Have you ever noticed that there is a small minority of people who you can never please and the only time they seem happy is when they are having a really good old moan and making the people around them feel depressed with their continual negativity. There was a well-known atheist in the last century who once reproached a group of moaning Christians, saying to them, “You all claim that you have been redeemed by your faith, well, you don’t look much redeemed to me.”

Margaret was married to a man whom she could never please, no matter how hard she tried to look after him. If she gave him orange juice for breakfast, he wanted apple juice. If she gave him his usual cup of tea, he asked for coffee, if she gave him scrambled eggs, he wanted fried ones, if she gave him bacon, then he wanted sausages. Then one day she reached breaking point and decided she would fix him for good. Preparing his breakfast, she made tea and coffee, apple juice and orange juice, scrambled eggs, fried eggs and boiled eggs, and then she added bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread and toast. She called upstairs that his breakfast was ready and when he arrived she placed his plate in front of him and waited for some comment. Looking down at his plate her surly husband said, “Nice try, but you’ve fried the wrong egg.”

Yes, it’s perfectly true that with some people, you just can’t win... We are all called to be life givers, not life drainers. Life is a gift to be enjoyed, cherished and celebrated by us all, it is like a mirror and we get the best results when we smile into it.

“When you were born you cried and the world rejoiced.
Live in such a way, that when you die, the world
will cry and you will rejoice.”