Paul wrote in the book of Romans about men who rejected God. God gave them over to their desires. We get a view of what such men look like. I read his description and compare them against daily headlines and can’t help but think God has given this country over to our desires.
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
In general, being outdoors and being creative are both activities that are good for our health. So it’s great when you get a chance to combine them.
A few weeks ago I spent a couple of hours at a local lake, Lake Wichita. It’s a lake that has been down on it’s luck for a while, but I remember it as a lake with boats, wildlife and decent fishing from when I was young. Sadly, it has been neglected over the years.
Fortunately, Lake Wichita has friends. Support Lake Wichita is a group of citizens who realize the value a lake brings to a community and are working hard to have it restored. I can’t wait to see the end results. In the meantime, enjoy s brief video of the water flowing over the spillway after a recent rain.
Many times I’ve heard folks talk about drinking apple cider vinegar (ACV). It’s a miracle! So I thought I’d give it a shot.
ACV does not, in my opinion, qualify as a miracle. In brief, the science seems to support that it does regulate blood sugar and inhibits the complete digestion of carbs. However, rather than being viewed as a one stop weight loss drink, it is instead a small piece that you could include in a total health jigsaw puzzle.
Over the years I’ve mediated disputes (not legal mediation) between people. On several occasions I found it interesting that they both had the same position but the same vocabulary. The words they were they were using to express themselves were not registering with each other. On those occasions I found the words and would ask, “So-and-so, are you saying this?” When they responded “yes” the other would say, “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
The point here is that sometimes we need to find another way of saying what we are saying to get the point across. Sometimes, it takes someone else to do it for us. When I read this post, I thought, this is exactly what I’ve been saying. What I’ve been saying in particular is how we (the church) gloss over the difficult parts of scripture rather than contemplating them and working them out.
We simply cannot let the passage say what it says and do what it is meant to do.
Elliff makes the point that we sometimes are too quick to look at certain passages and immediately try to counter it with another passage that seems to state the opposite.
I think we could liken this to the skill needed when counseling people about work performance. Often people want to turn the conversation from their performance issue with statements like, “Yeah but he/she did it too,” “we’ve always…” or “I was trying to…” As humans, we will do about anything to get out of the discomfort of having to confront our own shortcomings.
One of the saddest things as a supervisor was always to counsel someone and have them walk out having not owned up to the issue they were having. You could watch them walking away from their career because they weren’t willing to face their own difficult issues. Do we do the same thing with our faith? Do we refuse to correctly understand scripture because doing so challenges our beliefs and makes us confront our own shortcomings? If so, do we walk away from what God truly wants of us?
