AUTHOR: John Gillespie TITLE: Thoughts of the Day DATE: 12/30/2005 02:39:00 PM ----- BODY:

I was reading in Lamentations today just by chance really - it was one of those mornings where you open the Bible and you start reading where it lays... Not the greatest of ways to get into the Word no doubt but it still hit me deep with these words... "25 The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; 26 it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. 27 It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. 28 Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him. 29 Let him bury his face in the dust— there may yet be hope. 30 Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace. 31 For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. " Lam 3:25-31 I've been letting that sink in all day while I'm working. This is speaking about true brokeness before God and before the rest of us. So often I'm up so high on my high horse, to the extent that I feel hurt or let down when I'm corrected or sorted out by someone, or when I hear that somebody's been talking about me behind my back. And in truth, it does hurt, even if you are broken about it. But so often I'm not. So often that initial pang can turn into self-righteous anger, or indignation, that 'they don't have the right to...(fill in the blank)'. I claim to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. But if I'm being truly a disciple, which means I'm learning from who he is and becoming like him through a growing, deepening relationship, then I need to be taking his example to heart. And that means burying my face in the dust. That means turning the other cheek, and being willing to humble myself in the sight of God and my fellow humanity, and be willing to expose my shortcomings. Even if that means being misunderstood. even if that means rejection and sacrifice. "For men are not cast off by the Lord forever..." Liam and I were speaking this morning over pancakes, bacon, and maple syrup (with plenty of OJ and coffee) about how insecurity seems to be a part of the human condition. No matter what we do, we never seem to be able to entirely escape from it. I'm even insecure about my insecurities - I so despise being insecure that at any little insecurity which manifests itself I worry that I'm becoming insecure. Which only feeds my insecurity. Insecurity seems to be the thought that we will be discovered as not being able to 'measure up', and found outthat we're pretending. But if we're face in the dust, so low that the dirt's grinding between our teeth, then the only place that confidence can come from is God. If we make all our confidence in "the salvation of the Lord", that confidence enables us to be broken in our place of insecurity, to be honest about who we are, to get off our high horse and be willing to get battered on the other side of our face. Then, despite how we're perceived by ourselves or others, we are freed to live in God's confidence, in the confidence of His salvation. Once we reach the broken place, that's when God can make us back up into the people he'd have us be. He can put his treasure in these jars of clay. God loves to use the weakest of the world for his purpose. It demonstrates his greatness... I'm inspired today to be broken.

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: James Fletcher Baxter DATE:6/19/2006 02:45:00 AM Each individual human being possesses a unique, highly
developed, and sensitive perception of diversity. Thus
aware, man is endowed with a natural capability for enact-
ing internal mental and external physical selectivity.
Quantitative and qualitative choice-making thus lends
itself as the superior basis of an active intelligence.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. His title describes
his definitive and typifying characteristic. Recall
that his other features are but vehicles of experi-
ence intent on the development of perceptive
awareness and the following acts of decision and
choice. Note that the products of man cannot define
him for they are the fruit of the discerning choice-
making process and include the cognition of self,
the utility of experience, the development of value-
measuring systems and language, and the accultur-
ation of civilization.

The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits,
customs, and traditions, are the creative harvest of
his perceptive and selective powers. Creativity, the
creative process, is a choice-making process. His
articles, constructs, and commodities, however
marvelous to behold, deserve neither awe nor idol-
atry, for man, not his contrivance, is earth's own
highest expression of the creative process.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. The sublime and
significant act of choosing is, itself, the Archimedean
fulcrum upon which man levers and redirects the
forces of cause and effect to an elected level of qual-
ity and diversity. Further, it orients him toward a
natural environmental opportunity, freedom, and
bestows earth's title, The Choicemaker, on his
singular and plural brow.

Deterministic systems, ideological symbols of abdication
by man from his natural role as earth's Choicemaker,
inevitably degenerate into collectivism; the negation of
singularity, they become a conglomerate plural-based
system of measuring human value. Blunting an awareness
of diversity, blurring alternatives, and limiting the
selective creative process, they are self-relegated to
a passive and circular regression.

Tampering with man's selective nature endangers his
survival for it would render him impotent and obsolete
by denying the tools of diversity, individuality,
perception, criteria, selectivity, and progress.
Coercive attempts produce revulsion, for such acts
are contrary to an indeterminate nature and nature's
indeterminate off-spring, man the Choicemaker.

Until the oppressors discover that wisdom only just
begins with a respectful acknowledgment of The Creator,
The Creation, and The Choicemaker, they will be ever
learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth.
The rejection of Creator-initiated standards relegates
the mind of man to its own primitive, empirical, and
delimited devices. It is thus that the human intellect
cannot ascend and function at any level higher than the
criteria by which it perceives and measures values.

Additionally, such rejection of transcendent criteria
self-denies man the vision and foresight essential to
decision-making for survival and progression. He is left,
instead, with the redundant wreckage of expensive hind-
sight, including human institutions characterized by
averages, mediocrity, and regression.

Humanism, mired in the circular and mundane egocentric
predicament, is ill-equipped to produce transcendent
criteria. Evidenced by those who do not perceive
superiority and thus find themselves beset by the shifting
winds of the carnal-ego; i.e., moods, feelings, desires,
appetites, etc., the mind becomes subordinate: a mere
device for excuse-making and rationalizing self-justifica-
tion.

The carnal-ego rejects criteria and self-discipline for such
instruments are tools of the mind and the attitude. The
appetites of the flesh have no need of standards for at the
point of contention standards are perceived as alien, re-
strictive, and inhibiting. Yet, the very survival of our
physical nature itself depends upon a maintained sover-
eignty of the mind and of the spirit.

It remained, therefore, to the initiative of a personal
and living Creator to traverse the human horizon and
fill the vast void of human ignorance with an intelli-
gent and definitive faith. Man is thus afforded the
prime tool of the intellect - a Transcendent Standard
by which he may measure values in experience, anticipate
results, and make enlightened and visionary choices.

Only the unique and superior God-man Person can deserved-
ly displace the ego-person from his predicament and free
the individual to measure values and choose in a more
excellent way. That sublime Person was indicated in the
words of the prophet Amos, "...said the Lord, Behold,
I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel."
Y'shua Mashiyach Jesus said, "If I be lifted up I will
draw all men unto myself."

- from The HUMAN PARADIGM ----- --------