- It Changes You
It has been just over a year since I first started writing posts for Tracks of Life, but in my mind the posts have progressed through many years of growth. Meaning that with every post, I hope you are growing in your Christian life, as a child would as they learn and mature in age.
Our train is now long with many new cars that have been added over the years. Each car is unique to every individual train and life. We add cars that make us happen, but at times, cars get added because life happens. No one can prepare us for everything that may come into our lives or aboard our trains. So as time goes on, sometimes we have to remove a car or something from our train of life.
The one thing that I want to bring today, is the car of bitterness. Now, no one plans on become bitter about something or towards someone. Usually, it is the aftermath of a previous circumstance that lost control.
Definition: A bitter person often exhibits a baseline mood of anger, disappointment, or irritability, struggles with forgiveness, and can display behaviors like passive-aggression, excessive criticism, and withholding affection, often blaming others for their problems.
Ephesians 4:31-32 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
Bitterness is a feeling that is fed by emotion. It can easily get out of control and destroy a person’s soul if not removed. It can completely change a person’s character and heart if fed with hate. That is why we need to remove it from our life train.
For many years, I had a family member that was bitter towards a couple that hurt me and mom. They spoke hateful words about us and literally tried to destroy our hope and purpose. This family member protected me and mom from these people, but then as years went and his mind continually festered on what happen, bitterness began to set into his life. He became angry and started lashing out towards those that did nothing wrong. He would lose control over his feeling because of the pain of what they said about his family.
Now, jump ahead 5 to 6 years later, and he is now back to his happy self. He finally was able to, not remove the pain, but no long let it control him and make him bitter. He couldn’t change what happened, but he didn’t want to allow it to any long change him. He removed the car of bitterness from his life.
I have my dad back. There were a few years, I didn’t even want to talk to him out of fear he would get upset over the smallest things. I could bring up anything that reminded him of the past or else I would regret the words that may follow.
Bitterness is a terrible thing. It you have it in your life, remove it before it affects those you love the most.
- Weather Report Windy
Last night, I had the opportunity to experience strong crosswinds for the first time as I tried to sleep in our travel van on the plains of South Dakota. At times, it felt as if the van would tip over or be picked up by the wind and carried to another state. Luckily, I am exaggerating a little, but for me never experiencing that before it was pretty dramatic, especially because there was a dumpster across the road with a lid that was constantly banging in the night. But this experience had me thinking. How does wind affect trains?
Wind significantly impacts train operations, potentially causing derailment, collisions, damage to infrastructure, and safety hazards, requiring speed reduction or temporary halts. Strong crosswinds can push trains off the tracks, especially during acceleration or at high speeds. It creates additional aerodynamic forces on a train, potentially leading to instability and difficulty in controlling the train. Cargo can blow off trains, causing damage to other objects or posing hazards to other trains. And there is so much more.
For so long, I thought that the size and weight of a train seemed to be so massive that I could never have imagined that wind could do so much damage to it. But going through 29 – 30 mile an hour winds last night, I am no longer surprised.
Wind is a funny thing; you can’t see it, but you can feel it. It can be soft and inviting on warm summer days, or it can be bitterly cold and aggressive on a wintery day. It is kind of like our emotions. At times, we feel things that are warm and joyous, but other times hard memories arise and the pain or regret from those situations resurface causing all sorts of mixed emotions.
Emotions are hard. They often hit us without warning and stay longer than we would like. Occasionally, damage can be received through them, leaving scars or unimaginable change in a persons life. Wind-damaged trains can be fixed, but then they are no longer new. We, too, can be fixed, with time and refocusing on what is important, but like the train, we are no longer new.
Research shows that emotions are strongly tied to memory formation and retrieval, with emotionally charged experiences often leading to more vivid and lasting memories, particularly those linked to strong positive or negative emotions, due to the activation of the amygdala (where emotions influence memory in the brain).
No matter what winds of emotion you are going through right now, slow down like our engineer (Jesus Christ) would advise, and take precautions before you are derailed. Our emotions can often cause quite a bumpy ride if not checked. And if you don’t know what exactly God would want you to do with all the feelings going through your body, then pray and let him do a work in you, helping to to sort out all the thoughts and emotions in your mind. - When in the Valley
Being in the Valleys of life is often very different from the valleys when riding a train. When I visualize coming into an open area between the mountains, I see beautiful green forests surrounding a lake of pure blue waves. But when we come to a valley in our lives, oftentimes beauty is the last thing we see.
I have a friend who is currently in one of those hard valleys. He received news of his sister having stage 4 cancer. The doctors informed the whole family that she didn’t have much time left to live. Beauty is nowhere insight for my friend and his family.
They will experience the downward feeling of emotions as their family member begins to pass away. At the bottom, they will have an emptiness inside of them that will seem to never leave. But as time goes on, and God shows his amazing love, they will slowly make their way out of the valley and back into the mountain paths.
We as their friends can come alongside of them and show God’s love to them as they work through their pains. We can comfort them with words and actions until they can stand up on their own once again.
Do you have someone in your life who is currently going through a valley? Are you helping them? Encouraging them? If not start today, because the pain and sorrow of a valley in one’s life requires friendship and God’s love to get through it with as few scars as possible.
I’m afraid to say that coming across valleys is inevitable, for trains and in life. We need to work together to get through them. - Training
Let’s talk about training for a moment. When someone wants to work for a railroad, there is on average 14 weeks of classroom instruction, 12 months on-the-job training, hands-on application (which determining on job can take weeks or months) and exams to assess understanding. This is all before they are allowed to accept a job on their own in the railroad industry. With all the time it takes for someone to simply have the opportunity to work for a railroad, they really need to be dedicated to start this long process.
Training is also required in the Christian walk. When we accept Christ as our Saviour, that is simply the beginning of a new life of training and learning, but it is a fun process. Unlike the trainees of the railroad, we have someone who is there to help us 100% of the time. He even helps us with our tests. It is the Holy Spirit that we receive the moment of salvation. He is there to help us understand our textbook, the Bible, and guide us as we learn to follow it.
At the beginning of a Christian’s life, they really don’t know anything besides that God saved them from their sins on the cross. That is why they need training before they are thrown head first into a ministry they may not fully understand how to do. We all needed basic Bible knowledge and training before we were given responsibilities in the church. Those new believers are called baby Christians, because they need to be fed the basics of the Bible, like a baby needing simply milk. We can’t feed a baby meat when it is just born, and it is the same for a new believer. It takes training to grow to a point to where you are ready for the meat of the Christian life, but the growing process is wonderful. It is getting to know God on a personal level and having him be a part of your daily life. Like I said the Holy Spirit, a part of God, is with every believer once they are saved, but the training helps us to communicate through Him to God the Father in Heaven.
Honestly, it is the best training you could ever experience, and the reward is far beyond anything you can imagine. If you haven’t started your training, talk to a spiritual leader today at your local church. They can guide you to someone who can be your mentor and friend as you start this process. And make sure that you are reading your textbook, the Bible. That will be the biggest part of your training. Study it and then obey it.
I pray that your journey is full of wonderful opportunities to see God for who he really is and that you can experience the joy that only comes from this special training. - Human Error
A “human error train accident” refers to a train crash caused by a mistake made by a train operator, such as a conductor or engineer, which could include failing to follow safety protocols, distractions, fatigue, impaired judgment, inadequate training or misinterpreting signals, leading to a collision or derailment; essentially, human error is considered one of the most common causes of train accidents.
Making mistakes is inevitable. We are all imperfect humans who sometimes fumble around every day tasks. No matter how hard we try, we will never be able to prevent every accident that comes our way. (That is why it is called an accident.) But, when these “accidents” happen that is when we can learn how to prevent that from happening again in the future.
Now, when someone makes a mistake on a train, the consequences may be more than simply learning from their mistakes; lives could possibly be affected or changed forever. They would probably lose their job and even be held accountable by law enforcement for what happened if they survived the accident. That is why train workers are usually put through intense training before being allowed to work on or run a train.
For most of us when we make a mistake, we can simply analyze the situation and make simple adjustments to help prevent the accident from happening again.
In the Christian life, we will also have some human error. We will make choices that may have hard consequences that may affect us physically, mentally, or spiritually for a long time. They may even stick with us for the rest of our lives, creating a stumbling block that the devil will try to destroy you with when you least expect it.
The key is to learn from our mistakes and simply keep going. With every accident, we learn a little bit more and become wiser in our decision making. The more we grow in wisdom, the easier it will be to withstand against making foolish decisions that cause human error moments.
Let’s learn from our past human error moments, and become the wise Christians that can go through life with confidence, knowing that God is by our side ready to help us through the Holy Spirit to make good decisions.
Do you hear it?
The gentle rumble, the click-clack of the tracks, the metal gears grinding together, or the piercing whistle that clears the skies. As you watch from a platform full of people, you see it gradually getting closer, and your excitement flares for an unexpected adventure that is about to begin. You’re not thinking about anyone else who is standing near you, where they are going, how long they will be on the train, or even if this is their train. All you can think about is when you are leaving and what exciting things may happen along the way.
Traveling is always great fun, but I want to use this picture of a train and change it slightly.
What if you, or rather, your life was that train, and the rails that you will be running on are time? Makes it a little different right?
When you are born, your train leaves the rail yard. You just spent 9 months being put together and prepared for a lifelong journey. You only have your engine and the coal car as you pull out onto your very own track. It’s all shiny new, ready to be used and experienced. And it is those experiences that point you to your final destination.
Where are you going? What will you see? Will it be fun or dangerous? Who will you meet? When will the track end?
There are so many things that we don’t know when we start life, but as each year goes by and a new car is added to our train, we slowly learn and grow.
I want to take you on this great adventure with me. Each day, we will go through life experiences as we make our way down our track of time. Some will be hard, others will seem insignificant, but all are very important. It’s your choice. All I can say is…