9.14.14
“…God has made us what we are…[He]
made us to do good works…planned in advance for us to live our lives doing…”
“While
wandering a deserted beach at dawn, I saw a man in the distance bending and
throwing as he walked the endless stretch toward me. As he came near, I could
see that he was throwing starfish, abandoned on the sand by the tide, back into
the sea. I asked him why? He said that the sun would dry the starfish and they
would die. I commented that there were thousands of starfish on miles and miles
of beach. How could he ever make a difference? He smiled as he picked up the
next starfish. Tossing it back into the sea he said, "It makes a
difference for this one." ― Loren Eiseley
The
story by Eiseley begs the question: what am I doing to make a difference? Ralph
Waldo Emerson wrote: “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be
useful…to be compassionate, to… make some difference…” Are you making a
difference? Just asking…Pastor Keith
9.7.14
Some of you
have spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder. There, I said it. Sorry if that
sounds not so PC. The fact is you get bored with spiritual things. You have trouble
concentrating on God. Your time with Him has become mundane and full of
distractions. If this is you, you may have Spiritual ADD - being so distracted that you
get entangled in the problems of things all around you and loose focus. Often, it’s easier to get spiritually distracted
than physically distracted. Think of it
like this. As long as we keep our eyes on the Lord, we can seemingly do the
impossible. But look away from Him, look at the challenges of life, and we
sink. The reason why some of you are sinking today is that you’ve got your eyes
on your problem, on the circumstance, on your difficulty. You’ve taken your
eyes off the Lord. The simple Rx
for Spiritual ADD is to refocus.
Look at this from Proverbs 4: “…Keep
your eyes focused…look straight ahead…” Refocusing is hard. It takes a conscious choice. My prayer as you
read this post is that God will cause you to turn your attention from the
distractions to the Devine. Peace….Pastor
Keith