O God, You are my God;
Early will I seek You;
My soul thirsts for You;
My flesh longs for You;
In a dry and thirsty land
Where there is no water
I was reflecting on that last line and thinking that God truly is the living water. I believe that we cannot experience His goodness and grace until we truly give up control and let Him be in the driver’s seat.
This thing with Starbucks – read my previous post – has really gotten me thinking some more about it. I have been doing research on some other “The Way I See It” stories that are printed on their cups. First, here is the worst one that I have found so far:
“My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don’t make that mistake yourself. Life’s too damn short.” – Armistead Maupin, author (Story#43).
And here is the one that I like the best, from Rick Warren (author of The Purpose Driven Life):
“You are not an accident. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose. Focusing on yourself will never reveal your real purpose. You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense. Only in God do we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance and our destiny.” – Rick Warren (#92).
I was having some Starbucks this morning, and I always like to read the cups for those “The Way I See It” stories. Story #250 says…
“In reality hell is not such an intention of God as it is an invention of man. God is love and people are precious. Authentic truth is not so much taught or learned as it is remembered. Somewhere in your pre-incarnate consciousness you were loved absolutely because you were. Loved absolutely, and in reality, you still are! Remember who you are!” - Bishop Carlton Pearson
I love to initiate conversation topics. Notice how I said conversation, not controversy. That is not my goal. It is for the reason of conversation that I am posting this one.
My Basic Political Views
I do not consider myself a republican or a democrat – that is to say that I do not vote strictly one way or the other, however, I tend to lean towards conservative views.
Here are three issues that I feel strongly about:
Have you ever made a decision that you know you will regret?? If you just said no, then you are lying! Of course you have!
This past week or so – since Thursday (9-13) – has been, I think, the roughest week of my life! And, I can’t see the end, I am still in the middle of it!
Well, I think it all came to a head tonight (9-18). I lost my cool and punched a wall really, really hard! And, I will just say that is never a good idea. Plus the fact that I missed according to punching standards.
We face choices on a personal level daily:
What shall we eat? - We can choose to eat healthy or just “pig out” on junk food.
Whom should we vote for? – We can take the time to pray and study the candidates positions and vote accordingly or we can refuse to vote. When we do not vote, we are actually making a choice to allow others to choose who shall rule over us.
Whom shall we marry? – This is a serious life-time commitment and should never be gone into without God’s guidance. Making this choice foolishly or based on emotion alone has brought much heartache to many a person.
**I dare say this is true of a (potential) dating situation, as well**
Today is my birthday. And it has made me stop and think. Now that I am in my senior year of college, I am thinking back to my senior year of high school which started in 2001. I was a 16 year old high school senior…how often does that even happen. Most people in my class were 18, so of course then I thought that was not cool…now I think it actually was cool!
I can remember the plans that I had set in my senior year. I had graduated in the top quarter in my class, so my plan for college was to be able to graduate college by the time I turned 20 – well we can see how that worked out! (Grrrr #1).
