Giving a Boost While Smelling the Roses
	NOVEMBER 2004

by Don Huntington, Editor In Chief

Treat people as if they are what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being. (Johann von Goethe)

My life is marked by viewing the people and activities in my life as valuable and worthy of honor.

Years ago I read of a new teacher who was assigned a classroom of brilliant students. She could tell from their reported IQ scores that this was the most gifted class she had ever seen. Because of their extraordinary abilities the teacher devised special projects and assignments that would help the students achieve their high potentials.

It was the best and most rewarding class she had ever taught.

One day in the teachers lounge the teacher overheard a colleague make a disparaging comment about one of the students from the hi-intelligence group, saying that the boy was incapable of learning.

“You must be kidding,” the teacher remarked. “He’s a borderline genius!”

The other teacher replied that the student was closer to being a moron than a genius. The first teacher insisted that the boy was very bright and took her colleague to see the boy’s score for herself. She discovered that what she had mistaken as IQ scores were actually locker numbers.

That story changed my attitude towards myself and towards others. Part of a life of grace is to feel that I am accepted as if I am what I ought to be. Such a feeling of acceptance helps me become what by grace I am actually capable of being. And it gives me the ability to treat others as admirable acts of creation by a gifted artist.

Part of such self-acceptance, in my own experience, also gives me the ability to “smell the roses.” It also creates a bulwark that protects me from living life at an inappropriate level of seriousness. I don’t have to prove anything. I can resist urges to live life at frantic and compulsive levels.

Some people lack the ability to relax and to enjoy life.

Once I press myself into action, I immediately begin to live. Anything less is merely existing. The moments I truly live are the moments when I act with my entire will. (Oswald Chambers)

However, I often get charged up and, throw myself into an activity with all my will, living at the level Chambers talks about. I can sometimes thrive for a while living life at that level.

On the other hand, during slower periods — those times when I am relaxing or engaged in some pleasant diversion — I don’t feel that I am “merely existing,” to use Chamber’s word. I enjoy reading, for example. I love watching good movies with my family. I enjoy surfing the Internet once in a while, or playing cards with my wife and her parents.

During these times I usually feel perfectly alive. The Bible truthfully says:

I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil — this is the gift of God.

A person who can measure quality of life only in terms of action or production, in my opinion, is missing some wonderful gifts that have been put into this world. In some cases, he or she is trying to prove something that doesn’t need proving.

Also, such a person would be tough to live with. Who would want to be around someone who could never relax or have fun without feeling guilty for fear they were missing out on the opportunity of doing something productive?

Pleasurable experiences are like the frosting on top of the cake of a balanced life. If I throw away the “cake,” I certainly will become sick in a very short time. However, if I throw away the “frosting,” of pleasant activities, on the other hand, I needlessly deny myself gifts that might have done me good.

I’m grateful for times when I can exert myself and accomplish things for Heaven and for the good of others. But I’m also grateful for pleasant times of relaxation and fun. Both types of experience seem to me to bless my life, and might be as valuable in the sight of Heaven.

I love to boost the people in my life, regarding them as worthy of honor; I might as well regard all the activities God puts in my life as things that boost myself.