Blue Sky

The sky is very blue today. It is 70 degrees and just looks wonderful out there. I wonder if it is a good idea to have window in my office on days like this.

I see my car parked right outside my window and know that in the trunk are my golf clubs that do not have any 2008 grass stains on them yet. I think about my 4:30-5:30 meeting and then my 6PM to 8PM meeting and start feeling like I did back in high school when I'd just escape and go to the park.

Part of me wants to just get up, leave, and go outside to play. Yet, responsibilites cry out to me and so instead I take a break from work and decide to post on my blog. Today I met with a woman who could only verbalize that is was time to "take care of herself." She could not think about the fact that her teenage daughter was pregnant and maybe needed her. No, she could only think about doing what was best for herself. She felt she deserved that. We talked about God and she stated that she decided a long time ago that God did not care about her. If He did then her life would have been much easier, she reasoned.

Really? Is that what God's purpose is for our lives...to make them easier? If it is then I'm doing life all wrong. Easy is not a word I'd use to describe a day in the life of me. In fact, if I were honest I'd say most days were hard and filled with challenges. Could I choose to walk away from those things? Yes. Will I? No.

I'm reminded of a sermon I heard decades ago about the ant that never stops planning for the winter, working hard all summer. If you read the Bible passage too quickly you may miss the fact that winter does not mean time off, it includes the gathering of the harvest that the ant worked so hard at storing. No, I don't think God wants to make our lives easy. A great example of why can been seen now in our culture. The easier life gets the lazier we get. Physically and intellectually. So many people I meet seem to have just stopped using critical thinking. So much information is fed to them through television and other media that they just accept what they hear as fact instead of doing the hard work of researching a subject for themselves.

I see this with how people, like the woman I met today, approach "knowing" anything about God. Rarely will they read the Bible for themselves and rarer still will they investigate what they learn if they do read the Bible. No, it is easier to build Biblical knowledge off bumper stickers, the nightly news, and popular sitcoms. It makes me sad.

When was the last time you read a good Book? Have you spent even 20 minutes in the Bible lately? I must confess that the internet has helped to make me lazy in my Bible reading. I can go to a website and just search on a word or a passage and let the computer bring it up for me. I don't have to even open the paper pages of a book anymore. But what have I lost?

The search for a particular passage by turning to Ephesians or the Psalms always led me to other treasures that I wasn't looking for. Hmmmm...suddenly the old saying "physician heal thyself" comes to mind. I guess before I point the finger of laziness at others, or our culture, I must first look at myself. I think I'll stop posting now. I suddenly have the urge to read my Bible for the remainder of this short break from work.

A Lesson from the Ants
Proverbs 6:6-8
"Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and become wise! Though they have no prince or governor or ruler to make them work, they labor hard all summer, gathering food for the winter."