or riding a bike.

   This tunnel had no lights, you went into it like many railroad tunnels where the hill begins to rise up on the sides so there are rocks or timbers holding in the hill as you head toward the entrance of the tunnel.  It almost looks like you’ve entered the point of no return. Once you entered the tunnel, there was a point of no return because it was so completely dark inside you had to keep going forward toward that teeny speck of light, the opening on the other end because if you risked stopping inside the tunnel a myriad of things might happen to you, there were bats overhead and you felt them swooping over your head, the gravel over which your bike tires crunched was a little thicker inside and tended to grab at the rubber throwing you off balance so going forward was the only thing keeping you upright. You realize that you are in a point of no return because claustrophobia sets in and the only way to keep from hyperventilating is to not stop!

    Not all tunnels have lights at the end of them, not all lights at the end of the tunnel will illuminate your way, but sometimes if you are stuck in a tunnel you may have to keep going and light the way for yourself and others. It may not be a tunnel you want to go down, kind of like paths in life. We are forced into certain situations whether of our own making of someone else’s but we find ourselves having to be the ones to help get us and everyone else out. Keeping our heads and trusting God to guide us is the only way to keep going forward, keep speaking out, keeping being the moral truth-teller in this world and to help celebrate the other people who rush in to bad situations to help!  I want to be that person who helps!