Happy reading. A number of people have asked if they can use quotes from my Blog in church bulletins or newsletters. Permission is granted provided credit is given to: Dr Lionel Hartley, www.hartleyonline.blogspot.com
I am someone else.
I was I was standing in shop looking at items on display. A
woman came up behind me and began to speak to me as if she knew me.
When I turned around and she saw my face, she stopped,
looked astonished, and said, "Sorry, I thought you were someone
else."
I said, "Yes, Ma'am. You are right. I am someone
else."
The job isn't big enough.
As a keen young man of promise I progressed rapidly in a
certain manufacturing company from an after-school delivery boy with a weekly
pay packet of coins and one solitary banknote to the manager of a busy
warehouse with staff under my care and a $17,000-a-year executives’ salary
(very generous in those days) with equally generous 'fringe benefits' including
two tailor-made suits a year and twice-weekly dining vouchers.
In order to commit to a life of service to others, I chose
to leave all of this to train as a community health nurse with the prospect of
less than $5,000-a-year after graduation.
The company's Managing Director argued long for me to stay,
offering me an increase in my annual salary to $20,000 and he dangled the
carrot of extra benefits including free golf-club membership and less hour’s
work.
I turned it all down, explaining that the money was
certainly great enough, the fiscal benefits were generous enough, the prestige
was big enough, the social-connections were grand enough, the extra leisure
time was inviting enough, the material rewards were large enough, but the job
itself was too small.
Sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.
Eph 1:13 … ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.
"Many years ago I worked for a company with the menial task of tying parcels for posting. Each parcel was sealed with a strip of adhesive tape. The purpose of the tape was to stop the parcel from falling apart. When we are sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, it helps to prevent us from falling apart!"
-- Dr Lionel Hartley, The Blessings of Ephesians One (booklet), Philadelphia Press, 1989 (Available free from www.lrhartley.com)Why we Drank.
While working in a psychiatric hospital I was responsible for co-ordinating Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for recovering alcoholics. Because I had never personally experienced alcohol use or abuse I found it a challenge identifying personally with the attendees' addictions.
One recovering alcoholic sensed this and he handed me a hand-written scrap of paper with these words on it:
"We drank for happiness and became unhappy. We drank for joy and became miserable. We drank for sociability and became
argumentative. We drank for
sophistication and became obnoxious. We
drank for friendship and made enemies.
We drank for sleep and awakened without rest. We drank for strength and felt weak. We drank with the excuse that it was
medicinal and acquired health problems.
We drank for relaxation and got the shakes. We drank for bravery and became afraid. We drank for confidence and became
doubtful. We drank to make conversation
easier and slurred our speech. We drank
to feel heavenly and ended up feeling like hell. We drank to forget and were forever haunted. We drank for freedom and became slaves. We drank to erase problems and saw them
multiply. We drank to cope with life and
invited death."
-- Lionel Hartley
The Big Fright.
When I was working as solo night nurse in a certain hospital
ward, I often carried a torch in the breast pocket of my uniform with the beam
pointing downwards, As the head of the torch was within the pocket of my white
uniform, the light emitted a soft warm glow, sufficient to safely check on my
patients during the frequent night rounds without disturbing them.
One night a student nurse appeared at the ward nurse's
station just before I was about to do another round. I asked why she was there
and she explained that she had been sent from another ward to observe what a
nurse does on a night round.
I switched on my torch, put it in my pocket and invited her
to follow me into the darkened ward that was illuminated only by night-lights
along the skirting boards.
I might mention that I had inadvertently put my torch in my
pocket upside-down and the light was shining upwards.
As I walked into the ward I turned and looked back to see if
the student nurse was following me. As I turned, she began screaming in terror.
I immediately spun her around and led her back into the
well-lit nurse's station to settle her down and seek an explanation.
When she had sufficiently recovered, she explained that the
light shining on my face in the darkened ward gave my countenance a terrifying
appearance with my eyes appearing to be darkened, the shadow of my nose moving
grotesquely across my face and the shadow of my head on the ceiling above
making my appearance like that of a caricature monster.
Needless to say, the torch was returned to its correct position, we resumed our responsibilities and a check on the patients revealed that none of them had woken up despite the loud screaming.
When people look at us, perhaps in the street or at a social gathering, what do they see? Isaiah 43:10 "You are My witnesses," declares the LORD.