Fate, Forgiveness and Friendship

"It's a life and death situation."

When this line is used in a story either real or fiction, we think of it in the usual way: hanging off the edge of a cliff, being an out of control drug addict, cancer, being held at gun point, etc. you get the picture. We think about the physical life of the person, which in turn ends the social life and the work life. Some people don't think about, believe in or talk about the spiritual life. Some people don't like to talk about what they believe and why they believe it, as a general rule. It means that one would have to stand up for what he/she believes. It can be controversial.

So I have been thinking about mortality and I can't remember a time in my life that I haven't. I remember at 10 years old contemplating the end of my own young life. When people bring it up, I usually don't comment. Even recently a friend said, "maybe you're too young to be thinking about your own mortality." I don't think youth has anything to do with it. Maybe the general happy go lucky youths don't think about it. I guess I had a couple of seasons of not thinking about it but overall it is one of those things that concerns me.

I care about the here and now, a little more about my future and the future of my children but I guess I give a glance heavenward quite often. When I think about people in general, I think of their physical and mental health, emotional well-being and the state of their soul. People and their lives matter and all people are in a life and death situation.

The wages of sin is death. Sin has got to be paid for in order to enter the Presence of a Holy God.
(May 2010)

What prevents a person from accepting forgiveness? In a word pride but the explanation is not that simple to understand or maybe it is. Perhaps, it is light finally dawning on marble head. Perfectionism is the culprit. I don't think that I should make mistakes. I make them and most often I admit them and ask for forgiveness. Intellectually, I understand how important it is to learn from one's mistakes. However, there is a good possibility that what was pronounced regularly, "I may not always be right, but I am never wrong," was also modeled for me. It seems to be ingrained. Like I have an allergic reaction to forgiveness, when I think I have made a mistake that I should not have made. I think to myself, you must pay for that mistake. People can't just let you off the hook.
Some of the most successful people have made lots mistakes: Einstein, Edison, Ford, Hughes and Gates just to name a few. The key is to learn from them. I realize that these types of mistakes are not the same as the one's we make when interacting with people and hurting them. However, if I could see that the fact that mistakes is one of the things that ought to bring us together as human beings, then my relationships would continue to grow.

Even though these are two types of mistakes, they both miss the mark. The Oxford dictionary says, "an action or judgement that is misguided or wrong," for their definition of "mistake."
“How many people are completely successful in every department of life? Not one. The most successful people are the ones who learn from their mistakes and turn their failures into opportunities.” – Zig Ziglar
(December 2010)

Learning how to be a friend and finding that it can be a really hard thing to learn.
(December 2010)

We live and die. God keeps saying yes to the human race. People keep getting together (some marry and some don't) and having babies. We still have a planet and the world continues to spin on it's axis and most of us expect the sun to rise in the morning. Yes, this is a bit of a heavy post but that is kind of like life sometimes.