Today's Inspirational Quotation

May 4 - "Today I ask you to keep your mind in a state of naked simplicity, your thoughts rising pure like candle flames toward My power and majest and toward My love of Father and Bridegroom.
Even if you don't see the result of your prayers or efforts, don't let this hold you back. Just keep in mind that I know everything, and place yourself once more in the hands of your Redeemer. Remember this: I'll be for you what you want Me to be. If you treat Me as a stranger, I'll be only a judge. If you trust Me, I'll be your Saviour. If you live in My love, I'll be your loving Bridegroom, the Being of your being."
-Taken from "He and I" by Gabrielle Bossis

Smile Part II

"Today I'll take every smile of yours for Myself." 

So I decided to smile at everything and everybody.

-Gabrielle Bossis

When I woke up, this quote came to me, so I decided to do just that. This day, I offered my smile to Jesus. I smiled as I walked down my usual path to my lecture, said my good morning to people cheerfully and tried to look at everything in a positive way. 

Looking back at this day, I noticed that people tend to be nicer when you smile and your day seems to be that much brighter when you offer what you do to Jesus. I found it nice when the people I passed on the streets randomly smiles at me just because I was smiling at them especially while I was doing my volunteering this afternoon. We had the Big Spring Clean Up in my University today. The Vteam organised it and gathered all the staff and students that wanted to volunteer. They split us up into groups and sent us off to different locations around the university. We were meant to pick up rubbish as we make our way back to Uni. 

And so, there I was with my friends, a litter picker in one hand, a black bin on the other and a smile on my face. As we were walking and happily picking up rubbish with our cool litter picker, playing some kind of word game amongst ourselves, some passerby's came to us and just randomly encouraged us and thanked us for picking up litters on the roads. It was a very humbling experience and simply seeing the smile on the faces of the people passing us made me feel happy and made it all worth it.

Not only was it such a great and rewarding experience we were also given free burgers at the SU bar! Too bad  we weren't able to keep the T-shirts though.

Smile Part I

Around 2 AM this morning I was trying to find a movie to watch that I can fall asleep to. I went to many sites looking for any recommendations and as I was browsing, I read something about the 12 promises of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Interested, I went and searched about the devotion of the Sacred Heart. I clicked a link and found a really good site about it containing some prayers and some background information. There it said that the devotion to the Sacred Heart is usually done every first Friday of the month. And, what a great timing it was! Today is the first Friday of the month of May! So, I thought, why not do it?

Before that I have a confession, during the past week or days, I haven't been very good in terms of my prayer time or in being a good christian. I probably did things that hurt people and Jesus, and I may have done things that I am not proud of. It was like going through the rebellion phase of a teenager all over again. The only thing on my mind during the past week was, to give up. To not bother about anything, to not care and be selfish... Yes, I did pray and I looked Ok, however, deep inside I knew that something was wrong. It was like, I was fed up with everything. I was fed up with planning things, doing things for others, looking for houses, worrying about things, contacting people... I was fed up with most of the things in my life and I wanted a break. I wanted to stop and just focus on the things I want to do. I didn't care whether what I was doing was wrong. I was selfish. I wanted to be selfish, so I looked away from him.  

When I read about the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I was reminded of his love. Of how much he yearns for us, for me. I was reminded that at the times when I was doing all those things to hurt myself and other people, he was there, and he was hurting too. I realized that I neglected him, I turned my back from him and I furthered the gap between us. As I read through the contents of the site, I stumbled upon the prayer of exorcism. At first I was hesitant, I didn't want to do it, but after a while I stood up and took my crucifix, holy water and an image of the virgin Mary and went back in front of my laptop. As I was saying the prayer, I was grasping my crucifix in my hand. I felt scared, but I continued and just held the crucifix tighter and after a while I felt the warmth from it. I sprinkled holy water all around my dorm room and continued with the prayers for the Sacred Heart after the prayer of exorcism. You could say that nothing much happened, but it helped with easing my mind and made me calm. It also made me realize that I should stop being selfish and start being more selfless.

Later, I was directed to a book titled "He and I" by Gabrielle Bossis, by the author of the site. I searched the book and found a preview in Google Books. It was a book of the conversations that Gabrielle Bossis had with Jesus and it was powerful because the words that were written in the book somehow struck a chord in me. After reading a bit of the preview I decided to sleep. When I woke up, I remembered a phrase from the book wherein Jesus said, "Today I'll take every smile of yours for Myself."