September 22, 2020 – Click here to listen
My wife and I have been packing up for our move to the keys. We should be finished in the next few days and will be moving to a rental home for a couple of months while construction is being completed on our new home.
I went down to check on it this weekend and as always was blown away by the beauty of the turquoise blue water, the gently swaying coconut and palm trees. There are boats everywhere, fishing tackle and bait stores, scuba companies, seafood restaurants, sea shell venders, and key lime pie factories. It is paradise found!
If one doesn’t like the ocean, they have no business being there. I have found that indeed some like the tropics and ocean and some don’t. Some like cold weather, big cities, and no humidity; I like warm weather and lots of humidity. You are different – I am different.
God created us all as unique human beings. He obviously likes us to be different from one another, otherwise he would have made us all the same. So if God likes us to be different why should any of us insist that we all look, think, and act alike?
I’m a conservative and cannot understand why anyone would be a liberal. I cannot even think like one much less understand their point of view. It is the supreme test for me to accept them for what they are. I sometimes have mused that perhaps a wire did not get properly hooked up in their brain and it is shorting out with sparks flying everywhere causing them to malfunction. Of course they think the same about me.
Huh?
But I accept that they are different, just as I accept there will be atheists, bunny huggers, perverts, and saints and sinners of all types. I suppose the most important aspect of this is that accepting the premise that folks are unique is not the same as accepting them to force me to engage in things I dislike and more importantly those that are morally wrong.
This distinction seems to be lost on so many people today. I read just this morning where a truck driver in Portland Oregon was stopped by an angry mob and forced to give a Black Lives Matters salute and clinched fist and shout the BLM “war cry” before being allowed to continue on his way. We’ve seen similar behavior aimed at diners at restaurants, people walking down the street, corporations, teachers, celebrities, and so on. In essence some want us to give up our freedom to choose how to think and act.
I cannot accept giving up my freedom and will not. It is one of the reasons I have an AR 15. In my youth I was incarcerated a few times and I will never forget how hard it was to listen as those steel doors slammed behind me when I entered one of those hell holes. The moment I was incarcerated freedom no longer existed, and we were told when to go to sleep, when to get up, when to exercise, where to work, how to dress, when we could talk, and we even had to walk inside yellow lines painted on the floor. While some seemed to cope with it quite well, I was miserable the entire time. I never did acclimate and was in a rage most all the time.
We should cherish our freedom and be proud of our individuality. If you want to wear an Armani suit and crisp white shirt complete with Gucci shoes, then wear them proudly. Just please don’t try and force me to exchange my Bermuda shorts, tee shirt, fishing cap, and flip flops so I can look like you.
I agree with God that it would be a dull world if we were all identical. I appreciate what God has done to help us avoid the boredom of being alike. I just pray that He will prevent those who want to force us to march like lemmings into the sea from attaining their dream.
Live and let live and love and be loved that is the way of Jesus. The Lord is what the world needs, but don’t hold your breath that everyone will hop on your wagon. The electrical storm in the minds of the demented who only desire to pursue evil are determined to force you to share in their miserable existence and we must resist. The best way to resist is by embracing God and all for which He stands and praying to Him ceaselessly.
I once told some inmates at a prison ministry event that they should try following Jesus for 90 days and if they didn’t like the results, He would gladly refund their misery.
Hmmm . . . I wonder how many took me up on that offer?
1 Corinthians 12:27
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.