For starters....yeh, I'm using this account. You all knew it was only a matter of time before I made the switch. Though I will not abandon xanga just yet.
A more grown-up blog for more grown-up thoughts, I suppose...
Its amazing how captivating a little box can be. Nothing but flickers of light and bites of sound, and yet it can draw you in and keep you there. A clever device of satan, no doubt.
A whole day utterly wasted. (Well, from noon on anyway....)
It's so addicting. And it's twistedly so. Example: my parents are huge fans of Law and Order. What a sick show! Yes, I realize that atrocities do occur, but to watch it on the edge of our seats like fans at a sporting event....it's horrible. And nothing good comes of it. And yet, you see the first 5 minutes and you're there for an hour, wading through the violence, the drama, the crime, just to see it resolved.
And I suppose it hit home a lot today, because for the first time in I don't know when, I found myself watching tv by myself. I started with my family, but when people got up and left, there I was: glued to the tube.
Knowing all the while I had plenty that I could have been reading. Verses that I could have been memorizing. Or just chillin with Jesus.
How often do you hear people talk about how they're addicted to reading the Bible, or praying, or meditating on God's Word? Where they just started into something and then found the time flying by without them wanting to stop.
Not nearly as often as so many other things.
In fact, I wonder if I've ever really heard that sort of statement.
Thank God for grace. We would be nothing without it. How many graven images have we carved out for ourselves? When we've pointlessly wasted time that could have been spent in the Lord?
The Gospel for this morning was Matthew 13:
Now I've never been one for gardening, but I've done enough of it to know that it's hard work. You work all day long pulling weeds in the heat of the day, sweat dripping from your brow, knees and back aching from the work. Then you spend the evening watering the plants that you want to grow. And the next day, the blasted weeds are back. Your work is never done.
So it is with our faith, I suppose. We never reach that point where we can sit back and admire our lives/work/faith (which is all a gift anyway, so we should be giving thanks for it) (we will get that chance someday, and it'll be awesome!), because it's at that instant that satan is waiting to pounce. The weeds will grow back rapidly if there's no one tending the garden.
Actually the gardening is a better image than I'd initially thought.....
How do you garden?
On your knees.
How do we cultivate our faith? The same way.
And it's not something that can be done every so often, and then let alone. It's a constant commitment to delving into the Word, worshipping, praying, listening every day. Not just once in awhile.
And that's why we need grace, because that's way too big of a task for us to tackle ourselves.
I don't know if in our fallen nature it's even possible to become addicted to these sorts of things, but God willing, and by His grace, I hope to find out!
2 comments:
Whoa dang, Hershinater. I'm going to have to start writing on mine again, if you're going to be blogspotting it! Now, the chances of that actually happening with everything else I should prolly be doing... :)
Also, hu-rrah for Lutherans and Catholics using the same calendar for Sunday readings. It hit home today because, the 'rents being away, I had to water the garden, and it took freaking forever. Plants are thirsty little devils, I tell you what.
so true. the main why i don't own a tv. and yet it's so easy to get caught up in /anything/ else. we need to pray for the passion and desire to pray, read, and enjoy God and His glorious gifts.
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