When you find your deepest aspirations are frozen from the blight of life’s challenges, and when its trials leave you looking uninviting to others, be of good courage.

Have you noticed how many articles currently appear in the popular press and in professional health journals concerning the close link between religion and health? Here are some interesting excerpts.

Perhaps you have recently heard the story reported by ABC news of a novice skydiver. In her first sky dive, her primary parachute didn’t work.

This true story can give us some important lessons to think about. Sometimes boys and girls, and even mothers and fathers, act like the cruel travelers who insisted on having the elephant carry them, even though he had a sore back.

A Dutch study consisting of 900 individuals, ages 65-85, showed that those who reported high levels of optimism had 55% less risk of dying from all causes and 23% less risk of cardiovascular death than those who reported high levels of pessimism after adjusting for age, sex, chronic disease, education, smoking, alcohol consumption, history of cardiovascular disease or hypertension, body mass index, and total cholesterol level.²