a better life, balance, belief, courage, Energy, grace, gracefullness

Grace.

A ‘coaching conversation’ with Brad, while taking a rest break between exercise sets.
Helping Brad, help himself, achieve something he cares about and become more of who he wants to be.
Through belief, hope and effort + heart.

Aesthetic (balance & elegance) = Grace

Are you graceful?

Do you consider yourself a man or woman of grace? If you do, that’s great, you’re way ahead of the majority. I read somewhere recently that there is a never-ending worldwide shortage!

What does it mean to be ‘graceful’?

I would think graceful means balanced, elegant, subtle, effective and possibly artistic. A graceful person is someone who strives for aesthetic-ness as well as substance, as he or she understands that Aesthetic (balance & elegance) = Grace. A graceful person gets things done, but does it in a way that is beautiful and you would be happy to have him or her repeat it.

A graceful person raises the standards of everyone close by, forcing everyone to the top, not to the bottom. A graceful person is the person we cannot live without, the one who makes the difference.

There is no such thing as being born graceful. It’s not a talent, it is a choice! Only one person could have that exception and that is Jesus, our saviour.

Jesus’s birthday is only one night away now and it got me thinking….

Bare your cross.
Then …
Help someone else carry their’s … only if you can manage both

Jesus was – a man who was the epitome’ of grace

What a beautiful and graceful man Jesus was – a man that was the epitome of grace. Do you think you know him or do you know the celebration of his birthday more – Christmas Day?

It’s not easy knowing Jesus, not easy at all. He has very high standards, especially relevant in the modern-day’s world where there appears to be none in many areas of life. I say, be prepared to stumble if you want to get to ‘know’ him, as I think everyone who ever tried has stumbled, and more than once I think. I know I have.

But what do you learn when you fall or fail, you learn how to pick yourself back up faster, don’t you? So, don’t be afraid to fall or fail. Pick yourself up and try again and find a better way.

Knowing Jesus means that you have to be disappointed when he doesn’t meet your wrong expectations. Notice I said ‘wrong’ expectations.

Knowing Jesus may also spur you on to become something or someone you thought you could never do or be. Achieving the seemingly impossible.

Through his help, the impossible is made possible. Don’t stop believing!

He will remind you in various ways of how much you need him. And you do.

Knowing Jesus is a little like building muscle – he breaks us to pieces so that he can put us back together again, but this time in his image – his grace. Just like muscle, you need to break it to pieces so that you can nourish it and allow it to repair and grow. A definite fusion of chaos and order.

True.

Christmas is life

All Christians are work-in-progress, all under construction. I know I am. However, the most powerful thing for a Christian is the unwavering belief that Jesus, the son of God, born on Christmas Day – is our saviour.

Christmas Day is many things to many people but like I said in the previous blog post, Christmas to me is everything. Christmas is life. Christmas is a celebration of the birth of the world’s saviour. That, even in this fast-paced, ever-changing world, there is something that is un-changing. Something that we hang on to courageously.

We humans, we Christians, still have the courage to hang on to the belief that Jesus is still needed. Courage to believe that he was born on Christmas Day and died not long later but he will also come again.

Christians (and non-christian’s) insistence on celebrating Christmas could also be interpreted as an outward expression and belief that we (the world) still hungers for Jesus grace and hope.

Let’s pray that the world increasingly gets filled with more people like him, filled with grace. People the world just can’t do without.

May you be filled with grace this Christmas.

Until next time,

Cheers & Ahoy!

The Old Cap’n Viking Pirate Evangelist Muscled Monk

Feeling the ‘essence!’
Believe. Believe. Believe!
Make the impossible, possible!

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson.

a better life, awareness, Beliefs, chaos, christmas, dreams, Energy, eternity, faith, game of life, God, hope, Imagination, life, love, order, perspective, salvation, saviour, spirituality, you

Christmas salvation.

Imagine. Believe.

Christmas is a few days away and it got me thinking.

What does Christmas mean to you?

For me, it has always meant a lot, it meant and still means everything. It means a celebration of a birth, a life, a saviour of the world of one of the most influential person that has ever walked this earth.

Does Christmas mean everything to you too? What does it mean to you?

Or is it just about getting together with friends and families and drinking, eating and merry-making? Or is it about present giving and Santa Claus? There’s a few sitting under our Christmas tree. Or is it about being alone? What does Christmas mean to you?

Like I said, for me, Christmas means everything – it means LIFE.

It is a beginning and it is an end.

It is a time of chaos and a time of order.

It is a time of darkness and a time of light.

It is a time of reflection and a time of hope.

It is a time of aloneness and a time of interaction.

It is a time of blessed relief and imagining and believing all of God’s promises manifest itself in to that one person – Jesus Christ.

Amongst all the chaos and loudness and joyousness of the Christmas period, take a moment or two if you can to try and imagine what it was like for this little baby that was born in to poverty. This little baby that we all believe was and is the saviour of the world.

A little baby called Jesus.

Imagine what the conditions were like during the time of his birth. There might have only been one candle inside the stable. Today, Christmas, like Diwali in the hindu calendar is a celebration of light and you don’t need to look very hard to see it before your eyes in your own neighbourhood – beautifully designed lighting on houses and buildings.

Many people today associate Christmas being filled with the ones you love with lots of noise and laughter. Wonderful version of the truth.

When Jesus was born, I imagine the place located on a hill outside Jerusalem would have wreaked with loneliness. So, for those of you that may feel a sense of loneliness during this time and in particular, on Christmas day don’t be. You’re not alone, you have good company. Jesus too was very lonely at birth.

Jesus’s birth certainly wasn’t in luxury. You could imagine the toughness and roughness of the trough that he laid in. The trough or what was a similar to a modern-day baby cot, he felt at birth may have been as cruel a place as the cross he felt at his death. The end was like the beginning for Jesus. What will your end be like?

What about his first gasp for air? What about his first few cries, what would they have been like to welcome in to this world? I imagine that his infant cries we may have heard coming from stable may have been no less desperate and heart-piercing than his final cry on the cross. I wonder if some of the shouts and yells on Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations this year will be for the pain our saviour cried out over during his arrival and departure from this world. Our world, the world he came to save.

A variation of the ‘back single biceps” pose … on the beach.
The combination of chaos + order = Life.

So, what is Christmas to you?

Celebrate? You say. Yes, of course, I say. Celebrate and be merry!

But if you have a little time, try to … imagine and … project yourself back to that lonely stable and try to imagine celebrating, most heartily with food and wine and dance amidst the stench of the stable. Do you know what that dung-like smell that existed in that little stable could represent today? It could represent the refuse of the world – the ugliness, the hatred, the selfishness, the rubbish.

And when you hope for a better New Year, try imagining celebrating at the foot of that painful cross. And why do I leave you with that ghastly image – not to sound negative, but to point out that that image of us at the foot of that cross is the one and only thing that really keeps that ‘life force’ lit in you for yet another day.

Do you know what that life force is? It is that image that epitomises the whole foundation of Christianity and the whole reason we have Christmas. That image of us Christians at the foot of his cross is the ending and the beginning. It is our belief – our hope. It is the essence of what it means to be a Christian. The unwavering belief and hope that that little baby boy born in to poverty and rejected by many, died for all our sins.

Hope – that is all that we are and all that we will ever truly have within us for as long as we are alive.

Christmas for Christians is the celebration of the saviour of the world! Believe. Really believe. There is a passage that has always stayed with me since my youth:

“Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall find.” Achieve your salvation at Christmas, through Jesus – our saviour.

From me to you – Merry Christmas.

Imagine then. Live and be ALIVE now. Imagine and hope for a better future. A better YOU.

Amen.

Until next time,

Push-ups on the local beach. Basics can be hard work!

~~Life & wellness COACH~~

Changing lives. Empowering people. One life at a time.

Triple A to Life: Awareness. Action. Adaptation.

Tag Archives: christmas

Grace.

Christmas salvation.