My Inbox of Daily Inspirations: Daily Heartlight -- February 12, 2008

-/\/\-----------------------------------------------------------------
\ / HEARTLIGHT(R) Magazine --

http://www.heartlight.org/
--\/------------------------------------------------------------------
February 12, 2008

|-- Follow Phil as He Visits Uganda for Compassion --------|

Phil Ware is traveling with 15 other bloggers to Uganda
in an effort to increase the sponsorship of children
through Compassion International.

You can read about the trip and follow along on his blog:

|--

http://blogs.heartlight.org/phil/

---------------------|

=========================== TODAY'S ARTICLE ==========================

The Britney Spears in Your Life, by Rubel Shelly

This isn't a piling-on piece about Britney Spears out-of-control life.
She has enough people alternately diagnosing and dismissing her. Even
as the TV newscasters tell about the latest bout in court, the most
recent episode of partying, or introduce the latest censored photo,
they tend to roll their eyes. She generates a lot of tongue-clucking
these days. She just seems hopeless.

Ah, but that's the point. Or, at any rate, it is the beginning of a
point somebody needs to make about the latest young celebrity on a path
to self-destruction. Is there nobody who cares about her? Will nobody
risk telling her the truth? Doesn't anybody love her enough to throw
her a lifeline?

Practically everybody has a Britney Spears in her life. There is a
friend or family member, a colleague at work or member of her church
whose life is clearly spinning sideways on a sheet of ice and about to
crash.

It's a younger brother who has been experimenting with drugs -- while
racking up a couple of DUI's along the way.

It's a brother-in-law who has left his wife and their two children to
live with someone half his age.

It's a friend who has four or five credit cards maxed out from shopping
binges and whose idea of solving the problem is to get another card.

It's the deacon who was arrested a few weeks ago for stealing a
computer from his company -- and whose absence from church has not been
mentioned.

Wouldn't you want someone to reach a hand to you?

It's the person in your office who used to be cheerful and dependable
but who has missed a lot of work lately -- and whose presence
complicates life for everyone.

See what I mean now? My point is not to moralize about or to pass
another sanctimonious judgment on Ms. Spears. It is to look in from the
perspective you and I share to wish somebody would reach out to her.
Maybe there are people who really care about her. Maybe they have
tried. And maybe she has rebuffed them all. That happens sometimes!
More often than not, though, people crash and burn because the people
around them look away.

Alcoholics, philanderers, religious bigots, incorrigible gamblers,
clinically depressed people, tax cheats -- the list just goes on and
on. People have life issues that have them by the throats. It will
likely take a professional to help them dig out. But somebody who is
close to and credible with them has to take the first step to
intervene. Get in his face. Let her know how serious things are.

You don't know Britney Spears? Don't think you can help her? Okay. But
what about the person you do know who is on a similar path? You may be
that soul's best hope of recovery from a nose-dive into oblivion.

Even if you make the effort, there are no guarantees -- except that
major problems don't solve themselves. If the shoe were on the other
foot, wouldn't you want someone to reach a hand to you?

---------
(c) 2008 Used by permission. From Rubel Shelly's "FAX of Life"
printed each Tuesday. See Faith Matters for previous issues of
the "FAX of Life."

My Inbox of Daily Inspirations

Blog Archive

Blog Top Sites

Sponsors Link

Daily Heartlight -- February 12, 2008