From quiet time freewriting:
While it’s true God is not mocked, it’s more true God is not conned.
Nobody pulls that off.
No smooth, polished, mask-wearing churchman. No calloused, cynical crime figure. No slick, articulate atheist or couldn’t-care-less agnostic. No lip-service, manipulative political type.
Lucifer himself–once The Cherub Who Covers and closer to God than any other–couldn’t do it. Neither will anyone else. No one.
God is not conned.
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Sometimes the best medicine for what ails you is someone you can talk to. Someone you know well enough to trust with anything you say, any way you say it. Someone who knows the inner ‘you’, who not only doesn’t gossip or tattle, but would get in the face of anyone implying they might.
You and I seldom see this level of friendship. The shallowness and temporary nature of social media has conditioned us all to define ‘friend’ as the person we just met and are blabbing with while waiting on our caramel macchiatos.
That person is an acquaintance. Learn to save ‘friend’ for those time-tested ones who’ve proven their word and worth in a few valleys with you. Save ‘friend’ for those who’ve experienced you at your worst and trusted you to see them that way, too.
Exception: if your personality bubbles, it’s perfectly okay to introduce someone as “my newest friend”. That makes it clear to all listening you’re establishing a faith-based relationship: you believe that person’s going to be a good fit for you. Just remember: don’t expect them to be close any more than you’d expect your blue and white budgie to speak fluent Klingon.
For ‘friendship’ to mean something again, give it time. Give those you’d like to be friends with time, too. How much? Always err on the side of too much.
One of the most regrettable mistakes you can make is assuming another person to be a close friend and treating them as if when they’re not.
__________
It’s not what you gather but what you scatter
that tells the kind of life you’ve lived.
__________
I am motivated by accomplishment, not pride. Pride always wants to stop and look back and around, needing to be noticed. Pride wastes time, steals energy and consumes the weak–kills their heart from within.
If I fall, I will get up. If I am beaten, I will return.
If I am sore, wounded and spent I will do what is necessary to revive and I’ll get up again.
I will never stop getting better. I will never give up. Ever.
Somehow I will keep going regardless of how I feel or how others think.
I have set God’s standard before me and will not accept less than my best for Him.
I will not quit while one breath remains.
That is why I excel.
__________
“This should not be happening.”
“Yeah? Well, we don’t live in a world of should or shouldn’t.”
“But we should.”
What’s been popularly labeled ‘Political Correctness’ has brushed aside the nobler pieces of human behavior. It has worked to remove all mention of our higher instincts of common courtesy, decency and that most illusive value, manners.
Once we policed ourselves and often our neighbors. Now we seem mired in a self-absorbed bog that beggars description. We live among a people each of whom demands the right to say or do anything. At the same time they keenly scrutinize everyone around for the slightest hint of offensive word or deed.
Shoulder chips are in style.
__________
Living by faith is a knowing, not a feeling.
Dan © June 2013