I am so thankful....
Thank you so very much....
Have you ever really thought about these words? What do they really mean, what are we trying to say when we express thankfulness? What I started to think about was can you be thankful "in general", that is with no specific focus of thanks?
I think not. The more I have thought about this the more I realized we can only be truly thankful if our thanks is focused on someone who purposefully gave. Let me try to explain.
Can I thank my car for a safe trip to the store? No, it is a machine. As long as it is handled properly it will do as it is designed. My car cannot provide anything on its own. I could express thankfulness to the maker of the car. Thought and care and planning were employed in making a car that does what is designed, but I cannot really be thankful to the car.
Carrying this thought further, I thought about how we say we are thankful for the food we have. I realized we can be thankful only if we really think about what we mean. What is my point of view? Am I thankful to the food, or to the person who prepared it? OK someone says, the food was prepared and made appetizing and all, but the food provides me with energy and I would die without it.
Really? Isn't it my body that processes the food? My system has to break the food into the various items needed for my health and continued life. The food is not in there thinking about what it needs to do in order to build me up. So I can thank the farmers who grow the food, and the person who prepared it, and then myself for making myself grow, right? LOL! "Two out of three ain't bad"
When you get right down to the kernel, the rock bottom basis of all thanksgiving has to be given to God. I don't have to think about how to process my food. My body does it. But how does it know what to do? Who programmed it? I didn't. How does it keep going? If we don't believe in God, then we have to believe it is just blind chance that produced me and you cannot give thanks to a thing. Thankfulness implies you have been given something as the result of a plan by a thinking person. If you are the result of eons of time resulting in the "chance happening" that is you, then there is nothing to give thanks to. Like Topsey you "just growed".
A rational being will realize that all true thanksgiving has to ultimately be directed to a God Who created and continues to uphold His creation. He has thoughts and plans and love for the ones He has created. He is continually at work in many ways to give us life, and that more abundantly. "Give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good." Psalm 106:1
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Denying Reality - 2
Denying Reality - 2
We are at war.
We are at war!
We are at.......oh, sorry. Did I wake you? Did I say something you didn't want to hear? Am I upsetting you?
GOOD! It's about time we stop thinking about our petty little selves and begin to look outside our small circle at the larger world and what is really going on. Take your head out of .....the sand... and look up. Look at reality.
I was thinking about this while hearing about the recent shooting at Fort Hood, TX. While it is early in the investigation, what we are hearing so far is that there were lots of warnings from the man who eventually perpetuated this horrible act. Apparently there was a lot of talking that should have warned of what was coming.
How often we end up saying "if only we had paid attention to what was being said, or how the perpetrator was acting". But we are so used to closing ourselves off from reality, we are so used to lying, that we refuse to believe what is really happening. We want to live in our own little "happy place" where all is peaceful and cheerful and everyone gets along. We apparently think if we ignore the "bad stuff" then it won't happen. What a pitiful delusion.
We are told: "we are at war" with ____ (fill in the blank). But "just go on about your daily business, and pleasure. Act as if everything is fine and don't let the bad things upset you". Just go on as if everything is fine?
Do we think we are living in a cartoon?? Do we think there are no consequences for our actions? Is what is going on just "make believe"?
Of course I am not talking about the news today, or Ft. Hood. That is just the latest illustration of the reality of the war we are all in. A war we were born into. A war we are engaged in whether we want to be or not.
The reality is we are all part of the very real war between good and evil. We cannot opt out of this war. All we can do is choose which side we will be on. There is no one who can be neutral. There is no place we can hide from the battles constantly going on. We are actively engaged on one side or the other. Our choices, or lack thereof, are all part of the ongoing action.
We have been given the power of choice. We have been given the freedom to choose. Everyone chooses. We can actively choose. We can passively choose. If we do not make a choice, then we are automatically on the side we were born into. We are all given the opportunity to examine the evidence and make our choice. No one gets a pass.
We will see some of the evidence as we go along. We will make choices.
Daniel
We are at war.
We are at war!
We are at.......oh, sorry. Did I wake you? Did I say something you didn't want to hear? Am I upsetting you?
GOOD! It's about time we stop thinking about our petty little selves and begin to look outside our small circle at the larger world and what is really going on. Take your head out of .....the sand... and look up. Look at reality.
I was thinking about this while hearing about the recent shooting at Fort Hood, TX. While it is early in the investigation, what we are hearing so far is that there were lots of warnings from the man who eventually perpetuated this horrible act. Apparently there was a lot of talking that should have warned of what was coming.
How often we end up saying "if only we had paid attention to what was being said, or how the perpetrator was acting". But we are so used to closing ourselves off from reality, we are so used to lying, that we refuse to believe what is really happening. We want to live in our own little "happy place" where all is peaceful and cheerful and everyone gets along. We apparently think if we ignore the "bad stuff" then it won't happen. What a pitiful delusion.
We are told: "we are at war" with ____ (fill in the blank). But "just go on about your daily business, and pleasure. Act as if everything is fine and don't let the bad things upset you". Just go on as if everything is fine?
Do we think we are living in a cartoon?? Do we think there are no consequences for our actions? Is what is going on just "make believe"?
Of course I am not talking about the news today, or Ft. Hood. That is just the latest illustration of the reality of the war we are all in. A war we were born into. A war we are engaged in whether we want to be or not.
The reality is we are all part of the very real war between good and evil. We cannot opt out of this war. All we can do is choose which side we will be on. There is no one who can be neutral. There is no place we can hide from the battles constantly going on. We are actively engaged on one side or the other. Our choices, or lack thereof, are all part of the ongoing action.
We have been given the power of choice. We have been given the freedom to choose. Everyone chooses. We can actively choose. We can passively choose. If we do not make a choice, then we are automatically on the side we were born into. We are all given the opportunity to examine the evidence and make our choice. No one gets a pass.
We will see some of the evidence as we go along. We will make choices.
Daniel
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