Just a few of many reasons why…

… american football wins everytime.

 

This right here’s funny, I don’t care who ya are…

 

 

This sums up my feelings on the subject…

(HT to Despair.com -I wouldn’t mind if you guys want to throw a calendar or something my way for the product placement. Just a thought.)

 

A Prayer

I love this prayer. It makes me laugh, and cuts to the quick. If you ever find a piece that does both, hang on to it! That combo is rare.

 

Prayer Attributed to a Seventeenth-Century Nun

 

“Lord, you know better than I know myself that I am getting older, and will someday be old. Keep me from getting talkative, and particularly from the fatal habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and on every occasion. 

Release me from craving to straighten out everybody’s affairs. Make me thoughtful but not moody; helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom it seems a pity not to use it all, but you know Lord that I want a few friends at the end. Keep my mind from the recital of endless details- give me wings to come to the point.  

I ask for grace enough to listen to the tales of others’ pain. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains- they are increasing, and my love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. Help me to endure them with patience. 

I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessening cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally it is possible that I may be mistaken. 

Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint- some of them are so hard to live with- but a sour old woman is one of the crowning works of the devil. 

Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people. And give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.”- (From- Between Heaven And Earth, Ken Gire)

A contradiction

I am a mixture of holy and unholy. As is everyone else who has, living within them, the Spirit of the living God and is still on this earth.

But this blog isn’t about the rest of the world, it’s about me.

So far today (it’s now 11:22 am EST) I’ve struggled with-

 

• Fear- (This one whispers to me constantly in the background all day)- of anyone finding out what I’m really like, of death, of what might happen, makes me hide in the dark. The Spirit says, “I am perfect love, and perfect love casts out fear”
• Naked women- years of training, easy access, the more you feed the appetite, the hungrier (and duller) it gets. Oh, be sure and clear the “history” and “recent searches” on your browser. The Spirit says, “Don’t do it, you know where it leads. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. May her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love.”
• Laziness- I want to take the easy way out, I don’t like to do hard things. The Spirit says, “Anything that’s actually worth something will always cost a lot.”
• Boredom- “Nothings tastes”, as Marie Antoinette once said, so I’ll do anything to pass the time. The Spirit says, “Why do you spend your time on stuff that doesn’t satisfy?”
• Being Judgmental- I’m in the top five of all the people I know, everyone else has real problems that I can clearly point out if you’re interested. The Spirit says, “Leave all that to Me, you don’t know enough to sit in that chair.”
• Devotion- Sometimes easy, mostly hard, like running laps in football practice. The Spirit says, “Do you love me?”
• Wasting time- I look back and see what could have been if I’d just done something else, but it was and is easier not to. The Spirit says, “Quit wasting your life!”
• Regret- My past mistakes, and how they’ve shaped my present and future, there’s no end to the “what might have been”’s. The Spirit says, “Do you trust me to redeem it?” 
• Possessions- I like stuff. It gives me the same endorphin rush as over-eating, and the same empty feeling later. The Spirit says, “What do you really want?” 
• Arrogance- With all of the above, I’m still better than you. The Spirit says, “You’re dead wrong, but I still love you.”

Oh, by the way, I’ve also worked on a lesson on Holiness for Sunday.

You know when you hear truth

Way too close for comfort, too much truth to be ignored.

“But I, hurting and stubborn, preferred my sins. I preferred my peevish, snide, small-minded, mean-spirited comments, grunting at people when they walked in or out, and letting food drool out of my mouth. Those were sins that I had made my own. You know what it’s like when you make sin your own. You housebreak it. You domesticate it. You shield it from the Spirit’s scrutiny. I did not want to let go of the sick, strange comfort of my own misery.” Joni Ericson Tada

(HT-Tim Challies)

Molehills and mountains

I’m an introvert, so doing something in public that might call attention to myself causes me a to experience fairly high level of anxiety. 

Well, I went to the grocery store last week and saw a police cruiser in the parking lot with the officer sitting in the driver’s seat. I thought , “I ought to go tell him, ‘Thanks for doing what you do.’” But the little anxiety shot that comes with the thought of talking with “strangers” was enough to stop me. Besides, I was thinking thankful thoughts. Isn’t that enough?

I thought about why I didn’t say something for a while and scolded myself for letting this stupid personality quirk stop me from doing what I know is the right and good thing. And when I had scolded myself enough to make the guilt go away, I forgot about it.

Until this week.

Same grocery store, almost same parking place, maybe the same officer and cruiser.

Same thought, same anxiety, almost same action. Except this time I say to myself, before I walk past him, “Well, he looks busy. If he’s still here when I come out it means I’m supposed to say this to him, if he’s gone then….” 

I no sooner walk in and grab a cart when his partner walks right in front of me not ten feet away. But there’s people around and I freeze up. 

I walk on for about thirty seconds and decide I’ve got to do this. So I turn around go in the direction he was headed to find him. I find him, only he’s talking with a couple of people. Abort! Abort! 

I turn around.

Five minutes later, the first officer, the one that was in his cruiser, comes in and walks right past me.

This is getting stupid, and ridiculous. 

I’ve got my groceries and I’m headed to the car. He’s back in the cruiser. I go up to him, say, “I just wanted to thank you for what you do.” He says, “You’re welcome.”. I go on to the car. No big deal.

What a small thing. How hard I sometimes make small things.

I’m pretty sure that’s what He’s saying.

This post seems kinda scattered. I hope by the end it comes together, but in case you read the whole thing and still don’t know what it’s about, it’s about listening to, and trying to figure out what God’s saying to me in my life, through my life.

—

I talk a pretty good game. I really do.

Those who know me know that I’ll confess pretty much anything that’s happening in me, if those surrounding me are known to me, and not likely to go around sharing stuff that ought not be shared.

But there are still things I keep to myself. Things that, if I can choose, will never see the light of day. (There’s a line from an Andy Gullahorn song, “The Secret”, that haunts me. “Cause he knew carryin’ secrets to the grave was impossible to do…. The secrets carry you.”. But that’s a little off topic in this post)

One of the things I mostly keep to myself, but will confess on occasion, is that I’m more talk than action. Like a couple of posts ago, where I posted a clean water video, and was challenged to actually do something about it. Well, I still haven’t done anything.

—-

For the last fifteen years or so I’ve been an avid reader. Almost always devotional/theological in nature, almost always authors that are long dead. It’s not uncommon for me to be reading four or five books at a time, all the time. It has been a great source of comfort, encouragement and learning for me.

It’s been said that there are two ways of reading, reading for information, and reading for formation. While I understand what that gets at, I have for years read a third way. For confirmation. To know that I’m not out in left field somewhere, to know that someone else has been thinking the same thoughts, that this is not some lonely path that I’m on and folks a lot smarter than me have traveled this way before me.

Well, for the last six or eight months I’ve been unable to read much. Can’t concentrate for long, get fidgety, have to put it down. The comfort, encouragement and learning just aren’t there. 

—

Yesterday, A friend of mine, who has been ministering to folks in various stages of grief and recovery, asked if I’d like to come with him and just be with these folks. 

I immediately started thinking of excuses not to.

—

Here’s where I’ll try to pull it all together.

I believe that God is personally involved in my life.  shaping me into the likeness of Jesus, knowing everything that I think and say because he is in me and with me at all times wherever I go. I believe that he is speaking at all times, and if I have the ears to hear and the eyes to see and I learn to pay attention, he shows and tells me things.

Sometimes I have trouble hearing God and understanding what he’s trying to show/teach/reveal/uncover/etc….

This morning I realized, and I’m pretty sure, that God’s telling me to move from the theoretical to the actual in my life. 

The first instance is the clean water video. That one’s straight forward, I lament the fact that much of the world doesn’t have clean water, and suffers from the disease that comes from drinking nasty water. Theoretical. The step now is to do something, in this case a donation to an organization that supplies the means to clean water.

The next one, not being able to read much. Brennan Manning tells of a retreat where his director flat out tells him that he’s had enough insights into the spiritual life, and now it’s time to live his life in the light of those insights. That story has been running through my mind for several months now. I believe that I’m not able to read for the same reason. I know a lot about the christian life. It’s time to start living it out, and until I do I probably won’t be given much more insight. Like Brennan, I already have enough insight to last for years.

Finally, it was all too obvious in that moment of searching for an excuse yesterday that I would rather keep it theoretical, all talk, and not enter in the fray.

Somebody please ask me Monday if I’ve done anything, or just thought about it.