Spirit Of Gratitude

If we walk a busy road with people chit-chatting as they trod along, we come to notice the large number of people who seem to be very discontent with their lives.
Numerous people find comfort in blaming the universe for not satisfying their needs and desires.
Come to think of it, is it not true that we feel poor when we want more and we feel rich when we give more? I walk the streets of my city and see the numerous beggars seated on the footpaths, though I see a certain amount of sorrow dwelling in their faces, I must admit that I believe that a beggar with probably just a buck in the palm of his hand to somehow get his hands on a meal for the day is without doubt a hundred times happier than an entrepreneur with a billion dollars under his belt!
Why are we living lives where we choose to complain rather than thank?
Instead of complaining about the little hike in the price of vegetables today, why can’t we be grateful for the fresh oxygen that is entering our bodies every second? Don’t you think our minds would be happier then?
Why can’t we thank the God for all that He has given us rather than complain for all he has not?
Showing gratitude instills a sense of positive pride in our minds! Showing gratitude is very important for it is in this act that we feel free of all debts! If an act of kindness is shown to us and we are not grateful, in due time a feeling of guilt crawls up our spines like a slithering snake. Rather if we our grateful and express our thanks with just a word or two it causes a pleasant smile, I’m happy, and so is the other person! Awesome!
We live our lives piling up our treasures, building mountains of gold and hoping to find trees with diamonds for leaves! We dream big building castles sometimes higher than the sky, we are ambitious, always desiring to go higher, sparing not a single moment to just sit and wonder, when the time comes for my breath to abandon me, of what use will these mountains of gold and trees of diamonds be to me?
Instead of piling up pointless treasures, we must find the time to appreciate the little things in life that actually matter. Appreciate a rose for its beauty, or sit to imagine the glory of the creator to create such a wonderful world, such a marvelous world! Only if we learn to thank for the little things, we will find the ability to enjoy the big things!
We must inculcate the spirit of gratitude, its vitality is inevitable!
Before we complain about one thing, think of the million things around us there are for which the Almighty deserves sincere gratitude!
I will tell you a tale that I hope serves its purpose to explain the importance of gratitude!
Once there was a little boy who lived in a village on a hill. A little above the village there was a castle in which lived a rich man with his family. The rich man, though with all the money he could ever desire in the world, with a large castle for a home and ten horses of high standards in a large stable to serve him for transport, and food of various cuisines from across the world and rare expensive wines to drink and a family which had everything it ever needed, still never found it easy to smile! He found reasons to smile very difficult to find! One evening, the rich man took a stroll into the village to gain acquaintance with the latest happenings. He came across the little boy who seemed to be laughing at almost everything he saw. The rich man stopped and asked him, ‘What is it that causes so much laughter in you boy?’
‘Sir, I have no home, but the sky tells me it will serve as my roof! I have no bed, but the benches in the park though not as soft as cotton serve the purpose! I have no money to buy food but yet the big red delicious apples on the trees and the berries that grow on the outskirts satisfy me! Today the wind tastes sweet and the fragrance in the air is pleasant, so I am happy, very happy, and I have so many reasons to smile and laugh and jump about!’
The rich man stroked the little boy’s chin, pleased with his answer and walked away! That day he realized that life is not about the things that elude you but the things that find you! Life is not about the things you can never have but the things you always have!
The spirit of gratitude teaches us this!
The human tongue sends forth a million words of anger and hatred day by day. But remember, the two words that bless our lips. ‘Thank You’. Though two words, they take just one second to say! But they give us one hour of joy!
Laughter is food for the soul, and gratitude is a great reason to smile!
Spread the joy, spread the peace, life is beautiful!

Screamjack

Within My Reach

The grains of sand rolled of my fingers,
As I lost my mind to the dreadful past,
Thoughts too wretched for fords to explain,
Swimming and spinning in my head real fast.
I remembered the world that stole my soul,
Pricking cruelly at my tearful heart,
The world that had me drowning in an ocean,
With big fish that tore my body apart.
For eternity, I could reminisce the times of old,
Lying open-armed on this blissful beach,
But I know the golden gift of salvation,
Will always be within my reach!

I touch the cool flowing water,
Glancing up towards the sky,
I wondered if there existed the supreme guide,
And would He help me if I wanted to fly!
But man is foolish, a dangerous dreamer,
He cradles danger, like it was his very own child.
Though created clean, he is led astray,
Into a world of fantasy, the adventurous wild!
For eternity, I could proclaim the wrongs of man,
Lying open-armed on this blissful beach,
But I know the golden gift of salvation,
Will always be within my reach!

The horizon has come closer to me,
Or so it feels at the advent of dusk,
I am reminded of a close old friend,
Who studied numbers, stars and the elephant’s tusk!
I always wondered about his thoughts,
How he refused to believe in more than sense!
Even love to him was a matter of numbers,
Logic! It hindered him like a towering fence!
For eternity, my tears could flow for him,
Lying open-armed on this blissful beach,
But I know the golden gift of salvation,
Will always be within my reach!

The sun has set and the wind begins to howl,
The sting of old desires begin to hurt me,
Will the wounds of old, ever be healed?
Or must I lay motionless, at the bottom of the sea?
Will comfort ever walk the roads of my heart?
Where is the peace I was destined to find?
Will tears do justice to my endless sorrow?
Will my heart ever befriend my wandering mind?
For eternity, I could question myself,
Lying open-armed on this blissful beach,
But I know the golden gift of salvation,
Will always be within my reach!

Night conquers the day, darkness arrives,
The hopeful moon, reflects the sun,
I remember the friends, who came and went,
The hearts I had lost and the hearts I had won!
Life has never ceased to amaze me,
Many tears it causes, many smiles it gives,
The mystery of death man has never solved,
And it shall be the same, as long as he lives!
For eternity, I could write my limitless thoughts,
Lying open-armed on this blissful beach,

Would You?

Would you say I'm dreaming?
If I told you man can fly
But what if only he tried,
With a heart that told no lie
Would you call me a fool?
If I told you love is true
If only guns would cease to be,
Cold hearts would truly become few

Would you say I'm insane?
If I told you I needed no food to live
But is food that which feeds the mind?
When sorrow is near, peace will it give?
Would you call me crazy?
If I told you I could see the wind
But not with eyes that see lies and sin,
But the eyes of my soul that have never sinned

Would you tear my heart apart?
If I abandoned you that crucial time
But what if I did only to save you
Would I have committed an evil crime?
Would you stab me with your sharpened dagger?
For the hurt I caused you in the past
Or grant me forgiveness for which I plead,
Reject hate, and re-unite at last

Would you call me a treacherous liar,
If I told you God is by my side?
Though sin is ample in my broken heart,
I have stepped down from the pedestal of pride
Would you tell God to abandon me?
And let my tears pay for all of my sin
And ask Him to pour his wrath on me
So my repentance would finally begin

Would you stand really close to me?
In my effort to change this corrupted world
This world that is me, you and all,
And all in the future yet unfurled
Would you drop your guns and reject hate,
And breathe to forge a great new humanity
With peace to govern, love to unite,
Heaven above, and no human frailty

Screamjack

The Governor Of Change

The winds have told us tales a plenty,
Tales that entertain and tales mythical!
Down generations stories have passed,
And soothsayers come with minds too fickle!
But from all we can construe,
Who is the truly inevitable!
In submission we are to bow down,
As unlike man he is not gullible!
Change is his name and his years remain unknown,
His abilities transcend the limits of the mind!
And though in all his glory he governs the world,
His actions are governed by a Force from behind!

The governor of change his mind who knows?
Can man even count the sand grains on a shore?
If what man cannot stop, He creates and governs?
Who is man to term this Force, just mere folklore?
For the mind of man did not just come to be!
How can randomness result in all of creation!
For before all, there was none but Him!
And for his splendid glory, we owe him sincere admiration!
If man is proud and surrenders to a self-tuned will,
What will he do when he encounters weakness?
And his greatest weakness, that death is his birthright,
For flesh is an entity of this temporary world of bleakness!
Rather if his mind surrenders to a greater force,
A force whose existence subjects not to time!
Then the feet of man will tread the right path alone,
And the governor of change will make his life sublime!

For in his world deviated from truth,
Man proudly judges his own creator!
He forgets that he is only a five-sensed being,
And proudly he asks, ‘Than me who is greater?’
But when change lifts him of his feet,
And locks him in the prisons of sorrow and confusion,
He turns an eye to the greatest love he knows,
The Governor of Change who he called a mere illusion!
And though He is not entitled, He showers his love,
And comes to the rescue of his prodigal son!
For pride cannot take the great heart of His,
For from where love is, pride will always run!
If we turn the pages of our human race,
The presence of the Almighty is truly inevitable!
The tongues of great men proclaim their greatness,
As a gift from the Being, whose mind is infallible!

Is man a fool to reject a force that gives him good?
Is he a fool to reject the Writer of his destiny?
For no man is capable of choosing his own future,
But with aid from above, his future will need no scrutiny!
The five-sensed being, the pinnacle of creation!
Yet a funny thought that his senses are only five!
The mind of man is truly magnificent!
But in all his magnificence he still thinks naïve!
If his mind remains in ignorance change will strike,
And bring about only the most tragic of ends!
And in the last moments of torturous fire,
Man will lose the closest of all his friends!
And when he meets the painful sting of regret,
Only one will be left, to him yet made strange,
And though late, man will come to realize,

Tears Of Fire

Drenched in regret, my burdens too heavy to bear! My own cross I wish not to carry, sorrow scourging my heart. ‘If only things had happened otherwise’, I can say in regret for the rest of my life! But not a moment would arrive when my conscience would be clean, for guilt is only the strictest of disciplinarians. What am I to do other than shed tears of fire? Can I turn back the clocks and change things? Can I say a prayer of hope for the treasure of comfort? Can I leave things the way they are and move on? Yes I could! But what would I do those fearful nights when guilt constantly knocks on the door of my heart? None of this world give me their forgiveness! The fragrance of hope has long abandoned my senses! Faith seems only like a foolish endeavor! Am I to face the wrath of sorrow and regret for all the years to come? Or wait for the mercy of the unseen? Or remain in the prisons of confusion lost in thought for the few years of eternity that are left of me? Tears of fire! Tears of fire! They burn my cheeks and steal my vision! Tears of fire, the gift of guilt, eventually my soul’s destined bane!
A song of sorrow I whistle in the dark corridors of my heart, a song of hopelessness in the depths of my mind! My eyes take me places I’ve feared all my life! My ears hear things I’ve feared all my life! The winds tell me stories I never wished to hear!
A new darkened meaning to life I have found, and I am mercilessly consumed by it!
A new path I have chosen, one with no end, filled with fire that can be quenched only by evil thirsts! Thirsts to satisfy wrongful desires! And although quenched, done so falsely!
I am surrounded by trickery! The end is near! I am wasted and hurt in a desert of misery!
Just when my eyes are closing, my heart succumbing to the forces of sorrow, somewhere in the distance, I hear a hopeful voice! A ray of light, an angel singing, hope has arrived, maybe a minute too late, but still, arrived to wipe my tears of fire!

Screamjack

Prayer

There is this friend of mine who I meet very often, and he keeps telling me he cannot understand prayer! He keeps explaining to me how prayer always fails to make sense in his head! Well, just a while ago, I looked into his eyes and asked him,
“When you pray, do you believe someone is listening?”
He didn’t answer, he just began to pray and experience heaven’s wonders!
I make no accusation against my friend, nor do I agree with his former opinion of prayer!
See the power of prayer is twofold! It depends not alone in the power of God but in the power of our Faith! God is intangible in the physical world! But that does not mean he has an inability to work wonders in this world! See, his wonders are worked through us! For he lives in us and we are his image! So considering this notion of mine, I can safely say that the power of our prayers has a very close relationship with our faith!
Another weakness of man is he asks more rather than thank, when he prays!
Prayer is not an opportunity to sit down and cry to God about all the things He hasn’t given us! It is an opportunity to sit down and thank Him for all the things He has given us and for all that he is going to give us, for we know and we believe all things that come from Him are good! See this friend of mine, there were days when he would cry to me and tell me, I pray and I pray, but He never listens! And everyday I find it harder for I am struck with this thought, “Why do I speak to someone I cannot see? Am I mad?” I told him that faith is blind and its beauty lies in its extent of blindness! We live in a world where people say all that glitters is not gold! Does this line make sense if our minds wish to see stone as gold or lead as gold? We have eyes and two of them only, but the two of mine have caused so much sin in me I wish God had given me only one so I could halve my guilt! What is sight? Is it a gift of God? Or is it a limit that man draws to hinder his stream of thought?
We have five senses and five senses alone! And yes we do have a few people who bring in the sixth sense. Five or six, do you think these senses, without which we are mere vegetables, are enough to completely understand the Power that dwells above? No!
See prayer is not something we do forcefully, or words we say for the sake of those words being said, or for the satisfaction of a neighbor’s ears! See prayer is a weapon! A weapon against man’s greatest enemy, temptation! And how great is God to give us such a beautiful weapon!
Let me put forth an example to form a communication pathway between my mind and yours! We have an extremely intelligent man who develops an unimaginable computer program that works wonders! In this case, man is the creator and the program is the created! Do you wish to tell me, that the program can understand the mind of the programmer? I am hopeful you do not, for then I would safely term you, either insane or rudely disagreeable! This is an example to just explain why we cannot understand the power of God!
A program is just a code that has logical sense, but our God, how loving He is to create programs in his own image! Programs that he doesn’t use, but loves! And how loving He is to shower on us ample gifts and work through us His unimaginable wonders!
Prayer is our weapon, prayer is our communication with God, and prayer is our source of comfort! We do not pray because we need to pray, but we pray because we want to pray!
For prayer under compulsion is almost ineffective but prayer under will can work wonders!
I will tell you a little more about this friend of mine! He fretted for days about the fact that he could make no communication with God! He questioned me a million times and most of the times, I had an answer! This is no boast of mine for this friend was none other than the image in my mirror!
Prayers work! Give God a chance, you’ll never regret it!
Peace

Screamjack

Faith!

Christ my love, my savior, my God!
In a situation where hope seems like a foolish endeavor, you make it seem otherwise. See I have understood that faith is a recognition of the reality that is yet to be seen. I am but a mindless romantic with hopes beyond dreams and dreams beyond desires and my words may seem to you like a maze with no exit. My apology for this is sincere.
In this work of mine, I wish to indulge in the splendors of faith! See man accepts the existence of that divine power that governs the plan that keeps us in safety. He accepts the existence of the "Almighty"! But tell me, why in the vastness of the universe does man deny the power of his creator! What is the beginning and what is the end? What is the power of the unseen? We put our hopes in Science! What is Science? Nothing but a progressive perception of what we refer to as "God"! Dwell not in the home that shelters the plan of man but realize the fact that what is unseen is more powerful than what is seen!
We the human race, who are we? We are the created and not the creator! Our intelligence lies in the will of the creator!
Avoid your ego, and build the gratitude that you are meant to, towards the creator!
Faith is not something you can explain with numbers and equations! Faith is a state of transcendence, that enables man to make the impossible, yes indeed, possible!
Christ, I love Him!
Do you know why? Cause when we consider faith and God, we question ourselves asking "Does God know our feelings, emotions, sorrows and shortcomings?"
Let me devolve to you a very important piece of information!
You may criticize and yes it is a great possibility that you may disagree with me! But God! Don't you think he gave us the greatest gift mankind can ever receive? Christ! He came down and went through the temptation that man experiences! He overcame it! He experienced the pain, sorrow and misery that we all do! And he died! And yes, he overcame death!
And do you know what that means? It means there does exist a great deal of hope for all of us.
Sorrow is our friend! A dear teacher who purges us of our sins!
The world is a pool of sin! One way does exist with which we can transcend from the desires of the flesh and satisfy the desire of our soul! Salvation has been offered, but we can be saved only if we accept the offer!
Forget the perception of your eyes and build faith in the perception of your heart!
Happiness is undefined without faith! You have a task at hand!
Define it!
Peace