clarity

At the request of my favorite German, I'd like to take a few minutes and clarify my last entry. That whole Athens/Jerusalem thing, came into my head after thinking about how much I've heard about this secular/spiritual life thing, how much I've heard people expound and talk about how to "blend" the two. To me, it seemed like a whole lot of reasoning, not a lot of doing. But the rest of it had to do with how to go about living that "blend," mostly by realizing that the distinctions don't exist. There is no secular part of our lives. We live in this world, but we are not of this world. There never comes a time when we are not in God's presence, when we are not his representatives here on Earth. In that sense, we don't have a secular life. We all have entirely spiritual lives. Sometimes we fall short of the ideal, but it is none the less spiritual, and none the more secular. Everything we do, we do for our Father, with our Father, because of our Father. My point was, there is no such thing as sacred and secular aspects of our lives. Do I mean that talking about it is bad? Absolutely not. It's great. But I think that we have to remember to DO, including myself. That's always the hard and frusturating part for me.

On another topic. Sometimes I feel like the book of Job is being re-written using myself as a muse. And I notice that, during those times, I'm often tempted to look up and say "what in the name of .....ummm....You....are you doing??!!" Especialy in financial difficulties, or with lonliness, but even with general malcontent. It's always tempting to look to God as ask, why are you not providing for me? Why have you left me here?

Why is this? It's tough to recognize these thoughts for what they are. They are lies. They are lies that the things of this world actualy matter at all. For example, and mostly for humours sake, I live in a pretty bad part of town. I live in a pretty nasty house, on top of that, and as I am writing this, I have just discovered that after long trying to rid my house of them, rodents are again attempting to take it over. From the sounds of them...large ones. This comes at a pretty bad time for me. Added to many other hardships recently acquired,....Ugh, I'm really tempted to start blaming God. But I just recently read the parable of the sower.

Matthew 13:22-23.
"....The one who recieved the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful."
If I believe the lie that the things of this world matter, than I become unfruitful. What good is it then that I should gain the whole world but lose my soul? "But the one who recieves the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yeilding a hundred, sixy, or thirty times what was sown."

I think that once we recognize that these things are of no value, and that God is the only thing of any and eternal worth, once out heart gets straight, he can start safely giving the things of this world into our stewarship. Maybe that's why we go through certain hardships, because we have to learn from experience in order to change our hearts, we have to be tested in order to know ourselves, so that we can actualy focus
on the important things: God.
Just learning with our minds isn't enough, what that sometimes amounts to is mere recognition. Sometimes the best lessons are had in the trenches.