Have We Lost Ourselves?

All around us society is focused on things like money, sex, and power. We are always trying to make more money, TV and movies are trying to push the envelope on what they can show, and relationships are becoming less about what you can do for another person and more about what they can do for you.

But our lives are meant to be so much more, we are meant to live for more. These are the sentiments expressed by the band Switchfoot and their song "Meant to Live."

"We were meant to live for so much more/
Have we lost ourselves?"

If we are simply striving to make more money, amuse ourselves, and live a selfish life, then we are missing the point of life, and the things that we were meant to live for and strive to be. It seems as if somewhere along the way our society has lost itself.

What were we made to live for? Loving one another, seeking the best in others and striving to lift them up, looking out for the needs of others more than ourselves, and treating others like we would want to be treated. It is when we do these things that we can live happy and fulfilling lives, that we can change others and change ourselves.

What is your life lived for right now? Is it in line with the things that we were made for?

Scripture Sunday: Isaiah 43:2

Every Sunday on this site I will take some time to look at a passage from the Bible that I like and think is great... though they could obviously be presented by themselves without further mention, I will throw my two cents in on what the verse(s) mean to me.

Today we look at a verse when God tells us that He is with us always, no matter where we go or what we see. It comes from Isaiah.

"When you pass through the water, I will be with you; in the rivers you shall not drown. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned; the flames shall not consume you." (Isaiah 43:2)

God's message to us here is very clear... there is nowhere we can go where we are beyond the reach of Him. There will be many times in our life where will we feel down, or unworthy, or that we are "too bad" for God to save us, He tells us that is not the case.

We must always be willing to turn to God, to let Him help us. When we are in danger, or in despair, remember that God will not let us drown if we just turn to Him. Through all of the difficult time in life, we have to allow God into our hearts.

Next time you feel like you are past the point of redemption, simply remember that God will be with you, saving you from the fire. There is no need to be afraid.

The Screwtape Letters: Chapter 1

Each week I will summarize a chapter from The Screwtape Letters, a book by CS Lewis in which a senior demon named Screwtape is writing to his nephew, Wormwood, giving him advice on leading a man to damnation.

In Chapter 1, the message Lewis is trying to convey is clear - we need to fill our minds with higher things, and constantly be challenging ourselves. If we stand still in life and be content with the "ordinary," we are susceptible to a fall. Lewis writes:

"You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things." (10)

The world that we live in is quite extraordinary. We seem to have lost that sense of wonder, and regard almost everything that we come across as being ordinary. We are content to live our little lives, and never challenge our brain to learn and grow, never try to see things in new ways.

Last week, I was on a flight... and there I was, flying above the clouds, looking down on the Earth... WOW! It just struck me how amazing, how incredible it was, that we can fly to different places around the world. We have the technology to build an airplane and fly it around the world safely. It blows my mind. Looking down on the clouds rather than looking up at them... how can that not fill you with wonder?

We should constantly be trying to learn more about the world in which we live in and try to see it and understand it in new ways. After all, since God created the world we live in, when we understand that better (and the things that happen in it better), we can understand Him better.

When are content with ordinariness, we are missing the point... we are missing the grandeur that is all around us, and we can even begin to miss God.

Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

Some quotes by one of the greatest Presidents our country has seen - Theodore Roosevelt.

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"Believe you can and you're halfway there."

"Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike."

"Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage."

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

"Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind."

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."

"Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."

"Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care."

"Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

"The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything."

"If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month."

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It was said that Teddy Roosevelt would read a book a day... what an inspiration!

More great quotes here!

The Shins - Australia

My favorite song :)

Times They Gotta Change, But So Do We

So often we hear people (sometimes even ourselves) bemoan the state of society. When we hear of a murder, or a drug bust, or any of a number of other different crimes, we read about them and say, "What is our society coming to?"

And it is true. Society is (in my opinion) heading some negative places, and things are being acceptable that make me shake my head. But at the same time, we have to always change ourselves to in order to become better people.

It is easy to judge ourselves and our actions against the backdrop of society, or the people we know. We have to try and avoid that temptation. That leads to thinking such as, "Sure I didn't act very nicely there, but nobody else would have acted nice in that situation." Or, "Sure I don't set time for prayer everyday, but most people don't even go to church, so I am still doing good there." And so on and so on.

We have to judge our actions based against the best person that we can be, not against what everyone else is doing. If we are not living up to being the person we can and should be, it doesn't matter if we are still acting better than some or most people. We are still falling short of what we can be.

This is another reason why it is important to surround yourself with quality people that will lift you up higher. It will help you avoid this temptation and always make you strive to be a little bit better than you are, and a little bit better than you think you can be.

By the way, this is a lyric from a song called "Quiet as a Mouse" by Margot & the Nuclear So and Sos.

"He said times they gotta change/
But so do we"

Traveling

Hello world,

I have been doing extra traveling over the past couple of weeks, so I might miss a couple of posts! Between work and sandbagging, it has been kind of a crazy 2 weeks.

We will refund your money for any missed posts! Have a great day :)

Love Will Set You Free

One of my favorite bands is Mumford and Sons, and one of the songs I particularly enjoy is Sigh No More. They seem to at times have lyrics in their songs that are uncharacteristically deep when compared to other popular radio songs (and they sound good too, which is a nice perk).

For instance, in Sigh No More, they have this lyric near the end of the song.

"Love it will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be"

Rarely in music have I seen lyrics so right on. They are so simple and so deep at the same time. We can look at them in a couple of different ways.

One is in relation to our relationship with those around us. If we are in a relationship where we feel like we are enslaved to someone (or vice versa) that is not a loving relationship. If that is true, then we are being used (or, again, doing the using), which is the opposite of love.

Love should do what the last lines of the lyric say - allow us to feel free and become better people, indeed the people who we are meant to be. For myself, I will be married in 4 months or so... and if I felt that my fianceé was holding me back from becoming who I was meant to be, or if I felt like I could not be myself around her, then I should not marry her, and what was shared between us would not really be love. (Fortunately, that is not the case, and October 8th will be the best day of my life! But I digress... :))

At the same time, we can look at this lyric in relation to our relationship with God. Oftentimes people (who don't really understand God) think religion is simply about rules. "I have a personal relationship with Jesus," they will say, "I don't need religion." And they will use that excuse to justify doing whatever they want.

But God's love is not about rules. He does not betray us. He does not tell us that we cannot get drunk, or have premarital sex, or lie to others as a way of enslaving us. It rather a way to set us free to live happy, fulfilling lives. It is like this, when you play a game of basketball, there are rules. If you play a pickup game anywhere, you won't be able to run with the ball and foul everyone. There are fouls and there is the rule of traveling. These things are not in place to enslave us or prohibit us from enjoying the game, but rather the opposite. They are there to allow us to be free to enjoy the game.

In the same way, God does not put things in our life as a way of making us "enjoy it" less, or make it seem like all we do all day is follow rules. Rather, he puts things there so that we can live more freely and fully.

Love shall you set you free and allow you to become the person you were meant to be. Anything less is simply not love.

"If" by Rudyard Kipling

Just a great poem!

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

Google Doodles

I came across a cool article about the top 5 Google Doodles from The Washington Post, and thought it would be fun to share.

It has videos of the top 5, and I would encourage you to check them out if you are looking for 3 minutes of entertainment. My favorite out of their top 5 is the one about John Lennnon:



Do you have a favorite?