{"id":7344,"date":"2021-07-18T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/?p=7344"},"modified":"2021-07-14T13:51:38","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T17:51:38","slug":"sharpening-your-ax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/sharpening-your-ax\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharpening Your Ax!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<iframe title=\"Sharpening Your Ax! 7\/18\/21\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=kuztq-108bff1-pb&#038;from=pb6admin&#038;share=1&#038;download=1&#038;rtl=0&#038;fonts=Arial&#038;skin=1&#038;font-color=&#038;btn-skin=7\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>One man challenged another man to an all-day wood chopping contest. The challenger worked very hard, stopping only for a brief lunch break. The other man had a leisurely lunch and took several breaks during the day.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>At the end of the day, the challenger was surprised and annoyed to find that the other fellow had chopped substantially more wood than he had. &#8220;I don&#8217;t get it,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Every time I checked, you were taking a rest, yet you chopped more wood than I did.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<strong><em>&#8220;But you didn&#8217;t notice,&#8221;<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>said the winning woodsman,<strong>\u00a0<em>&#8220;that I was sharpening my ax when I sat down to rest.&#8221;<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0That is what Jesus does with his apostles in today\u2019s Gospel (Mark 6:30-34). Jesus says to them,\u00a0\u00a0<strong><em>\u201cCome apart into a desert place, and rest a little. For there were many coming and going and they had not so much as time to eat. And going up into a ship, they went into a desert place apart.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<em>We live in a world that equates busyness with success and constant activity with virtue. We bring our laptops and our smart phones on vacation. And we put in more hours at work today than we did ten or twenty years ago. Our national motto seems to be,\u00a0\u00a0<strong>\u201cThere is never enough time.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0We need to listen to the words of Jesus and make time to sharpen our ax.<\/em><br><br><strong>Carefully consider how YOU would like to be remembered at YOUR funeral eulogy. In so doing YOU will discover YOUR definition of success.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>DEAR GOD, IF TODAY I LOSE HOPE, PLEASE REMIND ME THAT YOUR PLANS ARE BETTER THAN MY DREAMS!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One man challenged another man to an all-day wood chopping contest. The challenger worked very hard, stopping only for a brief lunch break. The other man had a leisurely lunch and took several breaks during the day.&nbsp; At the end of the day, the challenger was surprised and annoyed to find that the other fellow [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"qubely_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"ocean-thumb-m":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"ocean-thumb-ml":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"ocean-thumb-l":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"qubely_landscape":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"qubely_portrait":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree.png",249,166,false],"qubely_thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree-140x100.png",140,100,true],"rpwe-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ax-on-Tree-45x45.png",45,45,true]},"qubely_author":{"display_name":"Medard Laz","author_link":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/author\/medlaz\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/category\/weekly-messages\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Weekly Messages<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"One man challenged another man to an all-day wood chopping contest. The challenger worked very hard, stopping only for a brief lunch break. The other man had a leisurely lunch and took several breaks during the day.&nbsp; At the end of the day, the challenger was surprised and annoyed to find that the other fellow&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}