ThoughtShades - Journal

(Some thoughts never grow into articles or sermons, but they won’t go away. Try these.)

Conveniences. The more we indulge in conveniences to save time and reduce the mundane activities of life, the more we spend our time servicing those conveniences, ultimately making our lives more complex. This is why we must never allow gadgetry to define our church mission, drive our burden or govern our relationship with God. When we do, our success will only last as long as an electronic circuit or a AA battery or the service contract.
Learning. As long as we insist on learning everything the hard way, we will never achieve true progress. True progress is predicated upon the tiered learning experiences of those older than ourselves. Herein lies the value of reading and gathering advice from as many people as possible. You gain the experience of others without having to suffer their pain.
Caring. Caring for and spending time with those you love remain the most fulfilling activities of life. Regardless of how important all others make you feel, or of how necessary they say you are to them, never overindulge in their praise. In the end, it is hollow. Your loved ones alone can provide the special satisfaction and contentment in life that you can take to your grave.
Enjoyment. Why do we insist on thinking of God as a mysterious, remote, awesome being when he has made it abundantly clear that he is close, relevant and intimate with humans? He made small flowers to grow in out-of-the-way places, designed the impish and mischievous monkeys to do silly things, and filled the forest with the ceaseless, empty chatter of birds and bugs. He placed these elements into his creation for us to enjoy. If you have ever had someone pull you aside at some festive occasion and launch into a serious or morbid discussion, you know the meaning of exasperation. God desires his people to celebrate life, at least some of the time.
Thoughts. Desires, compulsions, inspirations and surmisings are all hands extending out of our thoughts and shaping our ideas, much like a potter who has many hands to sculpt his clay on the wheel. Few of these ideas are based in reality. The leaders among us are people who cut the fat, the falsehoods and the futile elements out of their ideas and hone them into something workable.
Retirement. Retirement’s greatest shock is the impression that one is no longer needed. In the human economy, we value something or someone in direct proportion to need. Whenever something is deemed unnecessary, it loses its value. On a larger scale, we must never believe that God does not need us. Saying that God does not need us is a self-destructive, hypothetical statement. Of course, God can exist, survive, and create whatever and whomever he wants, but that is beside the point. He did make us and put us in our places. Why did he do this if not because he needed us?
Perspective. Perspective may be the most important concept we have in living for God. Perspective is the ability to see the world from a particular vantage point. It puts everything in the right relationship with everything else in the picture. Your linear perspective tells you whether an object is a huge mountain or a tiny bump on the horizon. Your spatial perspective determines whether the sun is a firestorm of nuclear fission or a distant, insignificant star. Your youth perspective decides whether romance is just puppy-love or a heart-wrenching drama. Your age perspective says that Social Security is the most important financial concern in your life or a meaningless statistic. Spiritually, nothing in your life’s picture will work until and unless you put Jesus Christ into the right perspective—-the center of it all!