Try holding hands with your mind sometime.
It’s done for more or less the same reason an elderly gentleman answered the question about his holding his wife’s hand as they strolled in WalMart running shoes around the interior of the mall.
“Thank you for your kind and romantic thoughts. However, the reason I hold her hand as we walk is that if I don’t keep her close, she gets away, goes into this or that shop and buys something.”
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I think senility is going to be a fairly smooth transition for me. That’s actually encouraging, since I’ve been walking into rooms and forgetting why for decades. I mentioned that to several high school teachers. I got an A for creativity from Mr. Smith, but fared less brilliantly on the quiz. Mr. Frazier was amused but unimpressed. I still think it’s a sound strategy. Generations of old codgers and codgettes have been laughing at the rest of us for a long time.
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God deserves more credit than He’s getting for generating the Bible. I agree with Mark Twain: “It’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that bother me.” The Bible, often read – like daily – keeps me on my toes. Ergo, a few thoughts on Ephesians 5.
Your parents gave genetic pieces to the puzzle that’s you. Your dad and mom are part of what, how and who you are–but they’re not you. You aren’t them. Yes. You may now rejoice.
Question remains: who are you? What do you bring? What do you think, feel, prefer, hate, want, and believe?
Does the way you believe drive your daily living and thinking? Or do you have a lazy default faith that ambles along in general agreement to what your parents – or worse, your friends – believe? How do you know their faith is worth following? What if they are ambling along in general agreement with the way their parents or friends think?
- Dig your own wells.
- Mine your own gold.
- Study your own Bible.
- Write your own devotional.
- Pray your own prayers.
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Flies bug me. I won’t bore you with the scientific name for the disgusting little poop-packers. The only reason to know it is to be able to triumphantly write, “Musca domestica Linnaeus” in the appropriate space on your 8th grade science test.
These foul pests have a life span of anywhere from 7-10 days to 2 months. That means 10 – 12 generations annually in temperate areas, and 20 or more in subtropic or tropical regions. Translation: SCADS of flies.
Flies naturally thrive around hog and cattle farms, horse barns and chicken enclosures. Dog runs. Outdoor toilets. All together, now: what do all these places have in common and to excess? You got it. Excremental residue. Guess where flies love to congregate, procreate and lay eggs? Nailed it again. When a fly lands nearby, raises his shades, looks cross-eyed at you and says, “Dude. Man, am I pooped”, pay attention. He means it.
There are 2 reasons why a fly’s lifespan is shortened:
- Heat, which hastens its maturation
2. Me, who hastens its extinction.
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God’s a God of second, third, fourth and hundredth chances, but He doesn’t recycle. No matter what a person’s done, where they’ve been, or for how long–if they honestly repent and turn to Jesus for forgiveness and salvation, for them the Cross and Resurrection still works. The life Jesus laid down and took up again still pays the price, and gives brand new life, for any man or woman who turns in the other direction from the path they’ve been on and walks with Him.
Proof: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) Coolness, right? That ‘anyone’ includes me. Includes you, too. Nobody’s excluded except those who choose it.
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The next time you accidentally fall, calmly accept help to get up, dust off your clothes while suavely dabbing at the scrape, shoot your cuffs and nonchalantly say, “Simply another unscheduled dismount.”
Writers voraciously read. I recall reading about “. . . an item likely to be as helpful as a banjo on a leopard hunt.” I thought it might come in handy someday and wrote it down to remember. Now you can, too.
Writers are of necessity a different breed, though it’s hard to establish just which. Truth be told, I’m probably closer to a likeable mongrelly mutt of many generational lines, the myriad influences of which conspire to make my thoughts, inclinations and ponderings the, ah, unique things they are. Many’s the time I’ve glanced down at my mini-doxy, noted his solemn gaze on me, and had the suspicion he was calculating mathematic probabilities without using his paws. Or considering the geometry of successfully nabbing that last pizza crust.
Thanks for walking along with me this morning. By now you’ve either been so thoroughly chilled, dismayed at the sheer volume of Writers’ Craziness that you’re hereby cured; or you’re strangely drawn into the awesome gravitational clause of being a Writer.
As to the former, congratulations. Hope you weren’t badly scarred.
And to the latter: you have my condolences.
© D. Dean Boone, August 2015