Good Grief! I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to write another entry here. Real life has gotten in the way, LOL. I had a great idea earlier today that I wanted to share, however I neglected to write it down, or put it into the sticky widget on my phone. So hopefully it'll come again. In the mean time I am working through an inspired Love Letter piece that will go up this week, possibly even tomorrow. So for lack of a better topic let's touch briefly on technology.
I spent the weekend at my parent's last weekend and since it's up in the mountains, cell phone signal is hard to come by. It made me think about just how attached to our text/email/twitter/facebook updates we are. And unfortunately as our society has gotten more social, we've gotten less personal. You know how it goes, logging on instead of picking up the phone. We're all guilty. Making small talk instead of asking and addressing the inportant questions. (That brings up issues with online dating, but I'll save that for another time...)
Did you know? I have over 200 friends on Facebook? 200!! Granted, I could probably name a lot of them and where I know them from...But if you asked me for more detail about their lives I'd be hard pressed to find correct answers. I admit, I love Facebook. It allows me to easily "connect" with cousins I barely see and friends who live farther away. It's great to share pictures and see what everyone is up to. But with all of the online connection, I feel that in many ways I've lost some of my ability to connect with someone in person. Oh sure I work in an office full of people, and I totally enjoy moments playing with my nieces and nephews. But when it comes to making an effort with someone new I lose a bit of my intuition. I've never been a fan of small talk, in a lot of ways I feel it's a waste of air. However it is a nicety that one endures, especially when meeting someone new...You don't just jump in with the heavy questions, you start small and work your way up.
Take it a step further, instead of meeting someone new, let's turn the search on ourselves. When was the last time you thought about your beliefs, your dreams, your favorite color? Ok, so the color is probably the snowflake on the iceberg, you thought of it immediately. Blue? Purple? Yeh totally. Beliefs are a bit tougher, Christian? Spirtual but not religious? Jew? Messianic Jew? Muslim? Undecided? And when you think of beliefs is it something you yourself own or is it something that you inherited from your family? How deep are those beliefs? Do you vote according to them? Shop according to them? Live according to them? Date according to them? Raise your kids to follow them?
(Dangit I think I just grabbed a flash of my idea from earlier, hold on I'm putting it in my sticky. Phew, glad that wasn't gone for good :-D) Back to the current thought stream...Hopefully some of this is making sense!
Beliefs, if someone asked you right now what you believed what would you say? Lead off with the Apostles' Creed? John 3:16? A Hebrew passage? Something from the Koran? (I'm not as familiar with what those statements might be outside Christianity, sorry...) As I said I was up at the farm last weekend. After church on Sunday we went back to the farm for lunch and a couple, who are good friends, joined us. It was a wonderful time. After lunch the conversation turned to end times, Revelation, Incan Calendar and all those sorts of things. I will admit, I am not into the end times and trying to figure it all out. Scripture seems to say clearly (to me anyway) that no one will know the day or time. Not even the Son will know, so how can all these scholars claim too. I think it's another one of those moments where God laughs heartily and shakes His head (Much like when I told him at age 12 that I would be married by age 25 and have 5 kids by the time I was 40, all boys mind you...He does have a wild sense of humor...) The gentleman we were eating with made the comment in the course of the discussion on persecution that he would have no problem standing for his beliefs even if his life were at stake, HOWEVER if you held the gun to his wife's head he would definitely have to hesitate. She in turn gave him permission to shout it from the rooftops regardless of danger to her. An interesting, loving pair they are and so much fun!
She and I wound up sitting on our side of the table watching most of the discussion like a tennis match, heads turning and everything. On the side we basically made an agreement: Jesus is our Lord and Savior, He died to save us, and rose again on the 3rd day. He's not interested in whether we figure out (Haha) when He's 'coming again'. He's interested in whether we are living our lives secure in the knowledge that He is. Regardless what form the end times takes, the Beast, literally or metaphorically, will the pale rider actually make an appearance? His concerrn is for His people. He wants us to be hot for him, not tepid or cold...HOT! (This feeds a bit into my next entry...)
Whatever your beliefs today, are you living them out? If not, what's the point?
