Gut check.

Your goals are chosen.  They're well established.  Those are the targets you'll hit.

Either by convention and social norm or perhaps by deliberate choice, we focus our lives on a particular set of results.  If we're careless, our goals are the same that everyone has.  The common path is easy to find and follow.

The gateway is open and the path is wide and many find and follow it; it's the one that leads to ... well, you know.

The common path:
My life, My friends and school,
My family and house,
My education, My job,

My career and advancement
possessions and wealth
retirement and end

In it all, we hope to find happiness for ourselves, perhaps.

... but we can choose.
There are nobler goals.

If you have ...

In the background, those are our friends.     

It takes awhile to understand how many stunning truths there are in such concepts as these.  Seeing and not turning away is difficult.

Turn away, like everyone does from TV shots of hungry kids, and you're normal.  Or perhaps typical.  But if you were to decide to change the world, where would you start?

Go see for yourself.  Or ask us.

Qayin and Havel

Qayin, so the historical account tells us, killed Havel.

There's no record of the weapon used or of any interest in what it might have been.  At issue is not the weapon but the killing.  It was perhaps because of jealousy, but we don't really know.  After Qayin (Cain) killed his brother Havel (Abel), no one lamented over the weapon.

Our deeper  question, why might he have done it? What was the real reason?

Heart issues remain the more important ones, but they're hard to face and even harder to address effectively.  It's perhaps understandable that we might move on to less relevant targets and focus our efforts there.

The Arab Spring, Tahrir Square, Egypt - Christians
guarded Muslims, and Muslims guarded Christians
during the violent times.

 

 

In any endeavor, the hard questions are often the more important.

Falling back on gun control as an easier solution ignores the obvious, that murderous behavior is not brought about by the available weapon.

Not wise, but certainly understandable.  Tackling the actual cause would require of us a measure of greatness, of courage, of nobility, would it not?

Above average

Above average..?  But of course we are!

Folks in the job market today find themselves being examined and ranked for intelligence, education, experience, talent, ...
... competitive criteria for comparing one against another, perhaps.  It's as though there's a scale upon which you might find yourself, and it's tempting to believe there's something significant about your position on that scale, too.

In a given business circumstance, talent could make the difference.  Or intelligence might do it.  Or education, perhaps, will make the critical difference in the marketplace.  Is that what we want or need?

When was the last time employers thoughtfully considered wisdom, courage, or integrity as criteria for hiring.  Three decades, perhaps?  These traits are present or absent; it's not a competition, not a scale.

Meaningless innuendo unless you're a geek.  :)

But do we need these traits any more in our western world?

• Would a wise man press ahead here?  
• Would a courageous woman back down from that roadblock?  
• Would a person of integrity accept tasking along those lines?  

We struggle with these questions, hoping to go beyond the requirements of law to those of conscience and virtue.  It's the difference between deal makers and world changers.

Short version; when it falls to you, you're on your own; do the next right thing!

The above is a condensed extract from a few years of struggle.  Do I do what I'm told?  Yes, but only if ....  Do I follow the well-worn path others have created?  No, unless research supports ....  Am I being pig-headed or restrained by conscience?  To both, yes, but the guiding principle ....  Unfortunately, there are few simple answers.  
Did we expect it to be this difficult?  :)  OK, ok, ... wait a minute; this is really hard!  Nuts.

blessed/cursed ... blessed?

How do you like the 21st century so far?  

Everything on an even keel?

Which is it????

Sometimes we're told that those blessed with house and car and food and happiness are the ones favored by God.

And by extension, those without such blessings are perhaps without the same favor.  Or maybe they have  been robbed by the devil.

Can we make sense of that?

Wealth equals blessing and favor from God, the best of life ...

And ...
Poverty equals the worst ... it's where none of the blessings show up.

The favored of God have all these blessings; they don't need to pray 'daily bread' prayers.  They have no occasion of begging for help or crying out for justice.  They won't need to take a stand against the world.

Their children, those of these 'favored folks'; they have everything they need and more.  They're blessed with free schools and lots of television shows and places to go with their friends.  They have no worries about whether they'll go to high school and maybe college too.  They have little need to participate in feeding themselves or the rest of the family.  They don't need to tend a garden or understand why a crop might succeed.  They're the favored of God, they are.  For sure.

How's our world doing?
Right-side up?  Or not.

Dad grew up on an Oklahoma farm during the
Depression.  His perspective on pigs was from
first-hand experience.  'Happiness is for pigs',
he'd say and smile.  'Joy, however,

is divine!'

Realistically, quality of life as viewed from inside a western perspective seems to be a blessing in direct relationship to the level of wealth and luxury involved.  Is freedom from hardship truly a blessing?  Does a biblical worldview offer more information?

Can I give myself to a western lifestyle and be a true believer at the same time?  Where are the conflicts?  Can I invest most of my days for most of my life in accumulating possessions and net worth?  Is there a conflict between that and some other purpose or calling?

We wonder why faith might be ridiculed.  Perhaps it's because what's visible is, like much of western thinking, just a bit upside-down.

Is there a right-side up perspective?  What might the foundation pieces be?

Curious where the money went?

The great recession, or so the period has been called, has had a price tag.  It equates to the loss of about ten years economic progress for the working classes.  They've lost ground, and it will take about a decade to break even, more or less, for those who have the time and income available.  The poor lost more.

Not everybody lost out, though.  The rich actually continued to increase in annual income, further widening the gap between the wealthy and everyone else.

Prince Bandar Bin Sultan sells his luxurious 

Aspen, Colorado estate to Hedge Fund billionaire

Then there are the heavy hitters in hedge-fund and private equity businesses. Along with the investment bankers, these are the very people who have been blamed for the current financial woe’s of the world.  Of the world!  These very few people have become super rich, and while the global economy is in turmoil around us, they get to sail off into the sunset with bulging pockets, to lay back and wait for the next set of opportunities that will come along.

There are men and women in the finance industry who have made millions or hundreds of millions while delivering a deadly blow to the world. They did so knowingly without conscience or remorse, as best we've been able to determine. None have even begun to acknowledge the losses for which they are responsible.  Or the deaths.

In Africa, the number of chronically hungry people rose by 1 million a year in 2000-05 and by more than 6 million a year beginning in 2007-12.  That doesn't mean they're hungry because they missed a meal; it means they are starving.  With most of family income spent on corn meal, when prices doubled in 07, 400,000 deaths are attributable to Wall Street for the first recession year in eastern Africa alone.

Karma is only a killer if you are, someone said, intending to be humorous.  You wonder though, what it will be like for the greed-players after living a life of wealth and luxury, to realize that they are among the most loathsome of all of mankind, that they were selfish and brutal beyond measure, that their arrogance and hubris were visible through it all, and that they were the deceivers and murderers of innocent children and families. 

We hope for better.