I’ve often sympathized with those NFL players who get drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles. Imagine that you are one of their running backs sprinting full speed up the field and then you get hit as though by two freight trains with a vicious bone crushing sandwich style tackle between two blazing fast 300 pounder rock-hard linemen.
You get up filled with pain and woozy and try to stagger back to the huddle, and the crowd starts booing you.
Huh?
Nowhere are the “Boo Birds” more abundant in the NFL than Philadelphia. And let me tell you there are plenty of Boo Birds in Greenville Florida too. Yesterday the “Boo Birds” were in full force after my Words for the Day entry detailing my crude text message to a buddy. (OMG! I said fart.)
I imagine some of those Philadelphia football players look at that bunch of obnoxious “fans” and would love to get them out there on the field for just one play. I have similar feelings towards those who often criticize me for my efforts.
In an attempt to provide some sort of spiritual intercourse in the lives of my employees I began writing WFTD 5 days per week approximately 15 years ago. As far as I know I pioneered the very first blog, when I instructed my head programmer, (ironically an avowed atheist), to write the software to automate it in June of 2000. Some two million words later, today June 4th, I’m still slugging away.
I admit my approach is unconventional. Those who remain subscribed seem to prefer an approach that is based more on reality than a naiveté view of a world of bliss.
Imagine that you are approached by the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, (gals can substitute man here). She walks up to you and you are near salivating and then you notice she has a large ugly wart on her nose.
Gross!
Then she smiles and her two front teeth are missing and the rest are stained with streaks of chocolate brown.
Whoa!
She greets you spewing profanity in an Appalachian dialect.
Say what!
God created our world as a perfect little blue marble and suspended it in an awesome Universe that continues to burst forth dazzling arrays of color as it has done for only He knows how long. He created a perfect garden on His earth, and placed His most prized possession, Adam, in the midst of it and allowed him to live there in peace and harmony. He gave him a wife, Eve, and they enjoyed their paradise eating fruit from trees of every description and choosing names for all of the teeming wildlife. Each day was sheer ecstasy.
And then sin came along and changed what was perfect to become imperfect and ugly warts began to appear and immediately it became “paradise lost”.
Regardless of what Joel Olsteen and the prosperity bunch will crow about, life is tough, death is real, and if you live long enough you will see tough times. I see things as they really are and not how they were in the Garden of Eden and that is how I tell it.
The Bible states in Genesis that God declared to Adam and Eve that because of their sin, their days, (and ours), would be “short and full of trouble”, and that we would “work by the sweat of our brow in the thorns and the thistles.” He cursed the ground because of us and He cursed us for our disobedience.
So my friends I try to make the best of my cursed fallen state in a now imperfect cursed world. Some people prefer to hear that everything is peachy cream and vanilla. Well you need to tune in to them and not me, because I don’t see the world through rose tinted glasses. I’ve lived through tough times, tragedy, and anguish. I’ve been washed in the blood of the Lamb Jesus Christ, but I’m not perfect and neither is this world anymore.
I don’t care if you unsubscribe or don’t like my musings about life. I don’t care if you agree with my interpretations of the Bible or my home spun, Seinfeld approach of what’s going on in my life and how I cope. I don’t charge for subscriptions or even know how many people read the blasted thing and could care less.
If you can do better, then get into the arena. Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech about it that is far more eloquent than this old redneck can muster:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
There is plenty of room for more folks to try to help others cope with life and give them hope. Start your own devotional, get into the arena, drip honey and sugar ad nauseum if you like. Me, I’m just Bob and I don’t pretend to be anything special because I’m not. I’m just a weak sinner who was wonderfully saved by the mercy and grace of a wonderful fabulous God whom I love with all my heart.
So in the words of Thomas Paine, (just full of inspiring quotes today), Boo Birds either “lead, follow, or get (the hell) out of the way!” I added “the hell” . . . Boo, boo, hiss, hiss, boo
Rev. 3:15
I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot: I would you were cold or hot. So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth . . .