PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Practice makes perfect. Practice having a merry and thankful heart. I have known people who, though they did not have a natural knack for music, started piano lessons and practiced every day. After two or three years, their fingers moved across the keys easily and their music sounded sweeter and more fluid every time I heard them. If you ask them, "How do you know to hit all those notes?" They answer, "Practice, I've practiced so much, I don't think about it. It just happens". Life is like that. Most people have practiced hitting the notes of bitterness, sourness, hurt feelings, and frustration so long that their soul finds the discordant notes easily, almost without thought. But, you don't have to keep on practicing discord: you can practice joy and thanksgiving just as easily, and certainly with more pleasure. Every day, every right response makes the fingers of your soul the notes of joy and thanksgiving easier and easier, until it is so natural that people will say to you, " I am not like you,: I just don't have a bubbly personality. I'm not a happy person. How can I have joy?" And you will be able to tell them, "Practice makes perfect." Learn to enjoy life. BE THANKFUL. SMILE. When you catch yourself becoming irritated or disturbed at circumstances, stop and laugh at the little things the steal your peace. COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS and learn to be appreciative. My daughter once wrote a song around the words, "Thanksgiving is good; thanks-living is better." Colossians 3:15 advises, 'AND LET THE PEACE OF GOD RULE IN YOUR HEARTS,TO THE WHICH ALSO YE ARE CALLED IN ONE BODY;AND BE YE THANKFUL."

PRACTICE MAKES 'AWFUL' PERFECTLY AWFUL By the time many women are in their fortieth year, they are teetering on the edge of mental instability. They have spent several years of their life irritated at their husbands, daily feeling hurt and responding with coldness and bitterness. Instead of practicing being thankful and merry, they are practicing bitterness. As practice enables the pianist to find the right keys without effort or thought, so a woman who practices discontentment will, without thought, hit the notes of bitterness when her chain is pulled. Practicing, always practicing, perfecting her bitterness and discontentment.
She has practiced her bitterness until it comes naturally, and she does not even recognize it. She will usually define herself as one who stands against pride and evil. She will "do what is right, even if no one else will."
In the course of time, as her edginess and moodiness grow, she realizes that she can no longer control her nervousness. One day her "nerves" snap and she loses control, screaming like a crazy woman and calling loved ones terrible names. She will say it was "just a bad hormone day," but the family will wonder. The family learns to tolerate her occasional blow-ups, and she keeps practicing. After a trip to the doctor, she is calmer..."more her old self." The doctor changed the medication.
"Mom sleeps more now."
"Shh! Don't wake Mother; she is having a bad day."
The disturbed woman expects her family to appease her and is offended when they act like life is just fine. God is visiting her soul with a terrible rot called madness. First, she is only mad at her husband. Years pass and she is mad at her family. As time goes on she is mad at the church. Then she is mad at the mailman and mad at the waitress. PRACTICING, ALWAYS PRACTICING, PRACTICING HER MADNESS. MAD, ALL THE TIME MAD. MADNESS.
"THE LORD SHALL SMITE THEE WITH MADNESS,AND BLINDNESS AND ASTONISHMENT OF HEART" (DEUTERONOMY 28:28)
'THE BEGINNING OF THE WORDS OF HIS MOUTH IS FOOLISHNESS; AND THE END OF HIS TALK IS MISCHIEVOUS MADNESS" (ECCLESIASTES 10:13)