Sometimes I wonder why it was that I was the one called. Birdie is the one with the keen insight into human nature. I feel at times like a bumbling idiot next to her. She said something yesterday that has taken some time to sink in (probably because I have the densest cranial skeletal structure known to man). What she said was profound in its simplicity. She said, "All of us make choices. In each and every action we make, we have made a choice." Now deep down in the subterranean depths of my brain I know this, but it seems that I have chosen to live in a world of reactions rather than actively choosing to do the right thing. In my density I never considered this to be making a "choice" until now. The problem with living this way is that it inevitably will lead you in the wrong direction. Someone will get hurt and it is usually those that you love that pay the price. This is where I find myself today. I have choices to make. Do I continue to be reactionary or to I pick myself up by the bootstraps, and make the active positive choices that will ultimately lead to a better future for our family.
Ironically, this dovetails with one of the themes of one of Birdie’s favorite movies. It is a children’s movie, called "Meet the Robinsons". Along with a theme on the importance of family, the main character had a motto "Keep moving forward". In this application it had to do with persevering through failure as success will eventually come. I can see the spiritual connection here as well and it came to me when I truly grasped Birdie’s words from yesterday. To keep moving forward is a choice to do so, actively. It is also a choice to move beyond the constraints of your past. A choice to not let what others think (real or perceived) to effect your choice to live for the only One who maters in the end. So the choice each of us has is to wallow in our own self pity (what I have done for years) or to make the choice as I have, to Keep Moving Forward.
4 comments:
Wallowing is highly under-rated. :)
Blessings and strength to you as you seek to walk forward. The steps don't get easier, but you do get stronger.
That is a great movie on so many levels. It is nice to see I am not the only one in the world with a thick skull.
Sounds very positive to me.
I suppose, as you, that moving forward is better than sitting still. However this sort of thinking can get us into real trouble. If we fail to know that Jesus is God while we are sitting still then moving is moving just to be moving and inevitably we will find that we are treading water in a dead religion. Jesus leads us not to move ourselves into a dead religion but calls us to follow Him into a Son relationship with Himself. As Sons, we are released from the grip of sin and of death. As Sons, we have the Holy Spirit abiding within us.
Men like Noah and Abram had the heavens-Psalms 19-and also prophets to know when they were still and to lead them when they were moving. Moses and the sons of Israel had the Cloud to lead them by day and the Pillar of Fire to lead them at night. God was in the Fire and the Cloud until the Tabernacle was built and eventually in the Temple until the fall of the Temple and thus the fall of the Old Testament.
Now, we are in the New Testament covenant. The only thing that has not changed is God, He is immutable. God is no longer in a geographically place as a fixed temple. He is now abiding in the hearts of His Called Out Ones, the believers, the ones that believe that Jesus is he only door to salvation and has accepted Him as Savior. The book of Hebrews tells us very early on that OT type prophets have been left in the OT and are not a part of NT life. We are all called to be priest of the NT life.
This gives me great comfort to know that God The Holy Spirit, the one that moved on the face of the waters of creation, the one that raised my savior from the grave, the infinite personal power that sustains the universe is the one that abides in my heart. To find ourselves crushed under a load from time to time is simply human, but to stay there, for the most part, is a failure to see just who Christ really is. If we Know who Christ is and that The Infinite God abides in our heart and we cannot shake depression then we may consider that there may be some underlying medical cause. If this is the case, there may be help available.
Paul in the NT tells us in no uncertain term that an idle mind is the devil's workshop and yet we are told to be still and to know the God is God, and we need to yield our very lives to Him, to be led into places where only The Omnipotent God can lead.
Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
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