Inside the elephant's mind...
Many organizations are like elephants. Although elephants are powerful and most people don't realize they are smarter than we think. However, sometimes they don't live up to their potentials due to their minds' conditioning.
You probably have seen elephants easily controlled by a trainer without any force. Why couldn't a massive-powerful elephant just go wherever he wants to?
The story was told that the elephant trainer usually gets the elephant when it's young. Then the trainer shackles young elephant with chain or a rope to deeply embedded stake or cement block. Young as he is, there's no way he can break the chain or move the block. At first he will try to break free, of course. But then he realizes he can't do it. Finally, when the memory takes place in his brain and he accepts the limit how far he will be able to go. When the elephant gets as big as full grown bull and has strength to pull the stake or block but he can't, even though he has only a small bracelet around his foot attaches to nothing.
PEOPLE ARE SOMETIMES LIKE ELEPHANTS:
We used to be told or conditioned not to go beyond our certain limitation when we were young. We have a mental stake or block into our minds. Although we become adults, we are still conditioned to hold back our potentials in making a difference for ourselves and others due to our bad memories.
The good news is that whatever holding us back from God's purposes, Christ came to the world to set us free from sins and bad experiences in the past. In Jesus, we are set free at last and have the full potentials to become persons that God intends us to be.
This story of elephants also reminds us that once Laos used to be called "The Land of a million elephants." Our nation used to be one of the great countries in South East Asia hundreds years ago. Due to some bad experiences from being colonized by some aggressive foreign countries, we had been conditioned into limitations.
Although, Laos today is still one of the poorest countries in the world by certain standards, but we still have our great potentials to become a great people. We are smart as other nations in the world. The fact that we still exist as a nation today proves that we have survived beyond any limitations. It's time that we pull our mental stakes and thrive to become what we can be.
OUR CHRISTIAN MINISTRIES:
It's time for us to move beyond our dependency from foreign assistance. It's time for every Laotian Church to live up to our God-given potentials in serving Him and the world. It's time that we get together to share visions and dreams and resources in making our world for a better place.
OUR PRAYER:
This is the time we lay aside all differences and unite together in love to carry out the Great Commission of our Lord that all the peoples on earth may know the love of God through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for our sins, so that we may have an abundant life in Him.
JSR Luke-Savanh