Life is full of competing priorities. The older you get, the more you find many different things that will compete for every minute—and this is something that’s only gotten worse with modern technology. There will be projects that need to get done, a family wanting your time, and your body won’t always cooperate.
This is why, now more than ever, integrity is one of the most valuable things that you can have.
What would you hear?
So said the scrawling on the bathroom stall I found myself in Monday morning. Now, I guess I could have taken it as a warning, and left immediately, but instead I found myself reflecting on the fact that we’re all mortal, and we all have a short time on Earth to make an impact.
They say that artists are a temperamental lot. They’re easily upset, and they may blow up at any time. I don’t think that, up to this point, I would have considered myself an artist1, but in the recent days my reaction to stress has been less than appropriate.
I have been in a lot of stressful jobs during my short life2.
As the children of Israel were leaving Egypt and headed back towards the promised land, you can imagine that the site of them created quite a stir. There will at least a million of these people, many different ages, traveling across the terrain, and, as you probably can imagine, some would want to take advantage of them.
Amalek was one such nation—a band of marauders that preyed on the weak in the group, gathering what they could from the children of Israel and being a regular nuisance.
What’s interesting is just how much like sheep people are. Sure, we all want to think that we’re unique, different and open minded (or at least some of us do) and we like to point at others that are “brainwashing their children” or “closed to other possibilities” but in reality we’re all this way. On the grand scheme, we all operate based on a worldview– a way we perceive things around us– to make sense of the world.
When it comes to the church, this worldview is further refined by the doctrinal statements, teachings and traditions of the given church that you’re attending. The problem is that churches can fall into ruts, where they simply do what they’ve always done because they’ve always done it that way.
In regards to doing great things for God, I think that one of the reasons that we don’t see God doing the great works that He did of old is not that He’s changed or not that He’s silent, but that we really don’t believe we need him.
At what time in the world’s history has there been a culture with such prosperity as that of the United States. Now, I’m sure there has been comparative prosperity at different times, but at what time has the poor among us had so much– so much that they would rather remain jobless than find a job!
