Thoughts For The Day~*~Commitment ^*^*^*^*^ November 19, 2009
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~*~A.A. Thoughts For The Day~*~
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Commitment
"No matter how much one wishes to try,
how can he turn his own will and his own life
over to the care of whatever God he thinks there is?
A beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed.
Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock,
and have the door ever so slightly open,
we find that we can always open it some more."
c. 1967AAWS, As Bill Sees It, p. 122
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Thought to Consider . . .
If you always do what you've always done,
you will always be where you've always been.
*~*~*AACRONYMS*~*~*
H O W = Honest, Open, Willing
Here I found an ingredient that had been lacking in any other effort I had made to save myself. Here was - power! Here was power to live to the end of any given day, power to have the courage to face the next day, power to have friends, power to help people, power to be sane, power to stay sober. That was seven years ago - and many AA meetings ago - and I haven't had a drink during those seven years. Moreover, I am deeply convinced that so long as I continue to strive, in my bumbling way, toward the principles I first encountered in the earlier chapters of this book, this remarkable power will continue to flow through me. What is this power? With my AA friends, all I can say is that it's a Power greater than myself. If pressed, all I can do is follow the psalmist who said it long before me: "Be still, and know that I am God."
2001, AAWS, Inc., Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 386-387
"I WAS SLIPPING FAST"
We A.A.'s are active folk enjoying the satisfactions of dealing with the realities of life, . . . So it isn't surprising that we often tend to slight serious meditation and prayer as something not really necessary.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 96
I had been slipping away from the program for some time, but it took a death threat from a terminal disease to bring me back, and particularly to the practice of the Eleventh Step of our blessed Fellowship. Although I had fifteen years of sobriety and was still very active in the program, I knew that the quality of my sobriety had slipped badly. Eighteen months later, a checkup revealed a malignant tumor and a prognosis of certain death within six months. Despair settled in when I enrolled in a rehab program, after which I suffered two small strokes which revealed two large brain tumors. As I kept hitting new bottoms I had to ask myself why this was happening to me. God allowed me to recognize my dishonesty and to become teachable again. Miracles began to happen. But primarily I relearned the whole meaning of the Eleventh Step. My physical condition has improved dramatically, but my illness is minor compared to what I almost lost completely.
Copyright 1990 ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS WORLD SERVICES, INC.
*~*~*~*~*^As Bill Sees It^*~*~*~*~*
Groping toward God
"More than most people, I think, alcoholics want to know who they are, what this life is about,, whether they have a divine origin and an appointed destiny, and whether there is a system of cosmic justice and love.
"It is the experience of many of us in the early stages of drinking to feel that we have had glimpses of the Absolute and a heightened feeling of identification with the cosmos. While these glimpses and feelings doubtless have a validity, they are deformed and finally swept away in the chemical, spiritual, and emotional damage wrought by the alcohol itself.
"In A.A., and in many religious approaches, alcoholics find a great deal more of what they merely glimpsed and felt while trying to grope their way toward God in alcohol."
LETTER, 1960
*~*~*~*~*^ Big Book Quote ^*~*~*~*~*
"God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask Him in your
morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still
sick. The answers will come, if your own house is in order. But
obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got. See to it
that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come
to pass for you and countless others. This is the Great Fact for us."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, A Vision For You, pg. 164~
*~*~*~*^Twenty Four Hours A Day^*~*~*~*
A.A. Thought for the Day
In A.A. we do not speak much of sex. And yet putting sex in its proper place in our lives is one of the rewards that has come to us as a result of our new way of living. The Big Book says that many of us needed an overhauling there. It also says that we subjected each sex relation to this test-was it selfish or not? "We remembered always that our sex powers were God given and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly, nor to be despised or loathed." We can ask God to mold our ideals and to help us to live up to them. We can act accordingly. Have I got my sex life under proper control?
Meditation for the Day
"I will lift up my eyes unto the heights whence cometh my help." Try to raise your thoughts from the depths of the sordid and mean and impure things of the earth to the heights of goodness and decency and beauty. Train your insight by trying to take the higher view. Train it more and more until distant heights become more familiar. The heights of the Lord, whence cometh your help, will become nearer and dearer and the false values of the earth will seem farther away.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may not keep my eyes forever downcast. I pray that I may set my sights on higher things.
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