Church, Ramblings, Theology

Facebook as a creator of sickness

I sit here in my little place of authorship.  I have a TV on my right giving me the news of the day.  I have three computer screens in front of me.  One has my home security cameras going to make sure I know what the weather is like just outside of my walls.  The main monitor is 34 inches and is high definition; I justify it because my eyes are not as good as they used to be.  My third monitor has my email split with my instant messenger.  I guess someone looking in would think I was pretty well saturated with technology. I am often distracted by another app running behind the current task of writing by a new post on Facebook.

I have to ask the question:  What does all this technology and social media affect my life?  Further, what affect does this plethora of technology have upon the way that you and I have of the church?

Facebook is mostly positive.  Lots of pictures of dogs and food.  Once and a while there is a reaction to news or something really affecting one of my Facebook “Friends”.  I have a link on my main screen that takes me to the church I attend. The church has certainly leveraged this technology to advance the cause of Christ.  This blog is my way of making my voice heard in the din of voices in the internet.  I don’t know if anyone is reading this stuff, but it is enough to know I am out there.  The technology is not the illness.

The issue is the direct affect this glut of information upon the church.  I have concerns and so should you.

I just reviewed a book on the social media and how it is affecting the morals and behaviors of its adherents. MIT professor Sherry Trukle wrote to point to the dangers and advantages of social media. Here are a few thoughts I have to agree with professor Trukle as I look at today’s “Facebook culture.”  The sickness names are just a simple way to characterize the issues and are not from Trukle’s work.

  1. Facebook Attention Deficit Disorder (FADD)

I read a great deal.  Real books on real paper is my medium.  Sure I use the internet to get a different opinion on a subject, but for the most part, the books I have in my small library are the prime sources for both inspiration and new thoughts.  But the pervasive invasion of Facebook and like sources has become the only place where some find information.  Short texts, tweets, likes, and smiley faces have become the medium of today.  How do we expect a person from the FADD (Facebook Attention Deficit Disorder) to come to church and listen to a preacher for forty minutes?  Do we insist each part of the service to be accentuated by a slick video presentation.  Do we expect the message to be broken up by a joke or a funny antidote? I believe the only medicine for the church member suffering from FADD is to teach them on how important big thoughts can be.  To teach them that the message is more than a bunch of tweets and thumbs up, but the very prophecy of God.

  1. Facebook Authority Syndrome (FAS)

Our church small groups have changed by the mindset that everyone’s opinion is as worthy as everyone else’s.  There is no hierarchy of authority.  Social media has broken down the barriers of the authority of source.  If I say on my Facebook page that my opinion is just as good as the local minister, there are few that would contradict me.  Not because it is true but because I have freedom of speech and in the egalitarian world of social media there is no consequences to being wrong.  Everyone has a voice.  We all have a platform to speak our mind, to say our piece. After any article or news story, anyone can offer an opinion. And certainly much of this is good.  But it leads to the view that if all have an authority to speak, then no one can be an authority.  We have come to a place where no one person’s opinion should be valued or weighted more than any other’s. Needless to say, this presents problems for the church and pastors to have real God-given authority in the lives of its people.

  1. Facebook Artificiality Ailment (FAA)

In a book by a MIT professor Sherry Trukle, she states “On social-networking sites such as Facebook, we think we will be presenting ourselves, but our profile ends up as somebody else—often the fantasy of who we want to be.”  What she was saying was even though social media users may feel more connected, they become even more artificial. We post only what you want others to know about you.  The good stuff. Sometimes this good stuff is not entirely true but slanted to make the poster feel better. Consequently, those with FAD (Facebook Artificiality Disease) become more and more distant.  “I posted, therefore I am social.”

The church was founded upon and demands that we engage with each other.  And this engagement has to be truthful, loving and forgiving.  We have to engage with people as they really are.  It is only in honesty that we can face our sin and grow together with Jesus.

  1. Social Media Phantom Malady (SMPM)

I remember when the nickle postcard went up to ten cents.  It was a method of communication that was limited to just a few lines of script.  It was open for all to see. Sure this medium lasted quite a while but has morphed into a marketing tool and little else. Today, I find people readily admitting they would rather leave a voicemail or send an e-mail than talk face-to-face.  Social media has reduced human contact to a point which is limited to a couple of lines in a tweet.  Modern technology, can create an almost non-physical, quasi-phantom existence SMPM.

If I read the church web page and watch my favorite preacher on YouTube it is enough. But the church was born in a face to face encounter.  A hand shake or a polite hug is more gratifying that a million lines of tweets.

  1. Negative Accountability and Commitment Condition. (NACC)

Probably the most attractive features of the use of social media communications is that it does not require much of a commitment and little or no accountability.  We control to the last letter of our posts, the duration, degree of the radical, and level of our contact.  There is little commitment to the those we are spewing to.  There is a mindset that “everybody” wants to know my meal plan.  It is a low-commitment and low-accountability form of interaction.

But the Christian life and real Christian relationships don’t work this way. We do have obligations to one another to be real.  Oh there are times we would rather not have those obligations. There are times we would rather not have accountability.  But the Christian Church is one of commitments and obligations.  In the church there is something called a covenant. The Christian church has a corporate aspect that stands directly against the individualistic and self-determined relational patterns of our modern technological age.

The Bitter Pill

So is the answer is to unplug and shut it all down?  Should we all move away from it all and get back to our old time religion roots? Not at all.  Do we abandon technology, move to the countryside, and adopt an Amish-like existence? I am not here to condemn methodologies but to point out the symptoms. Symptoms of a sickness that could well be infecting your life.

Yes, we may well need a sabbatical from this all purveying contagion of illness.  But in reality we can’t get away from it all.  My bitter pill is to be honest with your posts.  Have accountability.  Don’t let the ease of communication become the only communication.  Realize there are authorities in life.  People are not all the same: love them, keep them in your prayers and go to church and shake a hand.

Tell me what you think.

Bible, Bible Study, Church History

Bible by Chapter and Verse

There are literally thousands of Bible study helps available.  There are commentaries written as academia and some for simple understandings.  There are handbooks, dictionaries, synoptic comparisons, expositions, translations, word studies in both Greek and Hebrew, parallel companions, daily Bible readings, prayer guides and on and on. I have to confess I have quite of few of these helps.  But every one of them depend on the work of another.  Never-the-less, without the work of a Bible scholar in England in the 13th century, it would have been much harder to study the Bible.

Stephen Langton was the medieval Archbishop of Canterbury.  He was the most prominent churchman in England. He was the one working with the Barons of England to force a faithless King John into signing the Magna Charta.  Quite a revolutionary for his time.  What this churchman is not well known for and the subject of this blog is something he added to the Bible that all the others that followed including me and you as we look through the Bible.  The next time someone asks you to lookup a verse in Isaiah they will give you a chapter and a verse number.  That convention was created by Stephane Langton.  He went through the entire Bible dividing it up in what, was to him, the most logical places to put chapters and delineate the verses.

Imagine how hard it would be to lookup John 3:16 if all you had was the text without any numbers to guide you along the way?  Each time the preacher says, “my text will be found in the fourteenth chapter and the third verse, you are depending upon the work of Stephen Langton.  Know full well his divisions were to the Latin Vulgate for the Holy Roman Church. But even after translation of scripture into all the languages of the world, Steven Langton stands in the background helping you find your favorite scripture.

Since the 13th century each expositor, scholar, printer, publisher, copier used this method.  Thank you Rev. Stephen Langton.

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Requirements for Heaven

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A teacher was testing the children in her Sunday school class to see if they understood the concept of getting to heaven.
She asked them, “If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?”
“NO!” the children answered.
“If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would that get me into Heaven?”
Again, the answer was, “NO!”
Now she was smiling. Hey, they’re getting it, she thought! “Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave candy to all the children, and loved my husband, would that get me into Heaven?” she asked.
Again, they all answered, “NO!”
She was just bursting with pride for them. “Well,” she continued, “then how can I get into Heaven?”
A five-year-old boy shouted out, “YOU GOTTA BE DEAD.”

Church, Preaching, Theology, Worship

An echo and an AMEN to A.W. Tozer

The more I read of A.W Tozer, a mid-western born preacher, pastor, author, magazine editor and spiritual mentor to hundreds, the more he both puzzles and astounds me.  In very simple terms he internalizes the words of Jesus and through his writing Christianity is furthered.  He wrote, and preached thousands of words on a myriad of subjects.  He seemed to come back again and again to three themes.  What they are is a genuine heartache for the state of the church.

You could l characterize the first of these concerns as seeing the Bible as an end to itself.  It is seen as a recipe.  Take a verse here and another one from over there and use them to prove your point.  The Bible becomes nothing more than a collection of facts that can be dissected, positioned, extrapolated and preached.  Preachers today seem to have all the right illustrations and answers to any given problem.  They pour two parts from one test tube in the beaker and a couple of drops from another and the expected chemical reaction is the result.  There is little room for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Tozer saw this as the shortest path to dead pulpits and dead churches.  You can be,” Tozer delighted in saying, “straight as a gun barrel theologically and as empty as one spiritually.”  The goal of reading the Bible is not to know more about the Bible, or to be able to quote the correct scripture at the correct time, but to be a pointer.  A pointer to God Himself.  The Word of God, while extremely important, can become more than the source of those words.

Tozer’s second concern was a growing practicality of  programs in the church; to insert methods and techniques to make the Church more palatable with the world.  He called it pragmatism.  It was an attempt to make the church more popular.  It was to add things that were more fun, more exciting, more attractive to the world.   He wrote,The temptation to introduce “new” things into the work of God has always been too strong for some people to resist. The Church has suffered untold injury at the hands of well-intentioned but misguided persons who have felt that they know more about running God’s work than Christ and His apostles did. Let me interject here.  There is nothing inherently wrong with any method unless it dilutes the message or pushes out God. Methodology has become rampant in the church today.  No longer do we sing hymns about the blood of Jesus.  No longer is the bread and cup venerated as a means of grace; instead we have prepackaged cups with bread in the tear off.  It is neater but is it better?  Is convention better than the graceful God.  I wonder what Peter would think of our church service if he silently crept in the back of these new relevant churches.

Third in his triad of concerns for the church was the lack of true worship.  He remarked over and over again about the loss of the sense of majesty, reverence and awe.  The Church as he saw it, was trivializing the very thing it was trying to accomplish. He saw it becoming a form of entertainment.  Hymns were being replaced by gospel songs, (and now by choruses sung over and over again).  The pulpit was becoming a place of humor and endless illustrations. He heard too many laughs and not enough sobs.  According to Tozer, “Worship is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence Our Father Which Art in Heaven.”

AMEN and AMEN

Your comments are appreciated.

Ramblings, Sermon Illustration

Scooby-Doo

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My children were raised with liberal doses of television.  I will admit sometimes I too was caught up in the cartoons of the day.  Now I am not to the level of a devote or a critic, but I do remember one series that sticks in my mind.  Scooby-Doo.  If you don’t remember this bit of comedic drama, here is the description from Wikipedia:

Each episode featured Scooby and the four teenaged members of the Mystery, Inc. gang: Fred, Shaggy, Daphne, and Velma, arriving to a location in the “Mystery Machine” and encountering a ghost, monster, or other supernatural creature, whom they learned was terrorizing the local populace. After looking for clues and suspects and being chased by the monster, the kids come to realize the ghost is anything but, and – often with the help of a Rube Goldberg-like trap designed by Fred – they capture the villain and unmask him. Revealed as a flesh and blood crook trying to cover up crimes by using the ghost story and costume, the criminal is arrested and taken to jail, often saying something to the effect of “…and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!”

What brings this to mind today is that in reality it a picture of the change of the world has morphed through in the last couple of hundred years or so.  It is the transition from the perception of life full of monsters and witches to a world of science.  Scooby is always afraid of the monster and ultimately that monster is revealed as something considerably less frightening.  Previously our world was filled with ghosts, demon possessions, witches and things that go bump in the night. In that day there two worlds of the spiritual and the natural.   These two worlds were held apart only by a very thin veil.  One world was always invading the other. Now it is called superstition.  Black cats and walking under ladders was bad luck.

Scooby was always the first to acknowledge this invasion of the dark world into his by running away and grabbing Shaggy and crying in fear.  But once the mask was removed even Scooby had to acknowledge the impossibility of the monster.  But next week he fell for the same ruse.

Today there is little use for monsters outside of the movies.  We have become more modern.  We have put away childish things.  Science, technology and skepticism now rule. We have become so modern we have to purposely go to the movies to be scared.  An entire entertainment genera exists just to scare us. We have become so hardened to the spiritual we have to artificially experience something just to feel.

Thinking again about Scooby-Doo I realized how closely the show traces, in a single episode, this movement from enchantment to disenchantment. The episodes begin with enchantment, with a supernatural monster, specter, ghoul or ghost. But as the kids investigate they get suspicious, reason asserts itself and the monster–the agent of the occult–is eventually revealed to be Mr. Jenkins the greedy banker. The story ends with disenchantment. The supernatural was simply a “cover” for workaday greed, theft and corruption.

We moderns think the world has been rid of the dark forces–the ghouls, ghosts, demons and monsters. But these occult forces of evil haven’t been expelled, expunged or exorcised. They still haunt and torment.  We may well call them other things, but in reality the spiritual world exists.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12

Contemplating Scooby-Doo I began to wonder. Perhaps this isn’t a tale of disenchantment after all. Perhaps Scooby-Doo really is a story about the occult and the demonic. We’ve just lost the ability to see it.

What do you think.  Leave a comment.

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Hate the sin, love the sinner, NOT.

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I was having a lengthy conversation with a volunteer at a local food pantry.  We talked about process and procedures; you know the how  of administration of the way they provided the services.  The discussion rambled here and there until I made the remark, “Our greatest ministry in the food pantry is not the food, it is the provision of that food without destroying dignity.”  But how about those who are gaming the system?  Those who use our Christian charity without real need?  How about those who drive new luxury cars to pick up food only because it costs them nothing? It is hard to be a part of a ministry to people that really don’t deserve it.  What is my attitude to those who do not deserve?

Some would say, “Hate the sin but love the sinner.”  But hold on there.  That is not from the Bible.  It is a quote for Gandhi.  Is there a place for hate?  Is there a place for intolerance to imperfection?

Proverbs stats quite emphatically:

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies and one who sows discord among brothers.

The real issue is the more I study, the more I understand what God expects of me, the more I grow, the more I hate sin.  Not anyone else’s sin but only mine.  God hates the failure.  God’s wrath, righteous judgement and hate is reserved NOT for the action but for my inner failure.  It is not what we do, it is what we are.  If I think I am better that someone else, it is pride.  It may well never be exhibited outwardly in the form of words or actions but it is still a sin.  When I am hard-headed, God breaks through with his disfavor (wrath).  But it is not because He hates me, but  because He loves me.

God hates sin because He loves us and wants to be absolutely intimate with us, which is impossible as long as we “love darkness instead of light because [our] deeds are evil” (John 3:19). I have grown out of a black and white view of God.  Previously I saw God’s hate or wrath and God’s love as polar opposites. Years of experience and beating my head against the wall I have learned that God’s hate and God’s love are independent qualities that work together to achieve the same purpose, like a hard-nosed football coach who reams out his quarterback ruthlessly in practice to make him tough, but holds him for five minutes without a word while he sobs after losing a close game.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.

Life, Ramblings, Theology

Liar, Liar, pants on fire.

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There is a divide in our country.  It is not about morals.  It is not about religion.  It is about our President of the United States.  President Trump, because of his method of communication has caused much discussion and even hot tempers.  I read this morning a writer’s characterization of this split. The “division between pro-Trump voters and anti-Trump voters could be described as follows: his opponents took Trump literally, but not seriously; whereas his supporters took him seriously, but not literally.”

What we say is important.  I believe the way we say things are also important.  The Pro-Trumper,s find his style of communications refreshing and appreciate is “speak your mind” way of addressing issues. The “Never Trump group calls our President a liar. They want to judge President Trump on his words based upon a concept of what truth is.  They seem to want to take every word, every phrase and dissect them to a point to where these snippets become giant inferences of the total character of the man speaking them.  Sure, we all live in a community, we all speak with a perceived audience and with every word we expect them to hear the words as we speak from our ears.  It just doesn’t work that way. So should I, or even the President be responsible for everyone to instantly understand the framework of the speaker and not from the hearer?

So what am I trying to say?  What is a lie?  Are the words spoken to be judged by the hearer or the speaker?  I am well aware the answer to this last question expects to be a yes or no.  But it is not that easy.  First and probably most important is the words must be understood from the person saying them.  A lie is a mismatch between what’s in your heart, that is what you take to be true and what’s on your tongue or what we say is true.  We lie when we speak words that are not what our lives and hearts believe. We lie when we speak words that contradict our thoughts.

OK, how about someone who speaks words that are part of his life and fully believes in what he is saying?  Is this inwardly truthful person a liar?  If I truly believe the world is flat and say so, am I a liar?  Don’t think so.  I am just speaking my heart, my belief, my understanding of the truth.  Am a liar?  No I am not.  I am just deceived or haven’t placed truth deep in my heart.  Liar, no, deceived, yes.

If you call someone a liar you are simply saying to the one speaking the words that your concept of the truth is different than what someone else is saying.  But the problem saying they are a liar is a judgement based upon your truth.  Your understanding of the truth is not the same as the speaker’s understanding of the truth.  And if speaker is not violating the internal understanding of the speaker’s truth, it is not a lie.

Maybe those who are so critical of our President are on to something. God does care what we think. And he knows that what we really think will always, in the end, come out of our mouth. The issue is a judgement based on our own personal views of truth. And your truth is not always my truth.  Your truth may not be anyone else’s truth.   We as Christians are people who are on a journey to the place where we believe that truth brings more hope than lies. That journey makes us more and more honest — more and more like God our Father who never speaks what he knows to be untrue, and whose heart is disclosed to us perfectly in the words of Scripture, and, above all, in the Word of God, Jesus his only-begotten Son.  I cannot call anyone a liar.  And I truly believe neither should any other Christian.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.

 

Life, Ramblings, Worship

Dry Worship, now what?

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I arrived early for my small group lesson last Sunday.  We had a substitute leader and the portion of scripture is well known and everything that can be said had been said a thousand times before.  I read the scripture when asked, bring in historical references when appropriate.  But something seems to be missing.  10:30 and we pray move to the sanctuary for worship.

It is well done: the song service is meant to set an environment of worship. But I am not feeling it.  Where is the awe of God? Where is the beauty of worship?  I am just not getting it today.  I look around and there are some that are raising their hands and praising God.  But for me, nothing.

So what should I do from here? Should you go through the motions anyway?  Do I just bear the lack of personal oneness with God and wait for next week?

What is true worship? Jesus said true worship must involve both spirit and truth (John 4:24).  OK, let’s look at truth.  The Bible is truth.  The lesson was truthful, the Pastors message was truthful, the songs were truthful. Worship in truth is a revelation of Jesus.  I have the truth part covered, it must be the other requirement.  Worship in Spirit.

What’s worship in spirit?  What does that mean?  Back to study.  I have to find the truth about the spirit.  What does the Bible say about spirit?  Normally when book refers to the Holy Spirit, it is predicated by the word “THE”.  Digging a little deeper, John was using the word spirit to refer to feelings and emotions.  So worship in spirit is to do so with feelings and emotions.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not proposing rolling in the isles and handling snakes, but it is more than a stoic resignation to boredom.

So how to get to the feeling part.  Especially for a person not known for his outgoing enthusiasm.  I would think that worship in spirit includes joyful praise, awestruck wonder, sorrow for sin, longing for God, and maybe a chill or two.  But what if I am just not feeling it.  What can I do? Is there a pious position which I can put my head?  Where are the holy feelings? I guess I could just go through the motions.  Stand when everyone else stands.  Sit when I am asked.  Try and sing songs that I really don’t think have much good theology.  But that just sets me up for what Jesus calls hypocrisy in Matthew 15:7-8

You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me…”

So what can I do?

In my studies today I found an interesting passage in Psalms 40 and was the theme of a great old hymn He Brought Me Out

My heart was distressed ’neath Jehovah’s dread frown,
And low in the pit where my sins dragged me down;
I cried to the Lord from the deep miry clay,
Who tenderly brought me out to golden day.

He brought me out of the miry clay,
He set my feet on the Rock to stay;
He puts a song in my soul today,
A song of praise, hallelujah!

At the beginning of Psalm 40 David was not feeling the worship. He felt as I did, in a pit of destruction and stuck in miry clay.  But it changed, God put a song of praise in his mouth. What is the difference?  What is the change that brought the song of praise?

David states plainly. “I waited patiently for the Lord.”  He did not go through the motions.  He did not stand when everyone else were standing.  He did not mouth the words.  He did not hold his head at a pious angle.  He simply waited for the Lord. He did not give up on worship; it was still the goal, but he simply waited for God to help him worship.  And here is how to do it.  I borrowed this quite a few years ago and I don’t know where but here it is:

  1. With expectation point yourself to the divine.  No use looking inwardly if it is just more emptiness.  Don’t focus on your lifeless heart — trust Christ to meet you, help you, change you.
  2. Pray and ask Him to help you worship.  Admit you want to worship and you are not doing so well. Cast your burdens upon Him — and ask Him to strengthen your faith.  Ask for more of the Spirit’s work in your heart to enable you to feel joyful praise, awestruck wonder, and heartfelt longing for Him.
  3. Open the Bible again and find the truth of God that points to praise. If worship is fire, then truth is the fuel that causes the fire to burn.  The more fuel — the hotter the fire.  Focus on the truth in the songs, the prayers, the Scriptures.
  4. Do point one through three again and again patiently.  It’s called waiting for a reason.  God might change your heart instantly — or not.  But His timing is perfect love for you.  So humbly continue waiting for Him.

It may take a long time or just an instant but it will come.  My God is not one to disappoint.

But — if we will wait on the Lord — it’s just a matter of time before we feel the wind of the Spirit start to blow — that fog starts to break up — we see the beauty of God revealed in Jesus Christ —

And we will worship.

Personal, Ramblings

Turn out the lights the party is over.

Sunday worship is a time where we focus for an hour or so on God.  The order of service is very familiar: 15 minutes of spiritual songs, a few announcements, a message from the Bible, an offering, and a benediction.  Each is mixed well and served in a comforting way.  Sweet.  But when it is over, we are trust back into a world that is both common place and not quite so holy.

The people we mix with are not all heavenly apparitions of goodness. They are not all angels.  We have to live our lives among the heathen.  Sure I live in a Christian nation.  Even the money I carry in my pocket has “In God We Trust”.  But it does not seem like it most of the time.  The reality of it all we have to live in a world that, for the most part wants nothing of my Jesus.  We must mingle with those who do not love Christ.  There are times when life is just full of frustration and discouragement. The issue is we have to live through it.  We have to meet the day as they come.  Sometimes we would rather just pull the covers over our heads and stay in the silent warmth of our beds.

To live the life that Jesus demands of me I have to live within the rocks of the world.  To step boldly as the jagged edges of life try to break my stride is the goal.  Each step has to be taken.  It does not matter that the ground I tread is trying to break my ankles.  So how do I do it?  How do I keep on keeping on?  How do I keep the momentum going forward, when I want to just sit and reduce the threats?

Life has to be more than existence.  It is not enough to just sit and be protected.  We have to move on.  “If you are not living on the edge, you are just taking up space.”  Sure there are times we have to “be still and know” but most of the time we have to make progress. Life is to be a joy not a burden. The joy is not in the destination but in the journey.  It is the overcoming the rocks in our path but the victory is moving through them.

Life is more than surviving.  Life is more than getting along.  Life is more that existing until we get back into our cocoon of our beds to die for eight hours or so.  Life is to be lived to overcome our obstacles, to master our experiences, and to have sense of joy along the way.  There will be defeats. There will be rocks that bruise us. There will be injuries that seem to disable us from going any further.  But there will be times of walking along with the eternal in our steps.  We may well wish to be have a little more ease and a lot less of toil.  We may find hope that it will get better.  But really it doesn’t matter.  You see that every one of us must live in our own circumstances.  What we make of our lives is not a matter of changing our world but changing ourselves.

It would be cool if we had everything we wanted.  To have the whole world at our finger tips. Never to experience pain, disappointment, or sin.  How delightful it would be, never to have a care, or a cross or a single negative. But it just isn’t so.  Paradise, Shangri-La, and heaven is not here.  And longing for It will not make it any closer.  Restless discontent cannot change our place.  All those around us have their lives they are living and I have mine.  It is mine alone.

So out of the bed I go.  To live and I choose to live in victory over the boulders in life. I choose to grow and move in the world God has given me to live.  Sunday worship is a great place to bask in the glow of perfection but my victories don’t come inside of a church.  My life is more than that.

 

The Study of God and Life