A Ball of Emotion

Imagine your emotions as a physical ball.  Now imagine yourself in a room filled with the people closest to you. Of the people who fill the room pick out the ones with whom you have the deepest relationships, and stand them nearest to yourself. The more shallow the relationship the further these people stand from you.

Pick up your Ball and throw it.

Who does it hit? How many people does it rebound off? Who was hurt by the impact?

Who was too far away to see the ball in the first place, but not far enough away to see the impact it made on others?  Did those people just take a step further away from you?

Our emotions are not ours alone.  They will affect others, often to a degree we may never know. Emotions are not bad.  Bad is neglecting to control ourselves and allow our emotions to dictate our decisions. No, not Bad… harmful.

Rose Coloured Glasses

To look at the World through Rose Coloured Glasses… An old idiom expressing the way we sometimes look at life, and view it as something better than it truly is.  To see color where there is only a white washed world.  I hate this expression!

This expression to me is the lie that supports so many other non-truths that we so readily accept as fact.  I believe the World is more “Rose Coloured” than we know.  That in truth, we are viewing our lives through the opaque glass that we call “routine”.  the light can not penetrate through the glass domes we have sheltered ourselves in; and it’s time to pick up the largest brick we can find and hurl it at our self made prison.  Once the walls are shattered and we break through the Routines that keep us so preoccupied, the light breaks through.  And I know we will find that the World truly is rose coloured indeed.

A Hole in Our Soul

We all yearn for something.  There is an emptiness inside you and me; a hole that we find ourselves desperate to fill.  and fill it we do…but soon that hole is calling to be filled again…and again…  What to do?  I believe there is a answer to make that yearning, bearable… I don’t think it will ever fully go away, because it is a healthy desire.  But what we choose to fill the emptiness with is not always healthy.  The desire will always be with us…. But you will always have a choice with what to do about it, so choose wisely

Fear of the Unseen

What is it about the unseen that we fear so much?

I believe we feel there is a calmness that comes with an enemy we can see and touch.  But when the enemy is a disease or a spiritual attacker, panic begins to set in.  How can you protect yourself from a “ghost”?  The question comes from our childhood fears of the Dark.  There was no reason to fear the dark, yet our minds would make up all the terrible things that lurked just beyond our beds, and the only protection we had was to cover ourselves with our comforters.  Funny, I wonder if that is why those thick blankets are called comforters, that is where our comfort came from.   So now that you are grown… where does you comfort come from.  The blanket was a false security to an imagined attacker.  But there are real unseen enemies in our lives… do you still protect yourself with “blankets”?

How well do you sleep at night.

The Unassuming Furniture of Life

Was Jesus a Carpenter (Mk 6:3)?

It’s unclear if he was.  He may have been, some think he was the son of a carpenter.  But, he more than likely was.  And if he was, what kind of carpentry did he do?  did he build homes… I doubt it.  Furniture perhaps…  maybe.  Know one really knows for sure.  But let’s say he did build furniture.  What do you think his finished pieces would have looked like?  Those of us who believe that Jesus was the Christ, may think that since he was with God at the Creation of the heavens, he would have made some pretty outrageous furniture.   But then again the Jewish people thought that the Christ would come in a blaze of glory; and Jesus, claiming to be the Christ, was born in the humblest of circumstances.  So if he was a carpenter, and did build furniture, it would more than likely be something fairly average.  It may have been a chair that years later would have broken from use, or a table that was thrown out because the family that bought it had grown too large and need a bigger one.

So what am I getting at you ask…

Well think about those people who had owned that furniture that Jesus, the “Son of Man”, had made for them.  Think about what must have gone through their minds years after discarding the old pieces of wood created by a man who taught thousands and led thousands and did miracles.  A man who was seen by many, days after he had been publicly  murdered.  A man who had started a revolution against the old ways of thinking, who revolted against traditions and claimed that he himself and the God of Abraham were one and the same(Jn 14: 8-11).  How would those people feel about that furniture that they had thrown out?  The furniture that God made for them.

How many times have you thrown away something that God has made for you, because you had outgrown it?

Or maybe you don’t believe in God or Jesus or anything like that.  Maybe you have different beliefs about eternal or spiritual things.  I suppose we will all find out soon enough, and I sincerely hope that you find yourself pleased with your decisions in life, in death.

The Hideous Beauty of Humans

The Cigarette’s ugliness can only be seen after it’s use.  It’s paper withered and burnt away; what’s left of  it’s insides crusted and spilling out; the tarred and brown filter still moist with saliva.  I propose that you look at your own life and see what similarities to this cigarette butt you can find.  How hard would you have to look?

The filter itself is laughable!  Thousands of tiny white fibers glued together to make an unsafe toxin… safer.  So, what “filters” do you have in your life?  What Synthetic safety nets do you carry around to avoid the “toxins” of humanity?  Because that is what I’m talking about here, human nature, this isn’t a bash on smokers!   There is something inside of us all that is ugly.  And we try to suppress it and control it and ultimately deny it.   But it’s still there.  A painted on smile that covers your sneer; a proud moment in anothers’ moment of failure; A lie old enough to become truth… all filters.  A delusion of control and a denial of what we are…  Human!  We were born, and we will die that way.  So why waste the time in-between pretending we’re something more.  Accepting your “ugliness” is the best thing you can do.  only after embracing your humanity, can you understand it.  And understanding what you are puts you one step closer to salvation.

Legacy

When you die, you leave behind a legacy.  And it doesn’t include all the stuff you have accumulated over your life, it includes all of the decisions you have ever made.  Most every decision you make effects someone else at some level.  And when you are gone it is those people you have affected that will remember you.  All of those memories, from all of those people you have affected come together to form your legacy.

What does your legacy look like right now?  How will the your world remember you…or will your world choose to forget you?  Everyday you type out another chapter in your life to be be remembered by someone, but you don’t get to go back and fix the errors you may have made while typing too fast or too reckless.   your legacy is published as you write it.

I Feel Sick

We all get sick of the circumstances we’re in from time to time.  We get stressed, angry, irritated,frustrated, even absolutely and uncontrollably livid at our situations at times.  It really is enough to make one feel ill.  But chances are that whatever situation you may find yourself  in is a direct result of a choice that you made.  We live in a world of cause and effect, and unfortunately “we” are the cause for most of our suffering.

Many people want to claim “victim-hood”, but no one wants to claim responsibility for the consequences of their own action.   Think beyond the choice toward the consequence, and then make your decision.  There are good decisions and bad decisions;  the bad decisions usually get better before they get worse,  the good decisions usually get worse before they get better.  Either way you will probably end up feeling “sick” of your circumstances at some point.  The “sickness” that comes with a bad decision can be crippling!  Some never recover, and go on to make more bad decisions.  The “sickness” that comes with good decisions can, and often does, keep us from moving toward the very reasons we made the decision in the first place.

The difference between the two:

Bad Decision sickness can be a learning experience,  much like burning yourself on the stove…”next time I won’t do that”.  Good decision sickness can be a growing experience, like an athlete in training…”If I can get through this, I can win”.

Never Give Up-Never Surrender!

Doing the right thing is never easy.  It usually involves tremendous sacrifice.  Sometimes it’s physical, but most of the time it is a sacrifice of perspective.  How far are you willing to bend your views before giving up?  How convinced are you that the way you see things is the right way?  Is it the only way?  Wise king Solomon said: The way of a fool is right in his own eyes but a wise man listens to advice.  But be carefully, Solomon also said: The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.

It’s a slippery slope to be sure, but never give up on others when it comes to listening.  If you won’t listen, neither will you be heard.

Broken

We are more fragile than we think, and when there is brokenness in our lives it sometimes leaves many sharp points.  It is our pride in such times that our loved ones often cut themselves on.  Pride tell us that an offer of help is insulting, that we are weak to accept assistance; but true weakness is allowing the pain we have to turn us into disdainful people.  If we allow ourselves to be filled with pride and disdain, we become more than broken–we become completely shattered.