You are what you wish (Self-fulfilling Prophecy)

Seorang pria miskin berjalan ke dalam hutan sambil meratapi nasibnya yang penuh dengan kesusahan.

Ia beristirahat di bawah pohon. Ternyata pohon ini adalah pohon ajaib yang bisa mengabulkan semua permohonan dari semua orang yang berada dekat dengan pohon itu. Apapun yang dipikirkan dan dikatakan akan menjadi kenyataan.

Pria itu sangat haus dan ingin minum. Tiba-tiba secangkir air dingin segar muncul di tangannya. Terkejut, pria itu melihat seksama air tersebut. Setelah merasa air itu aman, ia meminumnya.

Pria itu kemudian merasa lapar dan ingin sesuatu untuk makan. Sepiring makanan muncul di hadapannya.

“Keinginanku terkabul,” ia berpikir setengah tidak percaya. “Kalau begitu aku ingin memiliki rumah yang bagus milikku sendiri, “ ia berteriak dengan keras. Rumah itu secara ajaib muncul di sebelahnya. Senyum lebar muncul di muka pria itu.

Ia lalu meminta pelayan, untuk merawat rumahnya. Ketika pelayan itu muncul, pria itu sadar bahwa ia telah dikaruniai dengan keajaiban.

Pria itu lalu meminta seorang wanita cantik, pintar, dan mencintai dirinya untuk mendampinginya. Keinginannya pun terkabul.

“Tunggu, ini aneh,” kata pria itu pada si wanita,”Aku tidak mungkin seberuntung ini. Hal ini tidak mungkin terjadi padaku. Paling-paling sekarang ini aku lagi mimpi.”

Saat ia bicara … tiba-tiba ia tertidur, dan ketika ia terbangun semuanya menghilang. Semuanya benar-benar MENJADI hanya mimpi.

Kemudian pria itu menganggukkan kepala dan berkata,”Betul kan!” Kemudian pria itu berjalan lagi, pergi sambil meratapi nasibnya yang penuh kesusahan.

Moral of the story: Be careful of what you say and wish, cause you're gonna get it.

Jos 1:8 Janganlah engkau lupa memperkatakan kitab Taurat ini, tetapi renungkanlah itu siang dan malam, supaya engkau bertindak hati-hati sesuai dengan segala yang tertulis di dalamnya, sebab dengan demikian perjalananmu akan berhasil dan engkau akan beruntung.

Are you the man?

Carilah seorang pria yang memanggilmu cantik, bukan sexy,

Tunggulah seorang laki-laki yang mencium dahimu,

Yang menggenggam tanganmu di depan teman2nya,

Yang menganggap kamu tetap cantik tanpa riasan..

Seseorang yang selalu mengingatkanmu,

betapa besar kepeduliannya padamu

dan betapa beruntungnya dia memilikimu..

Seseorang yang berkata pada temannya:

dialah orangnya…

Giving vs Selling

Bill Gates died and, much to everyone's surprise, went to Heaven.

When he got there, he had to wait in the reception area, which was about the size of Massachusetts. There were millions of people living in tents. Food and water were being distributed from the backs of trucks, while staffers with clipboards slowly worked their way through the crowd.

Bill lived in a tent for three weeks until, finally, a staffer in his late teens approached him. The young man was wearing a blue T-shirt with the words TEAM PETER emblazoned on it in large yellow letters.

"Hello," said the staffer in a bored voice. "My name is Gabriel and I'll be your induction coordinator."

Bill started to ask a question, but Gabriel interrupted him. "No, I'm not the Archangel Gabriel. I'm a guy from Philadelphia named Gabriel who died in a car wreck at 17. Now give me your name, last name first, unless you were Chinese, in which case it's first name first."

"Gates, Bill."

Gabriel started searching through the sheaf of papers on his clipboard, looking for Bill's Record of Earthly Works.

"What's going on here?" asked Bill. "Why are all these people here? Where's St. Peter? Where are the pearly gates?"

Gabriel ignored the questions until he located Bill's records. "It says here that you were the president of a large software company. Is that right?"

"Yes."

"Well do the math! When this St. Peter business started, it was easy. Only a hundred or so people died every day, and Peter could handle it by himself."

"But now there are over five billion people on earth. When God said to 'go forth and multiply,' he didn't say 'like rabbits!' Ten thousand people die every hour, over a quarter-million a day. Do you think Peter can meet them all personally?"

"I guess not."

"You guess right. So he had to franchise the operation. Now, Peter is the CEO of Team Peter Enterprises, Inc. Franchisees like me handle the actual inductions."

Gabriel looked though his paperwork some more and then continued. "Your paperwork seems to be in order. And with a background like yours, you'll be getting a plum job assignment."

"Job assignment?"

"Of course. Did you expect to spend eternity sitting on your bum and drinking ambrosia? Heaven is a big operation. You have to pull your weight around here!"

Gabriel took out a triplicate form, had Bill sign at the bottom, and then tore out the middle copy and handed it to Bill. "Take this down to induction center no. 23 and meet up with your occupational coordinator. His name is Abraham--and no, he's not that Abraham."

Bill walked to induction center no. 23 and met with Abraham after a mere six-hour wait.

"Heaven is centuries behind in building its data-processing infrastructure, " explained Abraham.

"As you've seen, we're still doing everything on paper. It takes us a week just to process new entries. Your job will be to supervise Heaven's new data processing center."

"We're building the largest computing facility in creation. Half a million computers connected by a multisegment fiber-optic network, all running into a back-end server network with a thousand CPUs on a gigabit channel. Fault tolerant, distributed processing, the works."

Bill could barely contain his excitement. "Wow! What a great job! This is really Heaven!"

"We're just finishing construction, and we'll be starting operations soon. Would you like to go see the center now?"

"You bet!"

Abraham and Bill caught the shuttle bus and went to Heaven's new data processing center. It was a truly huge facility, a hundred times bigger than the Astrodome. Workers were crawling all over the place, getting the miles of fiber optic cables properly installed.

But the center was dominated by the computers. Half a million computers, arranged nearly row-by-row, half a million... Linux ... all running Star Office software! Not a single windows in sight! Not a single byte of Microsoft code!

The thought of spending eternity using products he had spent his whole life working to destroy was too much for Bill.

"What about PCs???" he exclaimed. "What about Windows??? Excel??? Word???"

"You're forgetting something," said Abraham.

"What's that?" asked Bill plaintively.

"This is Heaven," explained Abraham. "If you want to build a data processing center based on PCs running Windows, then you'll have to go elsewhere!"

Hahahaha... Sorry Bill ...

Get Your Wildest Dreams

Efesus 3:20 God can do anything, you know--far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

Wow... saya suka dengan ayat ini. Coba saya singkat: God can do anything far more than you could ever request in your wildest dreams! (penekanan oleh penulis)

What is your wildest dreams? Jadi orang super kaya? Super ganteng? Super terkenal? Super dermawan mungkin? Tapi lihat kenyataannya sekarang? Jangan-jangan kita saat ini adalah orang yang super miskin, super jelek, super pelit... hehehe...

Ada contoh nih. Coba kita lihat sederetan 'prestasi' orang ini:

• Tahun 1831 dia mengalami kebangkrutan usaha.
• Tahun 1832 dia menderita kekalahan dalam pemilihan tingkat lokal.
• Tahun 1833 usahanya bangkrut lagi.
• Tahun 1835 istrinya meninggal dunia.
• Tahun 1836 dia menderita tekanan mental yang sangat berat dan hampir saja masuk rumah sakit jiwa.
• Tahun 1837, dia kalah dalam suatu kontes pidato.
• Tahun 1840, ia gagal dalam pemilihan anggota senat AS.
• Tahun 1842, dia menderita kekalahan untuk duduk di dalam kongres AS.
• Tahun 1848 ia kalah lagi di kongres.
• Tahun 1855, lagi-lagi gagal di senat.
• Tahun 1856 ia kalah dalam menduduki kursi wakil presiden.
• Tahun 1858 ia kalah lagi di senat.

Akhirnya:

• Tahun 1860 akhirnya dia menjadi presiden Amerika Serikat.

Siapakah dia? Dialah Abraham Lincoln. Kira-kira kenapa ya dia harus mengalami berbagai kegagalan dalam hidupnya? Menurut saya, karena apa yang akan dia hadapi dalam pekerjaannya sebagai Presiden Amerika Serikat memerlukan ketahanan mental yang besar. Dan Tuhan mempersiapkannya dengan baik. Apa yang terjadi bila Abe berhenti di tengah jalan? Tidak mau menjalani proses yang Tuhan beri? Ya hidupnya akan gitu-gitu aja.

Maka jangan pernah menyerah dengan berbagai kegagalan yang pernah dialami, bahkan sedalam apapun kejatuhan kita. Beda orang sukses dan orang gagal hanya satu. Orang sukses ketika jatuh akan bangkit lagi, orang gagal ketika jatuh akan diam di tempatnya dan menyesali berbagai hal.

Ayo bangkit! Maju terus! Saya percaya, Tuhan telah menyediakan sesuatu yang luar biasa di ujung perjalanan kita.

Love and Get Loved

A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she held him, she sang:

• I'll love you forever
• I'll like you for always,
• As long as I'm living
• My baby you'll be

The baby grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was two years old, and he ran all around the house. He pulled all the books off the shelves. He pulled all the food out of the refrigerator and he took his mother's watch and flushed it down the toilet.

Sometimes his mother would say, "This kid is driving me CRAZY!"

But, at night time, when that two-year-old was quiet, she opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor, looked up over the side of his bed; and if he was really asleep she picked him up and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. While she rocked him she sang:

• I'll love you forever
• I'll like you for always,
• As long as I'm living
• My baby you'll be.

The little boy grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. he grew until he was nine years old. And, he never wanted to come in for dinner, he never wanted to take a bath, and when grandma visited he always said bad words.

Sometimes his mother wanted to sell him to the zoo!

But at night time, when he was asleep, the mother quietly opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor and looked up over the side of the bed. If he was really asleep, she picked up that nine-year-old boy and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she rocked him she sang:

• I'll love you forever
• I'll like you for always,
• As long as I'm living
• My baby you'll be.

The boy grew. he grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was a teenager. He had strange friends and he wore strange clothes and he listened to strange music.

Sometimes the mother felt like she was in a zoo!

But at night time, when that teenager was asleep, the mother opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor and looked up over the side of the bed. If he was really asleep she picked up that great big boy and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. While she rocked him she sang:

• I'll love you forever
• I'll like you for always,
• As long as I'm living
• My baby you'll be.

That teenager grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was a grown-up man. He left home and got a house across town.

But sometimes on dark nights the mother got into her car and drove across town. If all the lights in her son's house were out, she opened his bedroom window, crawled across the floor, and looked up over the side of his bed. If that great big man was really asleep she picked him up and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she rocked him she sang:

• I'll love you forever
• I'll like you for always,
• As long as I'm living
• My baby you'll be.

Well, that mother...she got older. She got older and older and older.

One day she called up her son and said, "You better come see because I'm very old and sick."

So her son came to see her. When he came in the door she tried to sing the song. She sang:

• I'll love you forever
• I'll like you for always....

But she couldn't finish because she was too old and sick. The son went to his mother. He picked her up and rocked her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And he sang this song:

• I'll love you forever,
• I'll like you for always,
• As long as I'm living
• My Mommy you'll be.

(Disadur dari: I'll Love You Forever by Robert Munsch)