By now you ought to know how much I love the Bible. No! I am not an expert. Give me a subject and I cannot quote chapter and verse, but I doubt if that was the intention of those who brought this wisdom together in book form. Nowadays, it is to be found in all sorts of electronic messaging, most of which I know nothing about. This I do know. One verse in the Bible - when it became obvious to me that it meant what it said, caused my life to be dramatically changed. It was not instantaneous, it took time, and with regard to some subjects, I am still learning. But to me, those are the "asides" of life; I have learned to deal with the essentials.
"Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." I learned that eighty years ago probably, but it stuck with me all of my years and today, it is a foundational truth. (An aside - my computer tells me that I spelled that word wrong. Imagine that. Well, I opened my dictionary (Encarta) and there it is, spelled as I have spelled it. Wonderful lesson, check and double check.)
Which brings me back to my subject. There are lots of things to learn about as we travel through this life that we are supposed to be living. I believe that dealing with the essentials is the most important.
How did I get here? What am I supposed to do? I don't think you can honestly answer the second if you haven't answered the first. You got here, of course, because your parents were enjoying themselves. As the father of four, I can tell you that we didn't plan for any of them. We merely enjoyed having sex together with one another and now they refer to us as parents. It took me decades to understand that first question. I had two choices. I evolved from bacteria or, my parents had sex.
Years passed before I had a more definitive answer. I had heard about the Bible, about God creating mankind and I understood somewhat, but it took an experience long before I got serious about an answer. If you have read my blogs, you know that I encountered God on the deck of a troopship headed for Japan and I saw His handiwork, first hand. As far as I could see, from North to South and from East to West, the skies were filled with stars, there had to be billions of them, and intermixed among them were the planets I had heard about in my high school Science class, along with the comets and the falling stars, or whatever they were. That impression is still, uppermost in my memory bank.
I have read about evolution, know folks who believe in it, but none of them have ever matched my thoughts about the Creator who has brought all of those astral objects into being - and none have "evolved" over the centuries of their existence.
The Bible teaches, He is that Creator and He loves, even me. At my age, I have no problem sharing with you that I have committed some very serious mistakes in my life and I have to be honest with my own thoughts. I have experienced the pain of having some folks do the same to me. And I carried these experiences for nearly forty-five years until that glorious day when that Creator being, the One we worship as God, our Father, pardoned me. Set me free. I no longer carry the pain of those burdens and have forgiven every one who has ever wronged me in any way.
You don't have to believe me, of course, but we are talking about freedom, right? That was a gift I received, it cost me nothing except the responsibility of living life as it was meant to be.
I used to worry about the cross that was used to extinguish the life of God's only begotten Son, but over the years I have learned that the little instances in my life that have tended to hurt me, are nothing compared to the pain that He endured so that I might have the abundant life of which He had spoken.
What I did not tell you is that I spent the greater portion of my life as a personnel recruiter and I have met literally, thousands of people - looking for employment, but they had little or no interest in making amends for the problems they had caused. To me those were obvious just by taking a close look at their resumes. They looked nice, but they "looked" like losers from the descriptions of what they were doing before they found themselves on the outside, looking in. Resumes on paper are generally accepted by most employers, but if the person is truly in search of opportunity, you will discover their real resumes written on the hearts of the people with whom they have associated.
We live in a "fix it" society. If something is wrong, there are people who will help a person "fix" it - for a fee. Yes, it is a fact that if you have made mistakes, you have a responsibility to make amends, but paying others to make you look good is not the answer. You make yourself "look" good, by merely "being" good. It is an "inside" job and more often, the only real answer is to return to the maker, the One who can do for you, what He has done for me, and that was to cleanse me from the inside out,
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