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Saturday, September 19, 2009

Blink

In the blink of an eye, all this changes.
Everything. Nothing is left untouched.
No measure of wishing could bring it,
Whatever loathing insufficient to prevent it,
It waits for no one, inverting,
Burning, destroying a life's work,
Edifying, making inviolable another's treasure.
Of all the things that mattered, none remains.
Riches to rags and rags to riches,
Primordial terminal, last first.
The blink of an eye changes nothing,
For we should have seen it coming all along.
We can't say He never warned us,
That all along, there was not much time left.

Friday, September 18, 2009

All

I Corinthians 10:31 "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." [emphasis added]

I have been brooding over how to implement this instruction in my life, praying daily, "God how do I do everything to honor you?" It sounds simple enough. But in Christian circles it has the potential to become a mere truism. I have to take a good, hard look and determine whether I know I'm actually doing any given activity to the glory of God.

What about this: Let's say I graduate from law school in a couple years and become a potato farmer. If I felt bitter, as if my scholastic time was spent in waste, would I have really spent that time to the "glory of God?"
If I'm an athlete and sprain my ankle such that I can't play the championship game and I feel that my entire season previously has been mere vanity, does this comport with a notion that the first part of my season had value as exemplifying the "glory of God?"
If I host a Bible study and invite the whole town and only my wife and I actually show up to pray for an hour, and so I wonder if I'm a failure, does this mean I have failed to give "glory to God?"

Bitterness seems the antithesis of having truly performed an activity in honor of God. Isn't that the essence of what we're striving for, not to not care, but to care about what He cares about? Because if we're caring to act in ways that are concerned with what He cares about, which is what really is the only matter of concern, then we have acted for the glory of God.

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