THINGS THAT DO AND DON'T WORK~

 The young man is shown rescuing a straggly dying bush, giving alms to a pair of beggars, helping an old woman vendor push her cart, sharing food with a hungry dog, and last of all he's shown hanging a bunch of bananas on an old neighbor woman's door before retiring to his apartment.  Before the end of his day he takes a moment to pray. Along the way several people are shown shaking their head, as if to say, What's he doing that for? That's pointless...


Many things shape our lives. My family was not religious, although they may have been shocked if I had called them 'heathen' in their presence, that's what they were. Their main idea when I was growing up (this is what I absorbed at least) was to keep the Golden Rule. If you kept that rule, you were all right with God and fellow mankind.
                    ~Do unto others as you would have them do unto you~
That was the 'law and the prophets' rolled into one.  We didn't even need to keep the ten commandments, as some people said.

How did that work for us?  Well, I'll tell you-- It didn't work well at all.

I remember as a very young child thinking, There just has to be a better way (to live) because this is really painful.
As Jesus said, 'Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings,' I was less than ten years old and that was how I summed it up. That is when I began to search for that something better.
The following years became a long journey, but like a salmon swimming upstream to where it knows it needs to be, I persevered.  And I found the truth.


* "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man; But the end thereof are the ways of death."
  (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25) No matter how 'right' my family thought they were, and no matter how many times they thought they could tell God what he should/would accept--they were wrong. 

The man in the beginning of this post? He found happiness in doing for others.  He was a good person, according to our definition of good.  Not all religions make better people, but many do.  So what difference does it make what religion you adhere to as long as you are a good person?
I've attended funerals where it was a celebration of the person's life. The theme was that the person did it their way. As Frank Sinatra used to sing.

What did that mean? It meant they wanted to do what they wanted to do, and everything, and everyone else be hanged. Maybe the person in question smoked, drank, maybe cheated here and there, philandered a little, but they were a great person that loved fishing (or baking, or you fill in the blank) and now they are fishing (or said activity) with God.
I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry. People have been listening to the devil and his lies far too long. Unless a person does it God's way, when they die, they aren't doing anything with God. All the celebration of that person's life is vain and meaningless.  Being a good person in this life may have temporal rewards, such as love toward others and their love in return, but all of that without Jesus does no good beyond this life.  

John 14:6  "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me."

I could not say it better than this:
 “~I am the way, the truth, and the life. ~
Without the way there is no going; 
without the truth there is no knowing; 
without the life there is no living. 
I am the way which thou shouldst pursue; the truth which thou shouldst believe; the life which thou shouldst hope for”   (Thomas a Kempis, “Imitation of Christ,” iii., 56). 

 John_1:4. "In him was life; and the life was the light of men."
Going home: "Heaven, a prepared place for a prepared people."  Begin the journey--make your preservations today.