I have never met a person who did not have a story to tell. I wish I had had the good sense to bring a recorder to record most of them. Fact is always better than fiction. No matter the education, the financial plight, or whatever, every person has one sermon worth preaching. St. Augustine said that life is a constant battle between the ego of wanting to perform in the world and at the same time knowing that we belong to God. Life would be much easier if we were not scared. 365 times in God's Word we are told not to fear, and yet we live with fear of everything...failure, physical disability, spiritual harbingers.
1/3 of all abused women return to the abuser at least 5 times, ashamed, afraid of what people “will say”, believing that things will change for the better. A woman suffering in the isolation of abuse, is a hell that no person should go through. When I was young, there was no 911 to call. I remember so very well, a poverty stricken family living in the community. A bully of a husband (and it was known to everyone), who kept his wife and children bruised all the time. There was a time when real men in the community would have interfered. The worst night I ever spent in my life, was in living temporarily in a duplex I owned, while my house was being painted. In the duplex next to the one in which I was staying, I heard a man beating and abusing his wife for several hours. I had rented the place to him, he was a well-known quarterback on the high school football team. When I talked with the sheriff about the problem, he said, “you stay out of it. I have evicted him from every house in which he has lived for this very thing. He is a bully everywhere. He is so narcissistic, he thinks he is still a football star.”
A Catholic bishop said recently, “only 1/3 of all Catholics go to mass.” Most priests and preachers had rather be popular than right in their church and in their community. Like their memberships, most have fallen for the lie: sex, drugs, and the rock n' roll lifestyle. There is an Armageddon in most of our lives, if we live very long, we know that we are least forsaken during our time of need or during our time of suffering. God has assured us that He will be very close to us during these times. (Joshua 1:5, Hebrews 13:5)
George Burns said that if you live to be 100, you have it made. During most of our lives, we think we are either too young or too old. Remember, Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, founded Microsoft when he was 19. Charles Dickens quit school when he was 12 to work in a factory. Thomas Edison who gave the world most of its electronics, had 3 months of formal schooling, Edison took the world out of the dark at age 32 when he invented the incandescent light bulb. Benjamin Franklin was 75 when he invented bifocal eyeglasses. Frank Lloyd Wright was 91 when he designed the Guggenheim Museum. Life is what you make of it, regardless of age, skin color, disability, ancestry. The world's best psychiatrist is the one who looks back at you when you look in a mirror.
Having lived a long life, exposed to the world's education and history, traveled the world more than most people can imagine (8 round the world trips, passport stamped in 157 countries), I am still amazed that we have learned so little. Professors but not possessors, even those who claim to be Christian are much more eager to leave the church house and rush to a restaurant than to get into the church house to worship the sovereign God of the universe. Years ago, when I went to church, walking the 5 blocks to get there (First Baptist Church, Wilmington NC), this old blind man would ease out of the church at the singing of the closing hymn because otherwise he would be trampled by those exiting in a rush to get to the cafeteria.
Mother Teresa learned to overcome the darkness in the souls of unbelievers as well as believers. She said, “words that do not give the light of Christ, increase the darkness.” There is a dark night, a mirage, a belief system in most of us, torn between the consternation of the world, and the courage of our faith. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. (Romans 7:17-18)
Get away from the mirage of pretension, impostors. Dynasties star, Joan Collins, age 77, fainted at the Academy Awards because she had on a dress that was far too tight. Presbyopia, farsightedness after the age of 40, is a normal physiological sight factor. I get so tired of older people who will not wear reading glasses. Maybe they will tell God how much they enjoyed reading His Word, when they know they cannot read a thing without reading glasses. Almost as bad, hair dyes to cover their gray hair.
One of my best friends died, a man in his 60s, a wonderful husband and father, his wife had been pianist at the church. I have not recovered from the shock of her walking into a well-known restaurant with a young man...she in a miniskirt with boots, having been worked over by Ms. Clairol (“only your hairdresser knows”). Stay real, there is enough fakery, enough mirages, Christ died to save us from ourselves. And I love that old cross where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain. Hymn – Old Rugged Cross
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