Hearing the HINT

It was a great learning experience for me yesterday, my best friend invited me out to lunch to have a relaxed time together to dream and talk over our lives and where we are heading. After getting our food, an aquantance of ours walked up and began to converse with us. The conversation went on and we asked what he was doing there. His answer was one which causes you to pause and actually forces you to make a choice before responding. He layed out a very subtle hint, without imposing, that he wanted to sit and eat with us. We invited him to dine with us. Now, the comment my friend made to me regarding his choice was a great learning experience. Though we wanted a realxed time together to dream, he said, "God has a great way of showing us what life is all about." He was citing the fact that our lives are not our own or that "a man is not an island unto himself." Instead of talking over our dreams and plans for the future, we listened to the dreams of another and encouraged and shaped the life of another. Good time for me to see how to grab onto peoples hints and live for others.

An Overlooked Forgiveness

For my fellow Christians. I want to bring our focus inward, and see something that is so easily overlooked. We are told by God to look forward to eternal life with him, a new heaven and new earth, to focus on things eternal. What I think we do wrong, is to overlook our present. Just like in drivers training, we are told to see "the big picture", but we must also see our immediate surroundings in order to avoid an accident. Yes, we must see "the big picture" of our standing with God, but we must also see our immediate standing in order to make proper adjustments. As this qoute to the right states, to GET WELL and MOVE ON. Un-forgiveness towards ourselves and the mistakes we've made is crippling. We don't want to make those mistakes again so we shut down completely, not doing wrong but not doing right. If a Christian was suppose to never make any mistakes in order to be called a Christian, well then the world would have NO Christians in it. I think this excerpt helps clarify this point:

Exerpt by: Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore

"Christians overlook self-forgiveness because we also tend to reject self-love and foster ridiculous standards of perfection. It has taken psychologists, like Heinz Kohut, to demonstrate that people have healthy narcissistic needs for self-love that do not preclude or exclude love of others. Self-love and love of others are interdependent, something that the commandment to "love others as one loves oneself" actually implies. Given human limitation, failure is inevitable, and holding up absurd standards of perfection is neurotically unhealthy."

Don't cripple yourself by un-forgiveness towards yourself. God has called you for a purpose, make the proper adjustments in your life when needed in order to fulfill it. We all need a little bit of this:

The Dtayls of Life

It has occurred to me, how big the little details can be. I talked with a friend the other day about a time when I was a little "high" on life, in a life long gone, I thought to climb a tree. Crazy thing, while in the tree, I saw 2 columns of ants. 1 column was heading up the tree carrying something, the other column was heading down the tree I suppose to go get something to bring back. How many people get to see that? Although the circumstances of how I was able to witness this account may have been wrong, I am glad I did. While recalling this account in my life, I wonder how many small details like that we miss everyday. It was wonderful to see how organized and purposeful these ants were. They moved and functioned as a team for one common goal. We can all learn from the little details of life and better ourselves as we learn from them. God said it himself :

Proverbs 6:6
6 Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and become wise!
7 Though they have no prince or governor or ruler to make them work,
8 they labor hard all summer, gathering food for the winter.
9 But you, lazybones, how long will you sleep? When will you wake up?
10 A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—
11 then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber.

God himself must be into the details of life to reference these small almost insignificant creatures and tell us to Take a lesson and learn from them.

Just something to consider.