Let Go of Your Self

What good is conscience if it's goal is self?

It might as well be getting dusty sitting on a shelf.

Is that good for your health?

Your goals become power and wealth.

Can you take your riches with you when you die?

I'd like to see you pull them through a needle's eye.

A conscience is for helping others,

Our sisters and our brothers!

Not just those we are related to by earthly flesh and blood;

But all of those souls created by God in Heaven above.

We are all beautiful and precious in His eyes you see;

Why must we be about I? Let's focus instead on WE!

AMEN

Unconditional Love

A person that can sincerely love an animal understands love may give nothing in return.

To care for a thing that probably reasons to itself that it must be your duty to do.

We love our pets to an extent that we make accommodations for them at the sake of our own comfort.

People will overcome real fears and take great risk to help an animal in peril--often when it isn't even their own.

It must be the helpless nature of the animals we to tend to, and the ease with which caring for them comes to us.

We enjoy when the love is returned by a dog greeting us at the door, or a cat snuggling on our lap.

But, that return on our investment of love is not a guarantee.

Many times just the presence of the pet--or maybe the beauty of it, is all we get.

Somehow, with our pets, we love without limits.

We love without even a word spoken by the receiver of our heart.

When the pet leaves our life we feel a huge void.

We grieve and cry over the loss.

If it is in our human capacity to love this way, just imagine the love God has for us.

He already knows many will never acknowledge Him, or even speak to Him--but still, He built the world around each and every one of us!

That unconditional love from God is always there waiting to be praised and glorified.

When we are grateful and we pray, that is how we say, "I love You too"; and, unlike animals, we are capable of that.

Respecting the power of God's love is our way of saying "Thank You!" without even saying a word.

AMEN

God Still Loves you Even when you Sin...

This morning I woke up thinking about the same thing I thought about in my prayers before bed, and on my walk yesterday evening--all the forefathers (and mothers) of us that were essentially BFF's with God Himself, were sinners. Not only were they sinners, but I would say based on the Ten Commandments the sins were pretty heavy; especially for O.T. (Old Testament) times. Think about Adam and Eve! They knew God personally. They walked in the garden with God and He gave them just one rule. What did they do with that rule? Broke it, because of temptation. Can Eve really blame the devil though? She did it for the same reason the devil was sent to Hell; she wanted God's knowledge. Then she felt guilty about what she did and got Adam to join her. I also considered Noah--his family was the only one saved when God had him prepare an ark and then proceeded to destroy the Earth because of the sin and corruption. Noah was let out of the ark with his family and told by God that they alone would need to repopulate the Earth. What does Noah do? He gets so drunk he passes out naked and then his son Ham sees this and decides to tattle on his dad to his two brothers (which is also wrong), then the brothers cover him but tattle on their own brother to Noah when he wakes up. Noah likely felt ashamed for his actions and projected the blame onto Ham and cursed him! So what happened to treating others how you would want to be treated? What about honoring your parents? Not judging? These are things that should be inherently ingrained in our conscience. I would have thought those that had a direct speaking (face to face) relationship with God would really try to "behave", but over and over in the Bible we see them making huge mistakes, often with alcohol and women. Just think about what happened with Lot and his daughters right after God saved them from being killed during His destruction of Sodom and Gamora. Keep in mind they were all witness to the demise of Lot's wife when she even dared to look back toward the city. Moses did not follow instructions from God exactly as given, and questioned God's will a few times in a pretty hypocritic way. He told the people of Israel to trust God when they were thirsty, and then Moses went to complain to God about the same thing (while blaming the people following him). Then there was David, whom God also had a speaking relationship with. God would not allow David to build His temple because he had too much blood on his hands. Remember, David killed a man in a field before the many he killed during battles. I believe God referred to the former because it was murder. Solomon spoke with God as well and He was known to have at least a thousand lovers by the end of his life. So, as I thought about the main players (so to speak), the more important their role in human existence, the more grievous their sin seemed to be. Next time you give yourself a hard time for making a mistake, remember that God knows the mistakes we will make and He not only loves us still, but He counts on us making them. If we were all perfect already what need would we have to experience life on Earth. God designed Adam and Eve to sin so that we would all have similar experiences and be able to relate to His close acquaintances from the Bible. In His infinite knowledge, God knew that the devil would use guilt and shame to manipulate us; so, God created flawed people to carry His message. He made all of us flawed if simply for the joy we feel when we correct a mistake, ask for forgiveness, and see the lesson to be learned in order to not do the same thing again. Thank you Jesus for dying for our many sins, and thank you God for being so merciful as to sacrifice Your only Son for that purpose!

AMEN