I am the Lord

For those persons who need some hope.

November 17

I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me …….

Isaiah 45:5

    The nation of Israel had not kept her part in the covenant with the Lord God and had accommodated idols and the gods of the surrounding nations. For many centuries the Lord God had been proving to the people of Israel that the gods of the surrounding nations were as helpless as those who made the gods and that what some nations worshipped as gods were actually the things that he the Lord God had created.

     It was through the prophet Isaiah that the Lord God declared his credentials that he was God because as the Lord God he is able to tell what will happen in the future and he has the capability to tell what happened in the past. The Lord God looked two hundred years into the future and named the man that he would raise up to fulfill his purposes concerning Israel. The Lord God declared that it was he who formed the light and created the darkness also it is he who controls peace and times of evil.

    In a time when there were many gods clamoring for the devotion of the people of Israel the Lord God declared to the people of Israel that he was God and there is no God beside him. When what he has spoken happens then all the nations would know that there is no god to be compared to the Lord God and there is no other being who hold the title of being God.

    There does not exist another omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, immutable being in existence beside the Lord God.

Something to think about: The prophecies of the scriptures still remain the litmus test of the reality of the Lord God’s existence.

 (This reading is taken from my book "Crumbs under the table")

Available in print and Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Prince-W.-Bradford/e/B00GM5OKR6

Gray haired ideas

My wish as always is that you will have a Happy Monday.

Yea whew! It is hard to believe, but the season of joy, cheer and happiness is here. It is time to begin summarizing the past year's achievements and make plans to finalize accomplishments. It is also the time to  plan and set goals for the coming year.

This time of the year is also the time to gloat without being proud because in spite of the songs and choruses that it is too difficult for you, the naysayers have been silenced. There are results from pursuing your dreams and visions which cannot be denied so you have proven to the doubters that they are wrong.

We are called to stand out but it is not easy to be outstanding because this requires standing up to the strong and putting the cowards to flight.

The effectiveness of the strong do not necessarily rest in their strength but in their unity. The courage of cowards rest in their numbers because they draw from each other. The outstanding must have the smarts to overcome both of these two groups and their mode of operation.

The strong attack from ambush and in numbers because the strong knows the risks associated with attacking a prey. Even a lion knows the risks associated with attacking a prey and often uses fear as it greatest weapon or attack from ambush or in the dark and uses numbers to their advantage.

Cowardly animals will make even lions back down if they have sufficient numbers.

In life there are not going to be many persons who want to see you succeed and are prepared to help you get to the top. There will be even less persons who regard you as the better man and want to help you get ahead in life.

These are some realities that you and I must face. The strong who will attack in large numbers and attack from ambush. The cowardly who will try intimidating by virtue of large numbers but are quick to take flight in the face of courage. The good news is that you and I can overcome both these groups because we are dreamers and visionaries. Our dreams and ideas are the ideal weapons to defend against both the strong and the cowards.

January 1st does not have to be the beginning a new year. Any day can be the beginning of  a new year. It can be the day that you begin acting on your thoughts and ideas. This is what you must do if you want to stand out and to be outstanding. The material that we need to be outstanding can be found inside of us.

Some of us have thoughts and ideas that are growing gray hairs from waiting to be given a chance to come  to live. Give some thoughts and ideas a chance of live in this season of joy and happiness.

We are tomorrow's heroes

My wish as always is that you will have a happy Monday.

Every generation and every people need their heroes because they are writing history. The heroics and achievements of the past are vital because they provide benchmarks for the present. If there is nothing to gauge the present then there will be no way to measure present progress for shortcomings or surpluses.

It is not good enough however to live in the past but rather magnanimous goals should be set for the future. The present need it heroes to demonstrate that what was achieved in the past by others can be repeated and surpassed in the present.

Those persons reading this page  that are familiar with Judaeo/Christian writings will be familiar with the story of a pair of twins. The elder twin by virtue of being the firstborn inherited certain rights and privileges. He was careless and refused to live up to the responsibilities of the firstborn and his twin wanted what he ignored. One day the elder twin came home hungry and saw his twin brother with a cooked meal. The elder twin figured that he was about to die of hunger and asked his brother for some of the food. The younger twin told him that if he died the birthrights would become his anyway and since he would be saving the older brother's life then he should turn over the rights and privileges of the firstborn. The older twin agreed. There are two things that are stark in this story.
   1. The older brother did not value what he had coming in the future.
   2. The younger brother was rapacious and ready to take advantage of his brother.
It remains debatable whether the elder twin was really hungry to the point of death and if so whether his brother would see him die of hunger.

There are lessons to learnt from this story and the underlying principle in the story is as relevant now as it was when it first occurred.
   1. Learn the true value of your possessions. There are many benefits that will only be realized in the future.         ( Every persons born on this earth are entitled to a name and other identifying features. Records are                 kept so that future accolades may be bestowed although the person may have died). There are many             persons who are signing away these presently.
   2. Be on the look out for the covetous and rapacious. There are many who recognize the value of what              you possess and will try gaining it for very little.

It is true that there are persons and organization that have the resources and means to take your ideas and inventions to heights that are outside your wildest imaginations. The question remains, should you sign away all your rights?

Here is the reality of life. History has left its heroes who have set the benchmark. The present have it heroes who are in the process of reaching the benchmarks with the aim of surpassing yesterday's heroes. It is not good enough for you and I to sit on the sideline observing what is taking place. We have the opportunity to be today's heroes. We have the opportunity to rise to the top and become the example for the present and those coming after to emulate.

Bring out the heavy equipment

My wish for you as always is for you to have a Happy Monday.

Success is comparable to victories. If there are no battles to be fought then there are no victories to be won and if there are no obstacles to overcome then there is no success to achieve.
In life it should be remembered that courage and bravery are not qualities to be exhibited with pride. Both these qualities border on being foolhardy and it is only the outcome that determines if one was courageous and brave or foolhardy and was tempting fate.

I grew up near bauxite mining operations and sometimes it was possible to hear the heavy equipment at work in the distance. The siren at the plant served as time piece for 7:50 am (get ready to begin work), 8:00 am (work begin), 12 noon (lunch time), 12:50 pm (get ready to go back to work) 1:00 pm (back to work) 4:30 pm (work day ends). The factory was located in a basin so it was easy to see the heavy equipment at work from a distance. Sometime the mining operations were taking place next door to residences. (If this sound strange I should point out that the bauxite deposit was located on or close to the earth surface.

My father was a farmer and it was a common practice for the farmers to lease/rent land from the bauxite mining company to plant crops and to rear animals.One of the things that I never fully understood was the value of the earth in which my father planted the crops. The same spot where so often we cook out in the fields or roasted sweet potatoes, green corn or yellow yam would later be mined by the bauxite company. The heavy equipment would come in remove the top soil and the bauxite transported in heavy haulage trucks to be converted to alumina then exported to be smelted into aluminium. It was hard to grasp the idea of the red earth in which I planted food crops finally being converted into aluminum and probably was on the roof of the house, or may have made the pot in which I cooked or may have been made into a part on the airplane that was flying overhead.

My home was in the mountains and there were many natural hills, gullies and basins among other natural land formations. One of the infrastructure that the government put in place and improved was the roads.
I should probably mention the railway tracks first because the engineers who were responsible for putting into place the railway tracks when a hill was encountered did not run the tracks over the hill but tunneled through the hill.
There were many small hills that I had to climb up and then down as a child. When the roads were being built then the heavy equipment simply cut through these hills. Many of these hills were small mounds of earth that were naturally formed. Where I lived was limestone and there were also solid hill made out of rock. The use of dynamite and the heavy equipment cut a road through these rocks and left towering cliffs on either sides of the road.
There was a time when halfway through a road being constructed that the engineers came to the decision that the road was too steep for cars to navigate without danger. That road was abandoned and another built in a circuitous way.
I also knew of a prominent house because it was built on the top of a small hill. The time came when the house was demolished and the heavy equipment brought in. I was surprised that the hill was a natural mound of earth and it was completely leveled and the earth taken away (maybe as bauxite).

This page is about acting on out thoughts and ideas. The bigger our thoughts and ideas then the more impossible they will appear. It is the reality that our thoughts and ideas originate in our minds that make them possible to achieve. It is impossible for our minds to conceive things that are outside our dreams and experiences.
The bigger the dream then the more impossible it will appear but what if there were some heavy equipment that could be brought in to mow down and demolish the things that stand in the way of making our dreams, concepts and ideas possible.
The biggest failure that we can encounter is not to pursue our ideas and dreams. It is our dreams and our ideas so we have to deal with the problems individually. How we deal with the problem however could lead to some new invention that shall benefit the whole world.
Our heavy equipment could very well be the resolution with which we tackle our ideas and dreams.
© Prince W Bradford 2015

Non-starters and blinkers

My wish for you is for you to have a Happy Monday.

It is not easy to stay focused and not get distracted by events, circumstances and a host of incidentals, occasions and things which are outside of our control.

There was a time when my father gambled on racehorses. On many Friday evenings whether he was at home or not I had to sit by the old transistor radio, listen and write down the tipsters take on which racehorse would win each race and also the racehorse that could likely cause an upset.

In those days the avenues for entertainment was very limited. The old transistor radio broadcasted on the AM band and there were only two radio stations. On Saturdays between 12:00 noon and 5:00 pm there  was live horse racing commentary from the race track. On the hour and every half hour there were live commentary from the race track. (Just in case you are wondering. The closest that I have been to a race horse is when I am walking on the streets and one passes that is being transported in a truck). There was no getting away from listening to live racehorse commentary on a Saturday afternoon.

There are two terms that comes to mind when I reflect on those days and these terms are non starters and blinkers. There were many other terms that were used but these two terms stand out and it took me some time to understand the meaning of the two terms. The two terms are non-starters and blinkers.

The non-starter is the horse that was listed to start in the race but for some reason did not run in the race. It is only now that I understand that there were a number of reasons why a horse did not start as scheduled in a race.

The other term which I remember is that the racehorse would be wearing blinkers. The dictionary describes this as a piece of horse tack that prevent the horse from seeing to the rear and sometimes to the sides. This allowed the racehorse to only see to the front.

You could easily ask me what has racehorses, blinkers and non-starters has to do with my life and my answer will be that they serve as analogies. I encounter so many persons in life that should have been far ahead in life but for some reason they failed to start. There are those persons who are waiting on the ideal conditions to begin and those persons who allowed others to hinder their ever making a start.

Recently I had two chapters to write to complete the first draft of a book and I was overcome by a feeling of wanting to throw away the manuscript and not bother. It was the first time that I was experiencing such a feeling and I wondered what was happening to me. The feeling was so intense that it took the years of discipline that I had cultivated to overcome it.

I have often come across persons who had spent many years studying at university and in the final term quit. I could not understand why. I also have come across many persons who during their course of study keep changing their area of study and are unable to decide what exactly they want to be. This I realize comes about because they lost focus along the way.

When I was in my early twenties I easily grasped a goal or idea and used passion and determination to create opportunities in order to get things done. Now I keep asking what have become of that passion and ardency. Why is it so difficult for me to get things done now?

The reality is that in my twenties I set big goals but they were also short term goals. Now I more often than not set long term goals. I am no longer free to be who I want to be but I must fit into the mold that society shapes for me.Society is empowered to use the forces of arms against me if I do not conform to its norms. I know that society's norm is not the best but it is designed to exploit me. Those who have never seen anything else swallow society's lies and take being exploited as the norm.

There is also the constant temptation to want to look around me and behind me and to lose focus on what is in front of me. This is one reason why I may need blinkers as is done to racehorses. I may need blinkers but I am certainly not a non-starter.

This page  is evidence enough for me that I am not a non-starter. I began this page with the hope of encouraging others to act on their thoughts and ideas. In so doing it provided for me the impetus to act on my own thoughts and ideas. These thoughts and ideas are spawning other thoughts and ideas but I am not losing focus but rather I am creating and acting on opportunities.

If you are a non-starter it is never too late to begin because your raw material is your thoughts and ideas. Some racehorses race without blinkers and you may be able to stay focused on the course but if you find that you may get distracted then get some blinkers.

My Thoughts Take Flight

When I issued the challenge to pursue your ideas, dreams and passions I did not sit by idle. I wrote and among what I wrote was prose and poetry. The idea came that I could put some poems that I wrote on CD and add music. I pursued this idea and now I want to present "My Thoughts take Flight"
A CD of poems and music that is ready for download on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Take-Flight-Prince-Bradford/dp/B01648XEE0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1444505624&sr=8-2&keywords=my+thoughts+take+flight

So little time

My wish for you is for you to have and to be enjoying a Happy Monday.

It may take years to become the best but we live in a world that demands the best from the unlearned, the untried and the immature. We are living in a world where imperfect people who are seeking to highlight, epitomize and display perfection. Perfection is presented as a quality that can be achieved with the same speed that one can walk into a fast food store and be served.

 There are persons who recruit successful persons in order to boast of their own successes but will not invest in recruiting and training. Their mandate is to have under their umbrella the best at all times and have no desire to run the risk of investing in prospects and then see the prospect recruited by someone else when trained.

There are persons  scout for those with potential then coach and train these hopefuls only do so for the benefit of those who recruit the successful and the best. These are the the persons with the eyes to spot abilities and talents while remaining unselfish but releases those that they have recruited and trained.

There is no shortcut to growth although the natural process to growing can be cheated and/or enhanced. It may take years to become the best and even more time and efforts are required to remain the best.

This is the world where the inexperienced, the untrained and the novice must enter. The world that give no quarters and initially demand the best. It is a world that demands hundred of percent on what it invests and is unwilling to enter into risky investments.

Into this world must enter the hopeful, the risk taker, the entrepreneur and those who hope to rise above  mediocrity in this life. Many persons enter with big dreams and begin crying after the first attempt when their dreams and expectations are shattered. The immediate dream of success is not realized and the expected support of friends and family is instead ridicule.

These are some of the reality that stand in the way of launching out. There are many persons who grew with the wise words 'A bird in hand is worth two in the bushes." or "Don't give up what is sure in order to pursue a dream that may never be realized." There are many who know however that if a person desire to catch big fishes then he must abandon the shore and sail into the deep sea.

You and I have approximately 22,000 days that we can regard as the most productive days of our lives. We will be asleep for approximately 1/3 of this time which will leaves us with approximately 14,700 days. If we work for five day each week that will leave us with approximately 10,500 days. If we were to work 8 hours each day then we are left with approximately 3500 days in which to achieve our dreams and aspirations..

So then if the most productive days of our lives fall between the ages of 15 and 75 years of age we have approximately 3500 days or 84,000 hours in which to make the best use of our lives working eight hours per day for five days each week .

A forty hour work week and eight hours sleep per day only accounts for half our productive work years. That leaves approximately 11,000 days (not counting sleep time) that is available to utilize and still make an impact. There is still one half of our productive years to pursue our dreams and ideas.

We can sit back and relax and allow the days to pass by or we can look at life and realize that there is so little time and there is so much that can get done. Have fun pursuing your dream and ideas this week.

© Prince Bradford 2015