Episodes
Friday Oct 13, 2023
”Perspectives For a Culture in Crisis:” A Noble Calling - A Noble Response
Friday Oct 13, 2023
Friday Oct 13, 2023
At times, the innumerable dialogues regarding the state of our nation appear to be less dialogues and more something akin to agenda mongering and rights crusading. It seems that we have hijacked the solemn rights and sacred liberties afforded us and have forced them into servitude around our ego-centric agendas and myopic special interests. The altar of self is where nations perish. And on that altar we have too often found ourselves tediously picking apart the fabric of liberty and meticulously editing the founding principles of this nation so that we might justify those agendas and rationalize those interests in the name of the very freedom we are abusing.
In response to these actions, leaders and heralds of debatable origins spout bold platitudes and chart even bolder courses that often have little substance and are void of the balance achieved through the merging of wisdom seasoned by time, the vision gifted through deep struggle, and the astuteness afforded by heritage. It seems that we are adrift on the tides of whimsy instead of the currents of calling, and that the sails borne by this ship of state are too often driven by the fickle winds of politically-correct agendas and bane opportunists instead of buoyed firm by the hard-core values born of faith and legacy.
And has the insanity of such realities been adopted as our norm? Has our identity as a proud people become the mess that we’ve permitted it to become? Is this who we are, and are we satisfied with those who of their limited vision and selfish notions run on anemic platforms that perpetuate this very mentality while at the very same time saying those platforms do not? And in the mess of it all, have we chosen to follow those who talk about what has perished with themselves having little to no idea of what has actually perished?
A Longing Undefined
There seems to be a longing born of a great absence. And there is likewise a passionate searching arising from that absence that appears to be seizing this nation today. In a malaise spawned of comfort we have increasingly distanced ourselves from the founding principles of our nation, yet we have not distanced ourselves so far that we fail to feel the bruising impact of this profound absence. And it is within this perplexing state that the soul of an entire nation of people are finding themselves plagued by a sense that something has perished that should never have perished. And in this, there is an ever-stirring sense that it is somehow our solemn duty to find this thing that has perished and restore it so that this cherished nation might rise to heights that excel those summited at even at its most glorious moments.
The Core Challenge
While it may appear simplistic, I would suggest that we begin with something simply powerful. I would suggest that this grand undertaking might begin by reclaiming two simple yet potently unifying principles upon which this nation was rigorously founded.
First, I would suggest that freedom that is not exercised for the common good is freedom absconded and assaulted. Freedom exercised for self is nothing more than greed in disguise, for to hoard assets of any kind is to simultaneously move someone else somewhere else into a deeper state of impoverishment. And to create scandalous agendas driven by self-interest is to sequester others with the shackles of our unrestrained ambitions. Therefore, freedom rightly exercised on behalf of the person standing next to us is impoverishment decisively crushed under the heels of liberty, and spurious agendas wholly exposed under the piercing light of principle. And when these things transpire, freedom is free to be free. And nothing man can devise can stand in the way of that.
Second, I would further suggest that morals abandoned as a means of granting ourselves permission that these morals would not have granted us is freedom traded for license. Such a trade-off is nothing less than cultural suicide. Freedom is never license, and we would be wise to understand that the distinction between the two is so utterly profound that they cannot exist in proximity to one another. Rather, freedom is the manifestation of a deeply held confidence that if we are afforded choice, mankind is innately principled by morals and sufficiently sacrificial in nature due to an adherence to these morals that we will fight all lesser impulses and consistently choose with selfless integrity. Without these timeless morals, decay and anarchy will be our lot. With them, the impossible will be our servant.
A Noble Calling
It is my belief that we are a far greater people than we have chosen to become. I would stand by the conviction that we are not what we have fallen to, and inherently we know this. And in the carnage of freedoms abused and morals abandoned there yet lies tremendous potential. And that potential lies not in legislative bodies, or towering institutions, or stirring platitudes, or political platforms of any design.
Rather, this potential resides in each of us. For great nations are built on individual people all of type and sort who seize the principles of freedom for all, who zealously hold to timeless morals despite the cost, and who join with other like-minded people in an indomitable march of mankind that nothing in all of mankind can stand against. It is the common man and the common woman who intentionally lives out these principles in their sphere of influence, whether that be large or small, that changes lives, awakens nations, and alters history.
May we all take such stands. And as a result, may there emerge a ground swell of epic restoration unprecedented that sweeps our hearts, seizes our souls, and restores the greatness that has been the enduring hallmark of this great nation.
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Wednesday Oct 11, 2023
Wednesday Oct 11, 2023
The majesty of our humanity and the capabilities laid out within us are nothing short of marvelous; so much so that we are barely cognizant of it. All of us run thick with untapped potential. We are rich with possibility and formidably equipped to tease the cusp of the impossible and to overcome it in the teasing. The essence of our being is immense beyond words and the breadth of it eclipses any syntax to frame it all. Despite the incomprehensible complexity of it all, the entirety of this essence is precisely consolidated and ingeniously joined so that the full measure of it might be released without any of it wasted or missed in the releasing. We are crafted to enhance all that exists around us and to make everything immeasurably more than what is. We are marvelous in ways so grand that such marvel escapes us although it resides right within each of us. Indeed, we are created in just this way.
This potential is not something of muse, as we might presume it to be since we tend to see so little of it. It’s not some hollow ideal that is more the trappings of some imaginative author who spins such ideas because they don’t have the courage to face the realities of who or what we really are. This is not about some feeble attempt to bolster our belief in ourselves as we watch the worst of ourselves create a world that we’re turning into the worst of itself. This potential is real. Very real. It may visit us rarely as it is much easier to access the lesser side of ourselves. But, it is real and it is always waiting.
Playground Feuds and Turf Wars
We have misplaced the majesty of our humanity in the lesser battles that we readily (and rather ignorantly) join. We cast ourselves as heroes selflessly battling for the soul of a community, a family or a nation when in fact we are engaged in playgrounds feuds of no greater importance than those played out on elementary playgrounds. We lay claim to some turf, which is less about what the turf might actually be and more about the fact that it’s turf (whatever it might be). We see ourselves on some colossal pilgrimage born of calling or destiny or the rallying of the masses against some great evil, however we have justified it. It must be pointed out that at times the pilgrimages are in fact colossal and of significant importance, but too many times what’s colossal is the appetite of our egos verses the worthiness of the venture. And so, too often we engage in these dirty little mongering turf wars that are more the stuff of mud-slinging than anything that might raise up humanity or change the course of history itself.
We wallow in the bane of blustering banter and then we gorge it fat on reckless arguments whose goal is to win, with us long having forgotten what exactly it is that we’re trying to win. Everything becomes a tit-for-tat circus of push and shove that might be attributed to two toddlers fighting over a toy that neither of them really wants in the first place. The focus becomes on finding some weakness, some point of hidden vulnerability, some crack in the proverbial armor that we can exploit in the pursuit of pursuing. We want to posture ourselves as some sort of valiant and sturdy victor, and if perchance we fall to the throes of defeat we then position ourselves as the victimized victim whose defeat clearly illustrates the impenetrable validity of their cause. And in the depravity and insanity of all of this we have misplaced the majesty of our humanity and we have wholly abandoned our calling.
To Reclaim Our Majesty
Might it be time to be accountable to who we’ve become so that we can make ourselves accountable to what we can be? Are we willing to divest ourselves of all the lesser things that we have elevated as greater things and engage in both a pointed and painful evaluation of who we’ve become? And once we’ve done that, are we brave enough to look at the damage that we’re incurred in the becoming? Can we relinquish our claim to whatever bit of turf we’ve claimed and lay our playground feuds to rest in deference to a cause far greater than the tiny space that we occupy? Can we shake ourselves out of ourselves sufficiently to wake up to the far greater things that lay ‘round about us? Can we begin to see others as less enemies and more people whose differing views may inform our own? At what point we will understand that partnership and camaraderie must be preserved even when differences of beliefs or opinions would do their level best to blast us into warring camps? When will we forfeit what we’ve become in order to become something so vastly superior to what we’ve become?
It’s not that such a shift is impossible (despite the fact that the behaviors exhibited in our world might suggest otherwise). But in the face of the reckless insanity all around us, will we dare to dare? Will we raise ourselves up to embrace the fullness of our humanity? Will we cast off the scourge of selfish agendas and the saber-rattling born of insatiable egos? Will we be what we’ve chosen not to be at whatever cost we might pay to do so, recognizing that the cost of not doing so is far, far greater? Will we shed all that we’ve become to become all that we can be? In essence, will we reclaim the majesty of our humanity as it was created and tenderly fashioned to be?
I Believe
I am utterly confident in our ability to do all of those things. I have great hope in humanity. I have even greater hope in the God that bestowed us with abilities that in fact mirrored His own. And for that reason, I have a pervading and insatiable hope. Though some might say so, I do not believe that kind of hope to be misplaced. I believe in us; in you and me. I believe that we have not done well, but I believe we can yet do very well. I believe in something better. I believe that we can join together in a mutual assault on the mounting challenges in our world instead of engaging in mounting assaults on each other. I believe, and I hope that everyone of us might join me in that belief. And in that joining might we rigorously inventory how we can be different. And then let us go and begin the process of making things different. Let us reclaim the majesty of our humanity in the care of humanity.
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Finally, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
Podcast Short: We Are More - Understanding Our Capacity
Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
We Are More - Understanding Our Capacity
“Whatever you see within yourself, let it be the whole of yourself. For too often we have been brutalized by our own sense of inadequacy and we’ve been held hostage to the lesser choices born of such a debilitating sense of self. Know this, that latent within you there lies more than ample resources begging to be called forth to smash the chains forged of such an incapacitating sense of self. And it is my prayer that you would press against everything within you that would hold you back, and that you would raise whatever voice you have and extend that call.”
You are more than you realize. A lot more. You’ve probably heard that before, and if you haven’t, you’re long overdue. You are more than you realize. But the thing is, we don’t feel that we are ‘more.’ If anything, the things that happened to us would suggest the opposite…that we’re less than what we hoped we were (and probably a whole lot less). Whether that’s failure (in any of the million different ways that we fail), or ridicule, or jobs lost, or relationships that blew up, or dreams that went up in smoke, or friends that walked away, or opportunities that drifted away, or family members who were critical to the point that we wished they went away…or whatever it might be. The statement that “we are more than we realize” just doesn’t seem to fit this stuff.
In my recent book, “The Self That I Long to Believe In,” I wrote this:
“The majesty of our humanity and the capabilities laid out within us are nothing short of marvelous; so much so that we are barely cognizant of it. That in and of itself may be why we don’t recognize them and therefore don’t believe that they exist. All of us run deep with untapped potential that is rustling just under the surface of our lives waiting to be unleashed.”
We are ‘more.’ Our circumstances don’t have the power to refute that or change that. For sure, our circumstances can lead us to believe that we’re not ‘more,’ and they can be very convincing in doing that. Our circumstances can also lead us to believe that we’re a whole lot less than we thought ourselves to be, and those circumstances can be incredibly convincing as well. But our capacity exceeds the failures that we experience and the criticisms that are thrown in our faces. Our abilities are not defined by what people have said, or the choices that we have made. Our abilities exceed all of those. They are greater than the limits of our imaginations, and they are not limited by people or choices that have proven to be less than imaginative.
That “more” will always be there whether you use it or not. It sits at the ready whether we recognize it or not. We are ‘more.’ That’s not the issue. The issue is will we understand that we are ‘more,’ and will we allow that ‘more’ begin to shape us into ‘more.’
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Podcast Short: Integrity - To Understand and Live It
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Integrity - To Understand and Live It
Integrity. You’ve heard that “Integrity is doing the right when nobody’s watching.” It’s not about being a crowd pleaser, or working to get some sort of edge. It’s not agenda driven, other than we do the right thing for no other reason than it’s the right thing…and that’s not an agenda. That’s a conviction. It’s not about the cost of doing the right thing, or the long-term effects, or the short-term effects, or whether it will be popular or not so popular. It’s not about the response of a person, or an organization, or a certain cultural group, or some philosophical leaning, or anything like that at all. It’s doing the right thing for no other reason than it’s the right thing. That’s it.
Now, a lot of people ask what the right thing is. And in our culture, the right thing is too often based on the wrong criteria (or at least a terribly skewed one). In the culture today, the right thing is typically based on its level of acceptance, whether that’s in our social group, or among our co-workers, or in some organization that we’ve aligned ourselves with, or it fits the current cultural climate. Is it politically-correct, or tolerant, or does it embrace diversity (whatever that might be at any given moment). Often it’s these criteria that define something as the right thing. But the right thing is never defined by whether it adheres to an agenda or not, and it’s not driven by whether it happens to be popular or vogue or trendy. The right thing will always be bigger than any of that, and it will never succumb to any of our puny definitions and our fleeting agendas.
So, what is the right thing anyway? Well, here’s an idea that’s probably not all that popular or vogue or trendy. But here’s an idea. Jesus put it this way. He said, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Now, maybe you’re not a religious person, or maybe you’re not really a people person, or maybe you’re not either of these. However, the principle is basically the same…am I acting out of love? Love is not tolerance. Love is not permissive. Love is not about diversity. It’s not about embracing some cultural ethic because it liberates people to chase what (in the end) is going to destroy them. It’s not about liberty defined as permission to indulge in behaviors that will do nothing but indulge us to our own demise. Love isn’t about any of that.
It’s about understanding that there are an immovable set of ethics, morals and values that in the current culture have been labeled as constraining, antiquated, irrelevant, out-moded, or any other number of other definitions that have been assigned to them. And love understands that we can incessantly label these ethics, morals and values in these ways, but those labels won’t change the fact that what these ethics, morals and values are trying to protect us from remains unchanged. Love will not give ourselves permission to destroy ourselves, even though we give ourselves permission to do that. Love understands that in the scope of this existence there are principles that if ignored or defied will send us to our own destruction. And while our culture would ignore such truths, love with not. And it is this stubborn refusal to ignore these truths, and to commit to abide by them regardless of the cost that are the hallmarks of this thing that we call ‘integrity.’ Integrity is the refusal not to love, despite whatever that might cost us. Be advised, being a person of integrity comes a great price. But the price of not being a person of integrity is infinitely greater.
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Friday Sep 29, 2023
Being a Lamp That’s Lit
Friday Sep 29, 2023
Friday Sep 29, 2023
Jesus calls us to be the "light of the world." The fact is, we are all lamps. We all have the capability to cast light into a darkened world. And furthermore, we can actually cast a compelling and far-reaching light if we choose to.
But even though we are a lamp with great potential, is that lamp ever lit? Are our lives ever really bright and casting something hopeful into the darkness around us. Yes, we are all lamps. But few of us are lit. And the question is, "Are you a lamp that's lit?" The answer to that question will have immense bearing on your life and the lives of those around you.
Discover additional podcasts as well other resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.
Tuesday Sep 26, 2023
Podcast Short: Thinking It’s Over When It’s Not
Tuesday Sep 26, 2023
Tuesday Sep 26, 2023
Thinking It's Over When It's Not
It’s over…we tell ourselves. It’s over. Whatever it might be (or might have been) it’s gone and there’s no getting it back. The loss is too big. The obstacles are too daunting. Things have changed so much that whatever we lost no longer has a place in the current reality that we’re living in. We’re one person (just one person) trapped in a downward spiral that’s far more powerful than all of us put together. The glass isn’t half empty. The fact is, there is no glass. We can’t pick up where we left off because where we left off...left. It’s over…so we think.
In processing all of this for myself, I wrote this quote:
“The last time I saw it, its hull was crushed and it laid helpless against the incessant swells that rolled up upon the shallows within which it laid canted and broken. Yet, in the hands of a seasoned sailor who saw potential in the carnage, it was hauled out the swells, lovingly repaired, and the next year it pushed out past the swells that had held it helpless and it sailed again. And although our hulls are crushed beyond hope of repair and we find ourselves helplessly awash in the incessant swells of our sin, with God we too can sail again.”
Sometimes things are ‘over’ only because we believe them to be over. We’ve been told that they’re over. Or everyone around us says that they’re over. Or the cultural climate seems to say that they’re over. Or those without vision have never realized that they lost anything because they never saw what they had in the first place, so they tell us that nothing’s over because nothing was lost to begin with. Or people have chosen to believe that they’re over because that’s easier than hoping that they’re not. We don’t want to look the fool and try to save something that’s no longer there to save, so we tell ourselves and those around us that it’s over…so we think. But we can sail again.
Is something really over? Have we actually lost something that we can’t reclaim? Is it gone forever? Or, is that what we’ve chosen to believe. It’s my sense that most things aren’t over (at all). Rather, it’s our belief that they are (which is a ‘belief,’ but not necessarily a ‘reality’). It’s more our attitude, or our fears, or our unwillingness to challenge popular thinking, or our unwillingness to risk grabbing hold of a vision, or a lack of belief in ourselves, or more importantly, a lack of belief in God. In the Bible, Jesus said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” Do you get that? Do you understand what that opens up? Do you understand that our perception that something is over does not take into account that with God, nothing is over? That our families, our communities, our dreams, our relationships, our nation can sail again? That there are always possibilities, even when all we see are massive impossibilities? That what we feel we have to walk away from are things that have a ton of possibilities still living and breathing within them? Is something really over? Really? You might want to think about that because you’d be amazed at all of the things that can sail again.
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Friday Sep 22, 2023
Uniqueness - Not as License
Friday Sep 22, 2023
Friday Sep 22, 2023
Sometimes fully being oneself in plain sight can be viewed as rather weird or downright odd. Sometimes our uniqueness is labeled as strange, bizarre, quirky or slightly peculiar. ‘Different’ in a culture of uniformity is too frequently labeled as eccentric, curious, “out there,” slightly unconventional, eerie, a tad bit unorthodox, or being something akin to being a dork. Our uniqueness can have dramatic social implications, causing us to be the outsider, the alien, the cultural misfit or just so plain weird that we’re a social phenomenon entirely unto ourselves with no place within which to fit at all; being relegated to the outcast.
These kinds of conclusions are quickly drawn and judgments are carelessly rendered rather than seeing uniqueness as potentially fresh, distinctive, or entirely singular. Far too often uniqueness is directly correlated with weirdness, dumping it into an entirely negative and typically unredeemable social sideshow. Uniqueness is pathetically reduced to oddity.It is then seen as entertaining because face it, “odd” is entertaining. The throngs of society curiously mill about these sideshows seeking some form of entertainment or amusement at the ignorant expense of the miracle of uniqueness. If you happen to have had the misfortune of having been dumped in some sort of sideshow because of your uniqueness, you’re seen as a permanent resident unless you reinvent yourself and sacrifice your uniqueness as part of that reinvention. The cost to do that is astronomical and deadening.
The Loss of Rendering Conclusions and Judgments
These various labels that we apply to others or have applied to us create a sharp and tainting distinctiveness that separates and excludes, rather than incorporates and includes. The profound asset of our uniqueness becomes a crippling liability. We have these various labels dogmatically slapped on our foreheads in exceedingly bold type with the whole of our person then being identified based on whatever’s been scrawled on the label and slapped on our foreheads. Following the brutality and ignorance of uniqueness branded as oddity, or worse yet as a deficit, we are forever relegated to the sideshow of life. The richness of our uniqueness is then lost to us, and lost to a world wallowing in stereotypes. In such a“lose-lose” situation, we are all diminished in ways that we may never make up.
Rightly Exercising Our Uniqueness
In a culture that embraces tolerance and diversity, let’s make one point very clear. Being unique is not about taking license by being oneself and using it as a stage to elicit attention, or make some sort of controversial cultural statement, or use it as a pedestal to flaunt immoral behavior, or generate some sort of shock factor in those who are watching us be “us.” Simply put, possession of uniqueness does not include permission to use that uniqueness with impunity to create something that we’re not in order to fulfill a personal agenda or fuel a social mission of some sort. Our uniqueness is not a lifeless stool to be snatched up and errantly or thoughtlessly used in the service of whatever cause we choose to use it in. Being authentically oneself is much more responsible and careful than that.
Being oneself is about embracing a deep respect for the stunning and entirely vibrant uniqueness of all of creation; a uniqueness that has been carefully crafted, unapologetically exercised and fully manifest in each and every one of us. It’s respecting that uniqueness within us not as license to be itself at the cost of everyone else around it, but something that builds upon everything else around it. It is not a pedestal to demand tolerance of the aberrant behaviors that we take license to construct from of our uniqueness. Rather it’s a place where we bow in some soulful combination of deep appreciation and mind-boggling awe as we look to carefully unearth who and what we are without twisting or tainting who we are in the process. It’s has nothing to do with revisionist mentalities or self-decreed permission where we seize our uniqueness, plop it as some lump of clay on a potter’s wheel and methodically shape it to our designs or our likening without regard for what it really is. Uniqueness used in these ways will cease to be unique.
Uniqueness Gone Bad
The uniqueness of our individuality under the total control of the individual is likely to be driven by selfish and self-centered agendas that will make us unique, but uniquely troubled, dysfunctional, disoriented and distorted. The power of uniqueness in the hands of limited people with unlimited parameters is dangerous indeed. In a culture of self-determination, personal rights and the territorial thumping of our chests to declare that we’re the masters of our own fates we take license with our uniqueness that is not necessarily ours to take. The cultural mindset of brazen independence creates a misguided sense that we are indeed of our own making, and that if we don’t shape who we are in whatever image we’ve determined that to be, we will have completely squandered our lives.
Uniqueness Well Handled
It seems that our uniqueness is not something to be shaped by us, but understood by us. It’s not to be engineered by us, but explored by us. It’s not to be created by us, but cultivated by us. We do not set its agenda; rather we discern it so that we know enough of it to know the agenda it has set for us. Our uniqueness is a precious gift that’s designed to be understood so that we can participate in making it the most that it can be, not shaping it into what we want it to be.
Our uniqueness holds within it the clues and the resources that tell us who we are, why we’re here and what we’re supposed to do with this gift called life.Our uniqueness is most effectively nurtured and cultivated within moral and ethical parameters that don’t inhibit that individuality as the culture assumes, but rather creates a place for us to maximize that individuality. Moral and ethical parameters keep our uniqueness pure, supple and free from all the things that would tarnish it and ultimately destroy it. Uniqueness is a priceless gift that is as fragile as fine china, as tough as fired steel, and as broadly expansive as the creative genius of God. It is a gift beyond our ability to handle, but not beyond our ability to surrender to something greater than us so that it will eventually become something greater than us. Uniqueness surrendered and lived out in the enabling power and protective place of moral principles and ethical standards paves the way for that uniqueness to rise to unparalleled heights, to be more than we can think or imagine, and to grow far beyond the horizons of any vision we could craft for it.
You are unique . . . that’s already an established reality. Amazingly, you are one of a kind. You’ve got one and only one shot at life. So, what are you going to do with the immense gift of your uniqueness? You will kill it or cultivate it. What will you do? Consider it.
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Read the rest of this entry »Wednesday Sep 20, 2023
Darren and a Plastic Fish - The Size of Smallness
Wednesday Sep 20, 2023
Wednesday Sep 20, 2023
We seem small. We look around at the mounting difficulties and challenges in our world today and we simply seem too small to make any sort of meaningful impact. We witness the flood of irrational agendas, the rampant greed, the destruction of morality, the corruption in leadership, and the insanity of organizations that propagate questionable platforms, and we feel far too small to speak into any of those things.
Yet, small is big when understood correctly. After all, everything big started as something small. Everything big is a compilation of small things. Everything big requires the work of small things to sustain them. In essence, small is big.
Craig's recent message outlines the fact that size does not suggest power. That we are capable of making a significant impact despite how small we might feel. Take a moment and enjoy this thought-provoking and timely message.
Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
Podcast Short: It’s Not About Being Ordinary
Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
It's Not About Being Ordinary
It’s not about being ordinary, because we all are. In talking about myself, I’m about as ‘ordinary’ as they come. But, it’s not about being ordinary. It’s about recognizing that being ordinary does not limit us to ordinary things. That’s the beauty of it. We’re all ordinary, which gives us everything that we need to be extra-ordinary. God granted you and He granted me all of the elements, all of the ingredients (if you will) to do what we never thought we could do. You come packaged with resources that (if used correctly) can accomplish things that are greater than the sum total of those resources. And if there’s some tragedy in all of that, it’s that people don’t use them correctly, and therefore they never accomplish the great things that were theirs to accomplish.
The incredibly disappointing thing is that people look at who they are through the lens of who ‘they’ are. And through that lens (which is incredibly limiting) we don’t see all that we are. We have this vague understanding of ourselves, which leaves a whole lot of ourselves unknown, or ill-defined, or misunderstood, or mis-defined altogether. And we walk through our lives with this less-than-accurate understanding of who we are. And that understanding (whatever it happens to be) is typically a horribly marginalized and minimized view of who we really are. So we might be ordinary, but we diminish the incredible abilities that are inherent in being ‘ordinary.’ Remember, “being ordinary” (as much as we diminish it) “does not limit us to ordinary things.”
I think that God wants you to see who you are. The whole of who you are. Not just the good, but everything that’s maybe not so good as well. Not just the stuff that we’re proud of (if we even have anything that we’d say we’re proud of) but all of the stuff. Not just the successes, but the failures as well. Not just the bright and shiny things within us, but the dark places too.
Because all of that is the stuff of the ordinary. And God waits to take everything that’s ordinary within you and do something extra-ordinary with it because “We’re all ordinary, which gives us everything that we need to be extra-ordinary.” That’s what God does. He takes whatever we are and He makes it into everything that we are not. He’s not looking for us to build all that up so that it eventually adds up to something that God can use. He’s looking for us to surrender all that’s ordinary about us to Him (in whatever condition it’s in) so that He can build it up to something He can use. “It’s about recognizing that being ordinary does not limit us to ordinary things,” because we have an extra-ordinary God who wants to birth a bunch of extra-ordinary things in your life.
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Friday Sep 15, 2023
Being a Lamp That’s Lit - Part Two
Friday Sep 15, 2023
Friday Sep 15, 2023
Being a Lamp That's Lit
So let’s begin at the beginning and ask the first question that needs to be asked . . . are you a lamp that's lit? Matthew chapter 5 talks about being a light, but we might want to first ask the fundamental question, am I a lamp that's lit in the first place?
How many of us are lit and ablaze? We’re all lamps . . . every one of us. But how many of us are lit and burning and casting light, because it’s one thing to be a lamp, and it’s quite another thing to be lit. If you walk through life being a lamp that’s not lit, you will live a diminished life and you will add to the diminishment of those around you. And that is tragic.
The Irish play-write, George Bernard Shaw was interviewed by a reporter who asked him, “Mr. Shaw, if you could live your life over and be anybody you’ve known, any person from history, who would you be?” Listen carefully to what he said. George Bernard Shaw said this. He replied, “I would choose to be the man George Bernard Shaw could have been, but never was.” Will that be your commentary on your life? When the end comes and the years are dwindling, will you say, I would choose to be the man I could have been, but never was?
George Bernard Shaw was a lamp that, by his own admission, was never lit.
“Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.” You . . . all of you . . . all of us are lamps. And the question that I have for you is “are you lit?
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Wednesday Sep 13, 2023
Dealing With Grief and Loss - An Autumn’s Journey
Wednesday Sep 13, 2023
Wednesday Sep 13, 2023
Grief and loss are something with which we are all well acquainted. Some of the losses that we've experienced are small, while others are utterly overwhelming.
Our natural response in our loss is to press past the pain in an effort to resume our normal lives as quickly as possible. But in the rush to heal and free ourselves from the pain, we miss the immense growth that is awaiting us in the pain itself.
Craig's recent message outlines the fact that "There is great purpose in great pain." However, if we live in denial of our pain or place all of our efforts on simply stopping the pain we will forfeited the priceless growth that await us in the pain.
Take a moment and enjoy this thought-provoking and timely message.
Tuesday Sep 12, 2023
Podcast Short: Dead-End Roads of Our Making
Tuesday Sep 12, 2023
Tuesday Sep 12, 2023
Dead-End Roads of Our Making
We chart these paths. We set these goals. We ponder where we are, and from there we determine where we want to go. There’s some sort of road that we’re walking, whether that’s a road of our own making, or it’s a road that everybody is walking, or it’s the road that culturally vogue or socially trending. Sometimes that road is well defined and clear. Sometimes there’s very little definition to it all, and we end up wondering if we’re really on any sort of road at all. And then some of us are just plain lost in the woods. “There’s some sort of road that we’re all walking.”
Whatever kind of road that we’re on, it’s both amazing and frustrating how many of those roads end up at dead-ends. It’s stunning that there are millions of people who are standing at the end of some road (or what they thought was a road) and it ends. It just ends. They had visualized it going somewhere great, or exciting, or meaningful. It was the path to their dreams. It was the road to a life-long relationship. The highway to fiscal wealth or career advancement. The byway that led them to everything that everyone else said that they could never do or never be…but it doesn’t go to any of those kinds of places at all. It dead-ends. In the middle of nowhere.
A dead-end is likely the product of being on the wrong road. And if I created the road, it’s probably going to dead-end because it’s probably the wrong road. Frequently, the dead-end will be up out of sight from where we started this journey (so that we won’t have second-thoughts taking it). Or, we can actually see the dead-end, but we live in denial of it because we want what we want. Or, the people around us took it and were too embarrassed to tell us that we would run into a dead-end because they were embarrassed that they ran into a dead-end. Or, the culture has deluded us into believing that it’s not a dead-end at all (even though it looks strikingly similar to a dead-end).
Dead-ends. The only road that I know of that has no dead-ends is the one that God lays out for us. Those are roads of no dead-ends. Rather, those are roads of endless beginnings. Forever beginnings. Perpetual beginnings. Where the world says that the road will stop, the roads God creates keep right on going. When the mountains become too high, or the valleys become too low and the roads come to a screaming halt, God has already constructed a bridge or leveled the valley. “There’s some sort of road that we’re walking.” And if God didn’t create it, your dead-end is just around the ‘corner.’ If He did create it, you don’t need to worry about the ‘corners.’
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Friday Sep 08, 2023
Being a Lamp That’s Lit - Part One
Friday Sep 08, 2023
Friday Sep 08, 2023
Being a Lamp That's Lit
So let’s begin at the beginning and ask the first question that needs to be asked . . . are you a lamp that's lit? Matthew chapter 5 talks about being a light, but we might want to first ask the fundamental question, am I a lamp that's lit in the first place?
How many of us are lit and ablaze? We’re all lamps . . . every one of us. But how many of us are lit and burning and casting light, because it’s one thing to be a lamp, and it’s quite another thing to be lit. If you walk through life being a lamp that’s not lit, you will live a diminished life and you will add to the diminishment of those around you. And that is tragic.
The Irish play-write, George Bernard Shaw was interviewed by a reporter who asked him, “Mr. Shaw, if you could live your life over and be anybody you’ve known, any person from history, who would you be?” Listen carefully to what he said. George Bernard Shaw said this. He replied, “I would choose to be the man George Bernard Shaw could have been, but never was.” Will that be your commentary on your life? When the end comes and the years are dwindling, will you say, I would choose to be the man I could have been, but never was?
George Bernard Shaw was a lamp that, by his own admission, was never lit.
“Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.” You . . . all of you . . . all of us are lamps. And the question that I have for you is “are you lit?
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Tuesday Sep 05, 2023
Podcast Short: Becoming Accountable
Tuesday Sep 05, 2023
Tuesday Sep 05, 2023
Becoming Accountable
Accountability…might it be time to be accountable to who we’ve become so that we can make ourselves accountable to what we can be? Are we willing to divest ourselves of all the lesser things that we have elevated as greater things and engage in both a pointed and painful evaluation of who we’ve become? And once we’ve done that, are we brave enough to look at the damage that we’re incurred in the becoming? Can we relinquish our claim to whatever bit of turf we’ve claimed and lay our playground feuds to rest in deference to a cause far greater than the tiny space that we occupy? Can we shake ourselves out of ourselves sufficiently to wake up to the far greater things that lay ‘round about us? Can we begin to see others as less enemies and more people whose differing views may inform our own? At what point we will understand that partnership and camaraderie must be preserved even when differences of beliefs or opinions would do their level best to blast us into warring camps? When will we forfeit what we’ve become in order to become something so vastly superior to what we’ve become?
It’s not that such a shift is impossible (despite the fact that the behaviors exhibited in our world might suggest otherwise). But in the face of the reckless insanity all around us, will we dare to dare? Will we raise ourselves up to embrace the fullness of our humanity? Will we cast off the scourge of selfish agendas and the saber-rattling born of insatiable egos? Will we be what we’ve chosen not to be at whatever cost we might pay to do so, recognizing that the cost of not doing so is far, far greater? Will we shed all that we’ve become to become all that we can be? In essence, will we reclaim the majesty of our humanity as it was created and tenderly fashioned to be?
I believe that we have not done well, but I believe we can yet do very well. I believe in something better. I believe that we can join together in a mutual assault on the mounting challenges in our world instead of engaging in mounting assaults on each other. I believe, and I hope that everyone of us might join me in that belief. And in that joining might we rigorously inventory how we can be different. And then let us go and begin the process of making things different. Let us reclaim the majesty of our humanity in the care of humanity.
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Grief and Loss - Part Two
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Grief and Loss
Deep Growth in the Grief and Loss of Life's Seasons
There's an old Chinese proverb that states:
"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still."
I'm going to talk about grief and loss in this podcast. And if there's ever times in our lives when we end up "standing still," it's during times of grief and loss. My intent in this podcast is to help us understand how grief and loss, even devastating grief and loss, rather than causing us to "stand still," can actually facilitate great growth.
Grief and Loss
One of my books, “An Autumn’s Journey – Deep Growth in the Grief and Loss of Life’s Seasons” deals with the issue of grief and loss, so I'll be drawing from that book a bit this morning. I ended up writing this particular book for a number of reasons. Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into those reasons this morning. Suffice it to say, I have had my own grief and loss, and for over forty years I've walked with thousands of people through their grief and loss. Obviously, all of that created some of the motivation to write.
In reality however, the thing that really created the impetus for me to take on the task of writing about grief and loss was the unexpected death of my own mother on October 14th of 2007. In those final hours of her life, on her deathbed, I promised her that I would write. I made that promise to her because for years she had encouraged me to write. And so, the journey from her deathbed, to her funeral, to closing out her personal affects and affairs, to visiting her graveside on a cold Christmas Day some two years later is the journey outlined in this book.
Now, time this podcast only affords me the opportunity to say a few, very brief things of the many things I would like to say to you on the subject of grief and loss. The premise that undergirds everything that I am going to say in this podcast is simply this . . . "There is Great Purpose in Great Pain."
So, in order to build a foundation to support this premise, I'm going to pull several different thoughts together. First, I want to talk about pain as tremendous opportunity. Then I want to briefly talk about how and why we miss those opportunities. Once I have those two thoughts in place, I want to share with you two basic ideas, two principles that you can begin to incorporate into your own times of grief and loss to turn your pain into great gain.
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Thursday Aug 31, 2023
Podcast Short: The Problem Is Not the Problem
Thursday Aug 31, 2023
Thursday Aug 31, 2023
The Problem Is Not the Problem
We all have…problems. And there’s a real good chance that we have a lot of…problems. Life comes with problems. It’s part of the deal. It’s a natural part of this thing that we’re all doing called life. Life comes with problems. But the real problem is not that life comes with problems. The real problem is what we do with them.
In the majority of cases, the problem is ‘not’ the problem…despite the fact that we think it’s the problem. The problem is how we’re choosing to deal with the problem. That’s the problem. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in most cases the problem actually creates less problems than the way that we’ve chosen to deal with the problem. The ‘real’ problem is that we don’t want to deal with the ‘real’ problem. And all we have to do is look around at our culture today to realize that we have cultivated, and refined, and ingeniously perfected a whole bunch of ways to do that.
We want to immediately minimize the problem out of our frantic efforts to wave off the gravity of it at any cost in order to salvage our self-image. Or we want to blame others for it so that we are magically free of any culpability from the problem that we (through our geed or stupidity or arrogance) created. We want to devise clever narratives to excuse whatever we did that created the problem so as to hand ourselves a free pass and by-pass accountability for the carnage we caused. We want to see the problem as arising from circumstances beyond our control, leaving us utterly innocent, squeaky clean, and nothing more than the wounded victim of the choices that we refuse to own.
Or, we have come to determine that the problem is marvelously self-serving, and that it grants us some sort of cherished leverage that we would lose should we actually solve the problem. Therefore, we perpetuate the problem, turning a blind-eye toward those who are suffering because of the problem. Or, most deviously of all, we spin the problem to be the brain-child of some ill-defined, but dark and foreboding force intent on our destruction. And these people, or these organizations, or these clandestine groups clustered in some darkened room, or whatever they might be become enemy that they never were, and we become the victim that it is, in fact, the victimizer. The real problem is rarely the real problem.
But when we fall prey to our lesser selves and enslave ourselves to the fear of accountability, or risk tarnishing our cherished reputations by being exposed as the culprits, or have to expend cherished resources to clean up the mess we made when we would much prefer to hoard those resources for ourselves, or when we seize the opportunity to turn our failures on others in order to elevate ourselves above them in some sickening power grab, or when we choose whatever gain the problem might grant us over the destruction it will wield in the lives of others…when we do any of these, we are creating a problem far bigger than whatever the real problem was. Far bigger. And we would be utterly foolish to think that these choices will not come back to haunt us with an unparalleled vengeance that we cannot begin to imagine. Yes…the real problem is rarely the real problem.
It takes courage to step up and own what we have done. It is the brave individual who will refuse to elevate themselves at the expense of others. It is the person of integrity who will unflinchingly stare into the mirror of their decisions and own what they see staring back at them. It is the man or woman of wisdom who will recognize that to embrace the consequences of our choices, and to own the outcome of our behaviors is the single path to freedom, and that any other path will always, always, lead to enslavement. And it is the person of faith will understands that God can only forgive that which we repent of, and that there is nothing so large that He cannot, and will not, forgive. God is in the business of wiping slates clean and handing out new starts. Yes…the real problem is rarely the real problem. And if we are to begin the process of wiping out the problems in our world, we must wipe out the way that we have chosen to deal with them. We must…
“Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness…”.
- 1 Corinthians 3:18-19
Wednesday Aug 30, 2023
ECA Ordination Message - The Magnitude Of the Message in the Need of the Moment
Wednesday Aug 30, 2023
Wednesday Aug 30, 2023
The message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is everything that the world needs in a time when the world is madly pursuing everything that it doesn't need. Our world is desperate for that message. However, our less than thoughtful handling of the message of the Gospel has diluted it to the point that its appeal is nearly gone. We have subjugated it to our particular interpretations, shaped it to our personal agendas, inserted our own biases, preached it for our own gain, presented it more as entertainment than transformation, and assumed that we have the power to deliver it by our own means. A message manipulated and diminished in such ways will have no appeal to a dying world.
Craig's recent message to a group of ordination candidates thoughtfully and yet unashamedly challenges us to preach the richness of the Gospel free of the encumbrances that have left it weak and pathetic. This message is a call to restore the purity and power of the message in a world that is desperate for us to do so.
Discover additional resources at www.craiglpc.com. You will also find daily resources on all of our Social Media platforms.
Monday Aug 28, 2023
Grief and Loss - Part One
Monday Aug 28, 2023
Monday Aug 28, 2023
Grief and Loss
Deep Growth in the Grief and Loss of Life's Seasons
There's an old Chinese proverb that states:
"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still."
I'm going to talk about grief and loss in this podcast. And if there's ever times in our lives when we end up "standing still," it's during times of grief and loss. My intent in this podcast is to help us understand how grief and loss, even devastating grief and loss, rather than causing us to "stand still," can actually facilitate great growth.
Grief and Loss
One of my books, “An Autumn’s Journey – Deep Growth in the Grief and Loss of Life’s Seasons” deals with the issue of grief and loss, so I'll be drawing from that book a bit this morning. I ended up writing this particular book for a number of reasons. Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into those reasons this morning. Suffice it to say, I have had my own grief and loss, and for over forty years I've walked with thousands of people through their grief and loss. Obviously, all of that created some of the motivation to write.
In reality however, the thing that really created the impetus for me to take on the task of writing about grief and loss was the unexpected death of my own mother on October 14th of 2007. In those final hours of her life, on her deathbed, I promised her that I would write. I made that promise to her because for years she had encouraged me to write. And so, the journey from her deathbed, to her funeral, to closing out her personal affects and affairs, to visiting her graveside on a cold Christmas Day some two years later is the journey outlined in this book.
Now, time this podcast only affords me the opportunity to say a few, very brief things of the many things I would like to say to you on the subject of grief and loss. The premise that undergirds everything that I am going to say in this podcast is simply this . . . "There is Great Purpose in Great Pain."
So, in order to build a foundation to support this premise, I'm going to pull several different thoughts together. First, I want to talk about pain as tremendous opportunity. Then I want to briefly talk about how and why we miss those opportunities. Once I have those two thoughts in place, I want to share with you two basic ideas, two principles that you can begin to incorporate into your own times of grief and loss to turn your pain into great gain.
Friday Aug 25, 2023
Podcast Short: What I Don’t Want to Hear
Friday Aug 25, 2023
Friday Aug 25, 2023
Might I Say - What I Don't Want to Hear
We hear a lot of things. A whole lot of things. We’re incessantly bombarded with sheets and shards and streams of information. It’s about bits and bytes and boatloads of data that we ingest and digest without even realizing that we’re doing that. Either consciously or unconsciously we compile all of that sordid stuff into some sort of choppy mosaic about the life around us and the world within us. And as insidiously dangerous as it is, in time this rather indistinct and somewhat dubious mosaic becomes our reality. In essence, it becomes our existence.
It seems that we tend to be busy about a whole lot of nothing. We can meticulously tally the tasks of the day only to be inordinately perplexed that for some reason the sum total doesn’t come anywhere close to reflecting the sum total of everything that we expended in accomplishing those things. So consumed are we in the tasks of ‘nothing’ that we don’t have time to think about ‘something’. Therefore, we have irreparably fallen in love with plug-and-play and pre-fab. We like things pre-packaged, prepared, and predetermined. We’re looking for answers that were already ingested, digested and reflexively regurgitated for our reflexive consumption by whatever source we happen to have happened upon. In essence, we don’t think. And in fact, there are few things as dangerous as that.
We’re going to ingest a whole lot of something. That’s inevitable. And if that ‘something’ shapes us with that much force, we might be wise to ask what that ‘something’ is.
We live in a world roiling with bias and flushed murky with politically-correct agendas. We have splintering splinter groups proffering philosophies of every shape and sort. We’ve got the thematic propagation of ‘diversity’ that’s more about a permission to be permissive. Too often it’s about the ‘spin to win’. It’s less about truth and it’s more about triumph. It’s about the resolute and rather gritty proliferation of the agenda to the degree that truth becomes the agenda and the agenda becomes the truth. Therefore, truth becomes negotiable and pliable in a forced and placating servitude to an onslaught of dubious agendas. However, truth in the service of an agenda becomes opinion. And too often opinion is bias off the leash and running wild.
So, we need to listen for a change. We need to question…aggressively and responsibly. We need to ruthlessly investigate and corroborate. We need to quit being complacent consumers and become invested investigators. We need to use truth as a steeled template, not as a fluffy convenience. We need to bring the sturdy compass of ethics to point out the true north in every decision whether that true north is to our liking or not. We don’t need to be worldly wise, for that’s an oxymoron of the most deceptive kind. Rather, we need to be wise in the ways of God and life. We need to be sufficiently stubborn to reject the pabulum of the masses, yet pliable enough to hear the beating hearts underneath the pabulum. We need to be bold and brazen in a manner stitched tight by wisdom and lent compelling by reason. We need to be beacons of light knowing that the crowd is apt to label us as sorely antiquated and ridiculously ill-informed. We need to listen in the bravest form imaginable.
It would behoove us to remember that to live passively is to live dangerously. To live inquisitively is to live wisely. To live boldly is to live robustly. And to live our lives based on timeless principles is to honor God rather than worship everything else that pretends to be God. May we choose to abandon the former and judiciously embrace all of the latter.
“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.”
- Ephesians 5:15-16
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Monday Aug 21, 2023
”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Talk is Cheap
Monday Aug 21, 2023
Monday Aug 21, 2023
Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life. “Talk is cheap,” as the old saying goes. We say a lot of things, more due to the fact that we believe that we’re supposed to say those things, or we say so them because, in the end, they’ll get us what we want. Consider this “Thought for Life:”
“The degree of my commitment to a cause will not be in direct proportion to the degree that ‘I am willing’ to sacrifice for it. Rather, it will be in direct proportion to the degree that ‘I am sacrificing’ for it.”
I hope that you ponder that thought today. Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.
Friday Aug 18, 2023
New Beginnings - Seeds in Pain
Friday Aug 18, 2023
Friday Aug 18, 2023
New beginnings. The way our lives frequently go, we doubt the existence of new beginnings...at least for us. We've had too much loss, far too much pain, and circumstances that seemed anything but kind to us. And as we look down the road of our lives, we can only envision more of the same. We really don't believe in new beginnings because all we've come to believe in is survival, and we frequently feel that we're doing that all that well either.
But our new beginnings lay in our painful endings. No one likes to hear that, and few of us actually believe it. But the seeds of our new day, our new month, our new life lay scattered about in the midst of our losses. There are new beginnings awaiting you in the brokenness of your pain. And it's worth looking beyond your pain for a moment to gather the seeds that lay there waiting for you.
Wednesday Aug 16, 2023
Podcast Short: Is Anyone Listening?
Wednesday Aug 16, 2023
Wednesday Aug 16, 2023
Is Anyone Listening?
Is anyone listening? In the world within which you live, is anyone listening? Does your voice matter? The pain that you carry, the confusion that dogs your steps, the fear that drains your soul, the dreams that lay buried in a distant past, and a future that you sense is already being buried by the same things that buried your past…is anyone listening? In those moments when loneliness is all that you know. At those times when the loneliness has gone on for so long that you have little alternative than to believe that loneliness is the single story that life has penned for you, and that there is no other story…at those times is anyone listening?
Is there anyone who cares that you cry? Is there anyone who is willing to place themselves aside in order to make sufficient space for you to place yourself in their arms? Is there anyone who is willing to pick you up, to wipe clean the wounds that you have, to light a candle in your darkness, and help you press out into the light? Is there anyone who’s willing to get their hands dirty so that you might begin the process of getting yours clean? Is there anyone listening…at all?
And if perchance someone does listen, are they listening? Really? Or do we sense that they are listening out of obligation? Are we their project, or their charity case, and that in some way they are simply using us in some misguided way to fulfill some guilt-induced obligation to give back to society? Are we the box that they check in the ‘good deeds’ column of their lives because they haven’t checked a whole lot of boxes in that column? Or are they listening because focusing on our pain grants them an escape from their own? Or are they listening because to play the hero in our life is to make them feel that they have a life, or at least some sort of purpose in life so they don’t stumble through life feeling purposeless? Is anyone listening? Anyone?
In the Bible God says, "Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.” God will listen. Not out of obligation. Not because you are a project. Not because you are a charity case. Not because God is checking a box. Not because He’s escaping from anything, or needs to play the hero, or to grant Himself some sort of purpose. There is none of that.
God is listening. And He’s listening because to hear you warms His heart. To hear you thrills His soul. To hear you is the culmination of everything that He created, including you. He created the entirety of this world, and then He placed you in the middle of it so that you might know this God, and that He might love you. Intimate relationship. Unbroken relationship. A forever relationship. And when we broke that relationship through our sin, He refused to let that brokenness stand. That brokenness stood against everything for which God created ‘everything.’ So deep was His desire to listen to us, to connect with us, to hold us, and heal us that He sent His Son to die to heal what we broke. Yes, He listens. He created us to be heard, and when we messed it up He did nothing less than sacrifice His Son to heal what we broke. Yes, God listens. He refuses to do anything less. He listens. And because He does, He’s waiting for you to speak. And so, do the thing that you were created to do…talk to God, for He’s listening.
"Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."
- Jeremiah 29:12 and 13
Friday Aug 11, 2023
There Is No God - Evidence to the Contrary
Friday Aug 11, 2023
Friday Aug 11, 2023
There is no God. It’s not an unfamiliar statement. In fact, it permeates much of our modern thinking, which begs the question if our modern thinking is really either ‘modern’ or ‘thinking.’
We Don’t Want a God
I think that the mentality that ‘there is no God’ is centered primarily on the fact that we don’t want a God. Therefore, out of convenience, we simply declare that there is none, for we fear that the experiences that we crave will be snatched from us, the pleasures that we wish to indulge in will be made taboo, that we will somehow be punished if things feel too good, and that this doting judge-like figure will frown on most everything that makes us happy. So, we decide that we don’t want a God. And subsequently, we declare that there is no God.
Tuesday Aug 08, 2023
Podcast Short: Good as the Enemy of the Best
Tuesday Aug 08, 2023
Tuesday Aug 08, 2023
Good as the Enemy of the Best
“That’s good enough.” How many times have those words come out of our mouths? The idea of this lackluster commitment to the living out of our lives has become so prevalent that we’ve learned to articulate it in a whole bunch of different ways. The rather robust vernacular that we’ve created to wave off responsibility and say “that’s good enough” includes such catchy phrases as “that’ll get us by until Monday,” or “that’s good enough for government work,” or “that’s doable,” or “that’s in the ballpark,” or however we say “that’s good enough.”
The whole phenomena of “sliding by” or “skating by” has always been a byword of history. Subsequently, any vague concept of a ‘work ethic’ seems to have become much less an ethic and much more of a remotely fuzzy idea. We’re constantly working out ways of how not to work. And in doing that, we forfeit doing all the incredible things that we could be doing.
Many of us seem to have developed this fairy-dust type of magical thinking where things will just be there for us. Because we can’t see the efforts and the work of those who fill the shelves of our stores, or keep the wheels of commerce greased, or who relentlessly ply the seas of a forty-plus hour work week, they tend to become invisible. And so, things are just there because they’re there.
Ultimately, our gifts, talents and abilities are sacrificed on the altar of laziness and entitlement. We lose who we are, we lose what we could do, and in essence we lose our lives. At best, whatever our best could have been is lost. Tragically, in time we gradually lose a sense that we could actually do great things, and we forfeit the transformational reality that our best is both achievable and far beyond anything we could have imagined with the best of our imaginations. We forget that to be our best is the best thing that we can be.
Being our best is asking how can we take ourselves to our own limits in any given situation? It’s asking, how do I intentionally leave every situation and every person with more than what they had when I first encountered them? Being our best involves walking away from every situation with less than what we had when we encountered it because we left something behind in the exchange. Being our best asks did we press it as far as was humanly possible, and did we walk away with nothing else we could have given?
And so, commit to being your best. Shun anything that is anything less than that. Realize that you were created to ‘best’ your own ideas of what your best is. Be your best, and in doing so transform yourself and transform those around you in the best way possible.
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
- Galatians 6:9
Friday Aug 04, 2023
A Noble Calling - A Noble Response
Friday Aug 04, 2023
Friday Aug 04, 2023
Life calls us to many things. We will have to step-up in more ways and in more situations that we'd likely prefer at times. And when we have to step-up, the manner in which we do so becomes extremely important. We can do so in ways that are less than admirable or less than honest. We can attempt to side-step something, manipulate it to our convenience, shape it to our likes or dislikes, engage it in a way that invites the praise of the people that we admire, or we can ignore it altogether. At some time and in some place, we will have to step-up.
As we watch the world today, many people are stepping-up in less than admirable ways. It has become less about integrity and a whole lot less about honesty. Stepping up has been hijacked by agendas of all sorts. It has been compromised by lesser things that have created a nation of lesser people. But we have the ability to step-up in ways that are noble...truly noble. We can address situations thoughtfully, ethically and with the guiding hand of timeless wisdom. We can change our families, our communities and our world by stepping-up to the challenges of life in ways both noble and brave. We can all step-up in ways that makes stepping-up something beautiful and life-changing.
Tuesday Aug 01, 2023
Podcast Short: What Is Better...Really?
Tuesday Aug 01, 2023
Tuesday Aug 01, 2023
What Is Better...Really?
What is “better?” I mean, the definition of “better.” When we change something, we tend to label the change as “better,” whether it’s better or not. If we adjust something, or alter something, or eliminate it altogether, we define the changes that we make as “better.” We initiate new programs, or we reconstruct old ones, and in doing so we say that we are making things “better.” We craft new policies, or we tear down old businesses, or we adopt new beliefs, or we upgrade this, or we downgrade that, and we label all those actions as “better.”
But “better” based on what? What’s the criteria that determines if something is, in fact, “better?” Is it based on the current cultural climate? Or, is it based on the trends that tend to be trending? Or, is it based on the desire to make a name for ourselves, or get ahead, or beat the opposition, or bring down a boss, or lift up a cause, or promote a philosophy, or demote anything that irritates us? Is it based on our desire to make a win-fall, or get ourselves out of a freefall, or just create a free-for-all? What do we base the idea of “better” on?
Labeling something as “better” is often a justification for something that’s anything but “better”. It’s that label that we attach to our actions, hoping that people will pay a whole lot more attention to the label, and a whole lot less attention to the actions that we’ve pasted the label on. Sadly, most things are not better. They’re certainly ‘something,’ but they’re not “better”.
But what should “better” be based on? “Better” is when others benefit, even if we don’t. “Better” is driven by the need of the common man, as the common man is the common cause. It’s something in the service of a hurting world, and not something that serves to hurt the world. “Better” is something that we do that leaves the world “better” than what we found it, even if we end up not being “better” in the service of that world. It’s sacrificial. It’s recognizing our responsibility to the lives around us, not the agendas within us. “Better” is when we end the day having gained nothing, but having given everything. “Better” is where love is given legs to run and greed can’t find its shoes. The world needs to be “better” in a “better” way. And that starts with you, and it starts with me, and it starts with rejecting anything that is not truly “better.”
Tuesday Jul 25, 2023
Podcast Short: How Do We Look at Time?
Tuesday Jul 25, 2023
Tuesday Jul 25, 2023
How Do We Look at Time?
“Time is the great intimidator, steadily stealing away precious seconds with no pause in the stealing. And such thievery leads us to believe that in time, the pilfering of these seconds will eventually exhaust all such seconds, leaving us at the ‘end’ of everything. Yet, God states that the seconds are actually the countdown to the ‘beginning’ of everything.”
How do we look at time? As a thief? As something that moves way too fast? As something that robbed our youth and is eroding our lives with every tick of the clock? Do we see it as something that there’s never enough of? Do we see it as something that moves faster the busier that we become, so there’s never any chance that we will ever be able to catch up? Or, do we see it as something that drags when we’re bored, so much so that we’d gladly forfeit the time just to get out of the boredom? If we’re tired of life, or frustrated with our circumstances, or if we just don’t care anymore, do we wish that time didn’t exist in the first place so that we’d be free of whatever it is that we want to be free of? How do we look at time?
But is it possible that time is a resource? And in the expending of that resource (that we call time) is it possible that we can invest in something that we never really thought of? Something that we never really considered? Is the trade-off expending time that we can’t get back, for something that we can? Are we investing in something that can change a life, or alter the trajectory of a marriage gone sideways, or bring healing to someone who’s wounded, or give a bit of light to someone who’s living out their life in nothing but darkness? Is time a resource (when used wisely) can shape a community, touch a nation, or change the world? And more profoundly than all of that, is it something that God has given us to use now that it can have an eternal impact that is not bound by time at all? Is time the thing that we use to bring people to a God Who’s deepest desire is to ultimately bring all of those people to a place called “eternity” where there is no time?
If we use our time to achieve things like this, the passing of time and the loss of that time in the passing is infinitely offset by the good that came out of that time. No, we can’t get time back. No, it’s not a renewable resource. When it’s gone, it’s gone. But what if the expenditure was offset by the good that came out of that time? What about that? And what if that expenditure touches a life for an eternity of time? I would think that that is time well spent, and I would think that it makes the time we have the place from which we change things for all of time.
Tuesday Jul 18, 2023
Podcast Short: Do We Search for the Truth?
Tuesday Jul 18, 2023
Tuesday Jul 18, 2023
Do We Search for the Truth?
Do we search for the truth, or do we search for ways around the truth? Do we even take the time to consider a question like that out of the long-held assumption that we are, in fact, looking for the truth because (we assume) that that’s the obvious thing to do? What insanity would behoove us to do anything less? But do we search for the truth, or do we search for ways around the truth? Maybe we should consider the fact that there are a whole lot of reasons why we actually might stoop to something less.
Truth be told, the truth may not be what we want it to be. It may not support our agendas, or our desires. In fact, it might actually render those things as erroneous and all-together ill-fated. The truth may not support all of the things that we passionately wish to believe, or have talked ourselves into believing. Or truth may dare to go so far as to actually call the entirety of those beliefs into question, and call us out for believing in them in the first place. Do we search for the truth even when it takes the foundations that we’ve laboriously built with the sweat of our brow and the best of our years, and does truth handily expose those foundations as weak, entirely misappropriated, and as nothing more than sand piled in every place except the right place? Will we search for truth even when it looks us square in the face and tells us this kind of stuff? Will we search for it knowing that there is a very distinct possibility that it will tell us everything that we don’t want to hear in every way that we don’t want to hear it? Will we search for truth even then?
I don’t know that we do. In fact, what we seem to search for the most are ways to circumvent the truth. Our search does not seem to be ‘for’ the truth, but rather it seems to be far more vested in ways to get ‘around’ the truth. We would not even begin to label our actions as such because such actions would immediately call the whole of our character into question. But what we label something does not make it what we’ve labeled it. Our search seems to be one of committed avoidance. It is one of intentional evasion, of manufactured detours, of clever deviations that are so slick that we don’t even realize that we deviated. It’s not that we run from the truth as much as we diligently work to create pathways around it, that in the end, never get us around anything. I wonder if that’s really more of what we do.
And as such, these evasive endeavors are quite naturally filled with such familiar things as slippery denials, evasive rationalizations, ambiguous justifications, relentless blame-placing, rogue fear-mongering, the incessant spinning of events, the bogus editing of facts, and the mind-boggling contortions where we take reality and make it something other than reality.
But likely the most dangerous of these is the self-endowed liberty that we have granted ourselves to make truth whatever we wish to make it. Therefore, it’s not about avoidance, because conveniently, that’s no longer necessary. Rather, it’s about creating, which is avoidance of the most calculated, but ill-fated sort. It’s about making truth whatever we want it to be. It’s about making it fit whatever agenda, or belief system, or value system, or platform, or whatever it is that we want it to fit. If truth will not grant us that which we wish, we will simply edit it until it does. But in the end, it is no longer truth, and truth be told, we will eventually find that out, and we’ll probably find it out the hard way.
Truth. Do we search for it, or do we do something else with it? You might ask yourself, in a truthful kind of way, what you’re doing with it.
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
- Jesus Christ
Thursday Jul 13, 2023
What I Would Say to the World - Thoughts for a Struggling World
Thursday Jul 13, 2023
Thursday Jul 13, 2023
I often think about what I would say to the world. In the pain, confusion, fear, and rampant disorientation…what would I say? With the deceit, the manipulation, the less than admirable agendas being floated on all fronts…what would I say? With marriages fracturing under the weight of a culture gone rogue, with teenagers taking their lives before they ever have a chance to even understand what life is, with eyes cast to a hopeless future that seems to become dimmer by the day…what would I say? What would I say? And as I speak to an audience of patients that day-after-day sit crumpled and bent, as I speak to those who tolerate my penmanship and read the words that I stitch together, as I come across the innumerable people wounded and bleeding in whatever way they are wounded and bleeding, what would I say?
Tuesday Jul 11, 2023
Consequences - We Are the Cause
Tuesday Jul 11, 2023
Tuesday Jul 11, 2023
Do we realize that the choices that we make today lay the foundation for tomorrow's outcomes? Do we really think that things just happen, or do we understand that what happens today is the consequence of a series of choices that we made yesterday? We seem to stand stunned and perplexed by what we see in our culture. But are these things really happenstance and the turn of fate, or are they simply the consequences of the choices we have made along the way?
As the old saying goes, "You reap what you sow." We are certainly reaping. While we need to understand and accept that central reality, our time would be better spent asking how we learn from those choices. Why did we make them? What was it that we hoped to get out of them? How do we stop making them? What would better choices look like? What ethics, morals, values and principles should guide the choices that we make in the future so the consequences of those choices work for us instead of working against us? We are the cause. And since we are, we can also be the cure.
Friday Jul 07, 2023
To Think With Thought - Words of Wisdom in Difficult Times
Friday Jul 07, 2023
Friday Jul 07, 2023
Few of us think with thought. What I mean is that too few of us really examine the times that we're in verses getting caught up in the times that we're in. If we're not caught up in a particular cause or some compelling agenda of some sort, then there's a good chance that what we're caught up in is the fear and insecurity of these various causes and agendas. We're typically rather reactive rather than thoughtful. We reflexively respond, rather than digging deeper and asking the difficult questions. We move to 'fight-verses-flight' rather than something more calming and productive.
This podcast is a selection of Craig's quotes designed to give us comfort, perspective, insight and confidence as we face the uncertain times that we are living in. These quotes assist us in being thoughtful in a manner that allows us to not only effectively navigate these times, but bring something of stability and healing to them as well. They are written to help each of us become more thoughtful about the times so that our response to them can be more productive for us as well as those around us.
Wednesday Jul 05, 2023
Conscience or Convenience
Wednesday Jul 05, 2023
Wednesday Jul 05, 2023
We each have a conscience. Whether we listen to it or abide by it is another story. But we each have a conscience. The issue with our conscience is what will we do with it? The immediate answer might be that we will listen to it. But do we really do that? What if our conscience says "no" to the things that we want to say "yes" to? What if it takes us in an entirely different direction than the direction that we would like to go? What if is says that our dreams will be our downfall despite the fact that we are deeply passionate about those dreams? What if it calls us to something that we feel is either horribly frightening or terribly inconvenient? What if?
Too often we follow our conscience if the following is easy or if it's in keeping with our agendas. It's easy to follow our conscience when it lines up with everything that we want. But when it doesn't we often edit it, tweak it, put a hefty spin on it, or ignore it altogether. And it is in making decisions like these that we end up in places that we never wanted to be. It is the ignoring of our conscience that leads to the destruction of our lives. Our conscience is not this shrill and nagging voice. Rather, it is one of our most reliable compasses that keeps us out of the most terrible of places.
Tuesday Jul 04, 2023
Podcast Short: You Are Silent Now -Remembering the Sacrifices
Tuesday Jul 04, 2023
Tuesday Jul 04, 2023
You Are Silent Now -Remembering the Sacrifices
“You are silent now who once stood on battlefields ravaged by destruction unimaginable, holding in those desperate places the line of freedom for others you would never know, and who would never know you. And being one of those you never knew, I would give all I have to clasp your hand one single time, look into eyes that witnessed the bloodied carnage that results when freedom refuses to bow to chains of any kind, and simply say 'thank you.'”
Men and women died in the service of this country. They died. They…died. They gave up their lives. Their futures. Whatever roles that they would have played in their families. They gave up their dreams. They gave up their aspirations. They gave up ever going home again, or walking past the school that they went to as a kid, or enjoying warm summer evenings, or decorating a Christmas tree, or hugging their kids, or planting a garden, or talking to a neighbor over the fence, or a million other things. They gave all of that stuff up. All of it. Now, that all might sound a bit romanticized, particularly for those of us who don’t want to hear it. But it’s what they gave up. In fact, what you and I do every day is what they gave up doing…forever.
So, we are here only because someone else is not. We are here because someone, somewhere paid the ultimate price so that we could be here. So we could have a future. So we could go home at night. So we could walk past our old school. So we could sit outside on those summer evenings, or decorate a Christmas tree, or hug our kids, or plant a garden, or talk to our neighbors over the fence. People died so that we can do all of that stuff. We are here because they are not.
And I don’t know what I would do if I somehow I had to look even one, just one of those people in the face and tell them that I’ve abused what they died for. Or, that I took it all for granted. Or, that I was so callous that I didn’t even think about what they did for me because I’m too caught up in my own agendas to think about anything else. Or, I’ve lived my life thinking that I was owed these freedoms instead of realizing that I’ve been gifted with them. Or, that I’ve used these freedoms for all the things that they should have never been used for. I cannot imagine telling a fallen solider that that is how I used what they died for. I can’t imagine it.
So, maybe it’s a time for reflection. A lot of reflection. Reflection as individuals, as families, as communities, and reflection as a nation. Maybe it’s time to realize what we have. Maybe it’s time to reflect on the sacrifices of people who we will never know who handed us what we have. And maybe we need to reflect on our responsibility to hold all of that with the utmost respect. Maybe, just maybe it’s time to do that.
Monday Jun 26, 2023
Podcast Short: We Are a Mess
Monday Jun 26, 2023
Monday Jun 26, 2023
We Are a Mess
We are a mess. We are a mess because we are a people on a mad rant. Sadly, we have become blinded to the fact that we are blinded by a host of pathetically self-serving agendas. And the pathetic nature of these agendas are evidenced by the fact that they are unable to stand up to the slightest scrutiny despite how rigorous our justifications of those agendas might be. We create a litany of agendas whose basis is indefensible, for any self-serving agenda will always be indefensible.
Therefore, we shut down anyone who wishes to do something as simple as dialogue with us about those agendas. The simple and potentially enriching exchange of differing ideas and perspectives is viewed as an inexcusably prejudiced and an entirely unwarranted threat. And such a radicalized stance is based on the insecurities of an agenda that is too weak to entertain anything other than its own indefensible platform. Therefore, we instantly shut down dialogue in order to side-step the painful reality that the agenda is simply too flimsy and too ill-conceived to be defended. And the fact that it cannot be responsibly defended calls into question the very legitimacy of the very agenda that has come to define who we are. For many, this then becomes horribly frightening as it also calls into question the very culture that they are desperately attempting to create that will grant them permission to live out an indefensible agenda.
The concept of personal rights is exercised to near insanity, resulting in demands for liberties that are far more about license to be what we are not, and to do what we should not. We have placed the desires of self over an abiding respect of the liberties that give us the ability to express those desires in the first place. Many in our culture have utilized scare tactics simply because reason cannot support these agendas, therefore it is assumed that fear will press resistant individuals to accept those agendas. We create paradigms that instantly and rather immediately renders anyone in opposition to these agendas as holding some sort of unacceptable bias or ignorant prejudice or ill-informed option that is immediately ruled as simply and utterly intolerable. Once these paradigms are forced upon these individuals, they are immediately labeled as the bane of the culture and unworthy of anything but to be deported to the far fringes of the culture where all of the ignorant and uninformed are banished. All the while, these unsustainable agendas tear at the very fabric of the culture, leaving these individuals entirely unaware that their self-declared and indefensible freedoms will be the destruction of those freedoms.
In it all, we are in desperate need of perspective; of clear, clean, fresh, and undiluted perspective free of bias and wiped clear of agendas. We are in desperate need of balance long lost. We are in desperate need of a recalibration that pulls us away from the insanity of a culture gone rogue, to a reality where things such as selflessness, and integrity, and truth, and morality, and sacrifice, and love for all are granted permission to run rogue and live rogue.
And to do that, we need to be shaken awake and slapped upside the head in order to open our eyes and re-engage a sense of common sense. We need to have something pull us out of our own heads for a moment in order to understand that ‘our own heads’ will only cause us to ‘head’ in all the wrong directions. We need something that will blow the walls off of the confining and selfish vision that our agendas hold us hostage to in order to understand our need to be liberated from our tiny agendas in order to help a world that’s held hostage to horrific things that completely shame our tiny agendas. We need to be broken open, shaken from slumber, rocked out of our mediocrity, shamed by our laziness, humiliated by our greed, thrust out of our complacency, and brought to both our knees and our senses regarding who we’ve become verses who we should and can become.
And to do that, all we have to do is look at the world around us. All we have to do is to take our heads out of our ‘heads’ and look at the world around us. At war. At poverty. At oppression. At dictatorial leaders who enslave entire nations in unspeakable bondage. All that we have to do is to look at disease and those who have no means to fight it. At children picking through garbage heaps and people sleeping in boxes. At nations that recklessly invade other nations for reasons that are both pathetic and the stuff of political manipulation and power-mongering. At rampant crime that pillages the innocent in order to line the pockets of those who are not. At the hundreds of millions of people for whom an education is an impossible dream and food on the table a fading hope. Get out of your own head and look around. And once we do, we must keep looking ‘around until we have chosen to get out of our comfort zones and place our tiny, selfish agendas aside in order to step out into everything that’s ‘around.’ Look around. Get out of your head and look around. And then do something other than live to preserve an agenda that can’t stand on its own two legs, for there are seven and a half billion people out there, many of which need help standing on their own two legs.
“…if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
- 2 Chronicles 7:14
Wednesday Jun 21, 2023
”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - God’s Arsenal
Wednesday Jun 21, 2023
Wednesday Jun 21, 2023
Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life. We spend our lives acquiring what we think we need to fight the battles that we think we’re fighting. In a world fraught with fear and uncertainty, we assimilate whatever grants us this sense of invincibility and power for whatever battle we think we’re fighting. Consider this “Thought for Life:”
“I do not weaponize my life for God by rigorously acquiring an expansive arsenal of sophisticated munitions. Rather, I empty out the arsenal of everything but God, for at that point the arsenal is filled to capacity.”
I hope that you ponder that thought today. Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Who Are You Giving Yourself Away To?
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Who are you giving yourself away to? To what propaganda have you come to subscribe? To what bit of media polished bias or refined political spin have you succumb? Who has your ear, and therefore holds the heart to which your ear is attached? What are the voices that have methodically and patiently lulled you into some sort of comatose complacency where you no longer engage this rare, but incredibly precious thing that we call common sense? What podium have you obediently sat in front of that has led you to believe that you cannot think for yourself, or maybe that you can, but that you don’t need to? Who has told you that facts are irrelevant, and that the truth is simply an irritating obstacle to be quickly discarded if they don’t neatly fit on the preferred end of some ever-changing political spectrum? Who are you giving yourself away to?
Monday Jun 19, 2023
Podcast Short: We Like Things to Be New When New May Not Be Best
Monday Jun 19, 2023
Monday Jun 19, 2023
We Like Things to Be New
New. We like new things, or things to be new, or to do away with the old to make a place and a space for something new. The idea of ‘new’ is appealing. And because it is, we chase it. But ‘new’ does not mean ‘better,’ and I think that quite often we associate the two way too much. We tend to automatically think that if something is ‘new,’ the fact that it’s ‘new’ somehow guarantees that it’s ‘better.’ Certainly, some things that are ‘new’ are clearly ‘better.’ But many are not. And at some level we know that. But I think that we rather casually (and maybe unconsciously) associate that which is ‘new’ as somehow, someway, through some degree of some sort of magical thinking, as always being ‘better.’ However, ‘new’ does not mean ‘better.’
And because there’s this natural association of ‘new’ as being ‘better,’ we often focus on making something new, or doing something new, or trying something new, or inventing something new without really being thoughtful about whether this ‘new’ is actually ‘better,’ because in our minds, we’ve automatically associated ‘new’ with ‘better.’ And that kind of thinking is both dangerous and flawed, because ‘new’ does not mean ‘better.’
Sometimes we want ‘new’ to be ‘better’ as some sort of random shotgun approach. We think that if we try enough things for long enough, we’ll eventually hit something ‘new’ that actually (and rather surprisingly) turned out to be ‘better.’ Or we think that our situation, or our lives, or our relationships, or our finances, or our attitudes couldn’t get any worse, so we beguile ourselves into believing that ‘new’ might not necessarily be ‘better,’ but the odds are that it won’t be worse than whatever it is we’re living, or doing, or investing in, or waking up to every morning. But ‘new’ does not mean ‘better.’
And so, here’s something to think about. Why ‘new’ anyway? Not that ‘new’ is bad…at all. But why this nearly crazed need to always discard the old in favor of what we define as new? Our problem is that we often see some belief system, or value system, or set of morals, or some perspectives honed by time and experience as old, or antiquated, or ill-informed, or out of their era, or out of date altogether. They might have had value in another time, and they might have brought something meaningful to an era now passed, but things have moved on and it’s time for something ‘better.’ It’s time for something ‘new.’ But ‘new’ does not mean ‘better.’
And therefore, we foolishly begin to associate something that’s been around a long time as ‘old,’ rather than seeing it as ‘timeless.’ If something has come down to us through the years, or if its origins find their roots somewhere in a distant past, we casually and thoughtlessly assume that it is not applicable to today. That things are different today. Very different. And that this ‘different’ demands something ‘new.’ That the ‘different’ of today renders the wisdom of yesterday as being entirely out of step.
But the fact is, some things are ‘timeless,’ which places them forever beyond any feeble or weak definition of either ‘new’ or ‘old.’ That some things, in fact most great things, never get old because they apply to our humanity regardless of the era or the time within which we live. The deep things in life are not bound by any generation. Rather, they fit every generation. The great things are never outdated by time or technological advances. Rather, they are the things that time and technology cannot move forward without. Some things stand entirely above time, and change, and the evolution of humanity in whatever way we evolve. No. ‘New’ does not mean ‘better.’ And it does not because it’s not about ‘new.’ It’s about refusing to be so ignorant as to take what is timeless and attempt to force-fit it in the shallow rubrics of old and new. Because if we continue on such a destructive path, ‘new’ or ‘old’ won’t matter because we won’t be around to see either.
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
- Matthew 24:35
Wednesday Jun 14, 2023
”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Ignoring Our Conscience
Wednesday Jun 14, 2023
Wednesday Jun 14, 2023
Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life. We ignore our conscience because we want to do what it says we shouldn’t. But, we also ignore the consequences of ignoring it. Consider this “Thought for Life:”
“Disabling your conscience is like disabling your smoke detector. It doesn’t stop a fire. It just leaves you ignorant of the fact that there is one.”
I hope that you ponder that thought today. Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.
Wednesday Jun 07, 2023
”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Running After Stuff
Wednesday Jun 07, 2023
Wednesday Jun 07, 2023
Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life. We run after a lot of stuff. Our time, our energy, our finances, and much of our lives are spent chasing stuff. And when we catch that stuff, we typically find that it doesn’t do for us what we thought that it would do for us. Consider this “Thought for Life:”
“The insanity of it all is that the search for that which will fill us incessantly drives us to pursue the very things that will empty us. Yet, the greater insanity is to find ourselves utterly perishing in our emptiness and yet declaring to our dying day that the emptying was the filling. And that is emptiness of the most chilling sort.”
I hope that you ponder that thought today. Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.
Monday Jun 05, 2023
Podcast Short: The In-Between - Waiting for What Will Be
Monday Jun 05, 2023
Monday Jun 05, 2023
“Right now, it’s Saturday for me. I’m between what was and what is yet to be, living squarely between a death of sorts and the unknown of the ‘what next?’ It is my Saturday. If the ‘yet to be’ is nothing more than what is transpiring right now, my future will be shrouded in the thick cold of bitter hopelessness. A shift in a slightly different direction, and there may be jubilation. Either way, right now it’s Saturday for me.”
An Intimate Collision
Ever been in the “in-between?” You know, something’s gone (whatever that is), but whatever’s coming next hasn’t showed up yet. Or, life shut down in one place and it hasn’t opened up someplace else. Or, there’s this huge hole in our lives where some ‘thing’ or ‘someone’ used to be, and now that ‘it’ or ‘they’ are gone, we’re waiting for what’s going to show up and settle in that gaping hole within us. We lost a friend, or we lost a job, or we lost a home, or we lost a parent, or we lost our confidence, or we a lost a goal, or we lost a sense of self, or we lost a marriage…or whatever we lost. And whatever’s next after these losses is nowhere in sight, and because it’s not, we’re stuck in the “in-between.” And we hate being here.
But while we’re there (because sooner or later we will be there), we would wise to remember that the “in-between” is nothing more and nothing less than the step to our next step. It’s not a place where we’re stuck. It’s not a place where the “wheels came off” and we can’t get them back on. That’s our impatience talking. Rather, it’s a place within which we are being made ready for the next step. But because we’re so incredibly impatient, we don’t give this time of preparation the time it needs to prepare us.
And often our greatest mistake is to force ourselves forward by fabricating the ‘next thing’ so that something showed up and we can move forward because it did. Or by shoving something into the places where whatever we lost used to be, and then moving forward without being ready to move forward because none of that stuff we shoved in there fit…or maybe it did fit, but we put it in there prematurely. Or worse yet, we delude ourselves into believing that we really didn’t lose anything, or at least anything significant, and we just keep on forging forward to some destination that (in reality) no longer exists, or has shifted to a different place or moved to a different time. None of that works.
What we need to remember is that the “in-between” is not where our lives are stopped. It’s not some bottomless hole. It’s preparing you for your life. It’s a recalibration, not a reversal. It’s an end, but not a dead-end. So, if you’re in the “in-between,” learn from it, listen to it, be observant of it, tease out the lessons in it, and let it prepare you because the opportunities that it has for you aren’t going to be there forever because the “in-between” never lasts forever.
Tuesday Aug 30, 2022
”LifeTalk’s Thought for Life - The Notion of God
Tuesday Aug 30, 2022
Tuesday Aug 30, 2022
Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life. The notion of God does not set well with some people. Sadly, that notion was often shaped by people or situations or less than admirable agendas that did not reflect the true nature of this God. And if we’re going to reject something, maybe we should reject it on its true merits, not those that have been imposed upon it. Consider this “Thought for Life:”
“I can staunchly reject the notion that I was created to live in relationship with God. But should I do that, I will be unable to reject all of the consequences for which I was not created.”
I hope that you ponder that thought today. Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Monday Aug 29, 2022
Podcast Short: All Is Lost - Or So We Think
Monday Aug 29, 2022
Monday Aug 29, 2022
All Is Lost
Everybody seems lost these days. People don’t like to admit that, or they refuse to admit that…but everybody seems lost these days. I suppose that the greatest kind of ‘lost’ is to be ‘lost,’ but to deny that you’re ‘lost,’ even though you are. That’s about the worst kind of lost that I can think of, and we certainly see a whole lot of that kind of ‘lost’ today. Everybody seems lost these days.
Let’s face it, we live in a world that’s lost. In one way or another (or to one degree or another), the world’s always been lost. There’s a pattern to our humanity that should cause us to wise up a bit, and that pattern is that (as a species) we’re pretty consistently lost. It just seems that we’re a bit more lost these days.
And in our world today, the more that we work to become un-lost, the more ‘lost’ that we seem to become. As a culture, we walk around pretending that we have reliable maps and accurate compasses to get us un-lost. But we have neither. We attempt to create them, or make them, or say that we have them when we don’t. We claim that we have the policy, or the formula, or the philosophy, or some recent enlightenment, or some supposedly brilliant or revolutionary idea from which we can now draw the maps and fashion the compasses that we’ve been looking for, for so very long. And we grab hold of these new maps and compasses, and we use them to recalibrate wherever we are (and wherever it is that we think we want to go), and we end up deeper in woods than we’ve ever been before. The woods of our lives and our culture are littered with discarded maps and broken compasses. Everybody seems lost these days.
Of course we’re lost. We’re lost because the woods that we’re in are bigger than the resources that we have to get out them. And those woods become increasingly bigger the more that we convince ourselves that we can get out of them by ourselves. Where we are is too big for any map or any compass that we can create. And while we tend to bristle at the idea, God holds the map and has the compass. A sure map and a steady compass. And while we’re likely to continue to refute that reality, or work to ignore it in light of our incessant stubbornness, He’s got the map and the compass. And all we have to do (all we have to do) is ask Him for it. And I wonder (I wonder) exactly how lost we’re going to have to become before we finally ask Him.
Additional Resources
Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.
Tuesday Aug 23, 2022
”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Talk is Cheap
Tuesday Aug 23, 2022
Tuesday Aug 23, 2022
Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life. We need to stop. We need to put down our calendars, set our phones aside, strip ourselves of the voices incessantly clamoring for our attention and listen. Just listen. For life is not what we’re chasing. It’s what we’re leaving behind in the chasing. Consider this “Thought for Life:”
“Rich is the person who stops long enough to listen to a bird sing in the celebration of spring, peer into the deep blue of a drowsy summer sky, draw in the pungent aroma of fall’s leaves, and watch the listless kiss of a winter’s snow. For in doing these you have witnessed that which money cannot purchase and man cannot create.”
I hope that you ponder that thought today. Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.
Monday May 30, 2022
The Path to Losing Our Freedom
Monday May 30, 2022
Monday May 30, 2022
Our freedoms are not a "right." They are, in fact, a "privilege." They are not ours to abuse. Rather, they are ours to cherish. But as we abuse these rights by demanding our right to them or exercising them in ways that will destroy these very freedoms, we forget that they are fragile. Very fragile. They are not permanent. They are not guaranteed. They will not stand under the weight of our misuse of them. And if handled inappropriately or abused in one of the many ways that we abuse them, we may someday find ourselves without them.
We are a nation that is losing it's mooring. We are blatantly rewriting our history and thoughtlessly discarding truth in some mad dash of ultimate destruction. We are using our freedoms to destroy ourselves. And I would think that that is the saddest use of these cherished and long-held freedoms that I can think of.
Monday May 30, 2022
Podcast Short: What Is Right and What Is Not?
Monday May 30, 2022
Monday May 30, 2022
What Is Right and What Is Not?
What is ‘right?’ What provides our guiding function? What is our “north star?” Our constant? Our set of rules that keep us civil? Our code? Or… is our code the commitment to the absence of a code? What is ‘right?’
The question, “What is right,” must be asked without our efforts to choose what is ‘right,’ or to think that we actually have the power to do that in the first place. The question, “What is right” needs to be probed without exercising some sort of non-existent license that leads us to believe that we have the right to decide that ‘everything’ is right. It is a question not of opinion or bias or cultural trends or vogue ideals. Rather, it is a deeper question. Much deeper.
It is not a question of how we grant ourselves the greatest leeway by building the widest moral highway we can possibly build. It’s not about scripting out the boundaries for ourselves that are boundaries in name only, so that we might delude ourselves into thinking that we are walking the high road, when we are, in fact, mucking our way through the lowest path. It’s not about the kind of life that we want to live, but the kind of life that we should live. It’s not about declaring all things ‘right’ so that we can finally relieve ourselves of the guilt of having done so much that is wrong. And that involves submitting our greed to the weight of principle. And in the mind of many a life traveler, that trade demands far, far too much. Yet should we decide against the trade, we will soon realize that the cost is far, far too high.
And so, we might consider that ‘right’ is something that ‘is,’ not something that we create. Its existence pre-dates our own and will extend beyond our own. It is a collection of building blocks that when gathered, form the foundation of existence itself. It’s a natural set of laws and principles that keeps things regulated, in balance, ever-steady, and gently positioned in order that we might enjoy the maximum of this existence. This thing called ‘right’ is an ingenious compilation of the values that keep us safe from others, but mostly safe from ourselves…for on our own we do not seem to do either very well. Right’ is the daily working out of the ethics that allow none of us to abuse all the others of us. Instead, it allows us to enrich those with whom we share the privilege of this journey. ‘Right’ is that fragile collection of morals and values that are so easily broken, but never destroyed. But hard as we try, we cannot break them without deeply, and possibly permanently, breaking ourselves.
And are these things not embedded in us, so much so that we immediately know when we have violated them? And does not the frantic need to douse the guilt explain why we in a rogue culture are incessantly attempting to make ‘right’ that which we cannot for no other reason than that which we are fighting against has always been, and will always be, bigger than us? Will we be so foolish as to upset the gentle balance of ethics, morals and values to the point that we will never be able to reset a world that we sent careening? And so, the question is, “What is ‘right?” And my answer is, “What God built, and how He instructed us to manage it.” There is nothing, there is nothing that will ever be more right than that. Ever.
“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
- Micah 6:8
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
”Flecks of Gold On a Path of Stone - Simple Truth’s for Profound Living” - Part Two
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Flecks of Gold On a Path of Stone - Simple Truth's For Profound Living
An unknown author wrote, “Real treasure lies not in what that can be seen, but what cannot be seen.” Oddly, we possess this strangely cockeyed perception that we must be able to see something in order to treasure it. What we see as treasure is really only the thing that’s revealing the treasure itself. The treasure in a daisy is not the daisy, but the massively creative genius behind the daisy. The flower itself is simply a tender, fragrant and quite intricate manifestation of the real treasure. Reflected in the wonder of this simple flower we are privileged to see a whisper thin slice of something truly marvelous. Real treasure then lies nestled in hidden places with generous clues to its magnificence scattered all about us like a generous field of daisies that rolls off to blue horizons. Sadly, we call those clues “treasure.”
The real treasure is often too airy and intangible for us. But, we feel that we have to see treasure, which in reality keeps us from seeing treasure. Not only do we have to see treasure, we think that we have to be able to somehow hold it in our hands. And then, in far too many cases we think we have to be able to own in order to really treasure it. What we haven’t figured out is that if we can possess something it’s simply not a treasure, for real treasure is far too elusive to be held in the hands of any man.
Sadly, we rarely consider the reality that real treasure is the stuff that can’t be seen. Therefore, we don’t look for it because we presume that there’s nothing to look for. Because we don’t look for it, we miss real treasure and we accept the bogus, phony and plastic stuff of life for the stuff of treasure. We plod through life with our pockets crammed with a squalid array of worthless trinkets that we think to be treasure. We live anemically impoverished lives and we don’t even know it.
In fact, it may well be that to treasure something in a truly treasured manner it must be entirely ethereal; it must be something that we can’t see, that we can’t hold and that we can’t own. When we possess something, the fact that we have the ability to possess it suggests that whatever it is, it’s terribly limited; so limited in fact that we can control it. Possessing something suggests that whatever we possess is subject to our whims and the flux of our own whimsy. Anything we can control must have some sort of inferior status that automatically excludes it as being treasure of the most treasured sort.
Being unable to possess something suggests that it has a sweeping scope, an unfathomable significance, and a fathomless depth that is far beyond us or beyond anyone else for that matter. Real treasures are elusive because if they’re not, they don’t rise sufficiently above our sordid and stained humanity to be genuinely categorized as treasures. Real treasure will not be owned, or bound, or appraised, or hemmed in, or leashed, or locked in a vault, or confined to a trust, or be made subject to either our ridicule or praise. Real treasure is priceless because it supersedes and completely eclipses any rogue monetary standards that we’d foolishly attempt to place on it. Real treasure will not bow in servitude or obediently follow at our heels because it is superior to us. Yet the real wonder of real treasure is that it is withheld from no one.
Sparrows and a Clapboard Garage
Every spring the sparrows came back to the old garage; something like coming back to a comfy, old friend. Darting and bouncing in feathered frenzy, they would burst from the muscular maples and the tangled brush of the Mock Oranges, flirting and flitting in front of the garage in some sort of grand hello after a winter’s separation. Upon their return their boundless energy and contagious enthusiasm seemed wildly intoxicating; vibrant, vibrating and filled with all the fresh energy of spring. I often wondered if they had spent the cold, gray months of winter in a nearly uncontrollable anticipation of greeting their old friend once winter had rolled off the horizon of spring.
Sometimes in life there seems to be a subtle yet wonderfully warm camaraderie of sorts that develops between things you’d never think would or could be connected like that. Those things are a kind of treasure in themselves. That seemed to explain the quiet, entirely unspoken kind of relationship that existed between the old garage and the sparrows. They seemed like long seasoned friends that didn’t need to say much because the bond that they shared spoke more than words ever could. The old clapboard garage and the house sparrows were each warmed, gently magnified, and beautifully enhanced by the other. Each was a treasure embraced as a treasure.
The sparrows would glide up between the heavy wooden doors and slip by the sturdy steel tracks that they ran on; seeming to nestle into the garages soft, clapboard embrace. Every spring the sparrows would settle in and nest right above the heavy wooden doors, tucked just inside the thin edge of the garage attic. There was far too much love and warmth in the old garage, so there were usually two or three nests enfolded above the wooden doors.
It was easy to see the sparrows incessantly coming and going as they bobbed and darted about. Yet, as with any real treasure you couldn’t see what they were doing. Treasure enveloped in secrecy always lends a bit of tantalizing mystery to it all. The sparrows were phenomenally tireless; transporting endless bits of straw and brown grasses into the garage; building a place to birth the treasures of the next generation. Within moments of entering the garage they would poke out elated heads, and then burst into flight with empty beaks. In no time they would return with more strands of lacey grass, or bits of tattered weed, or cottony fibers, or limply discarded pieces of string . . . over and over.
Within weeks the sound of new life could be heard tentatively reaching out from above the old, wooden doors. Scattered chirps and peeps liberally tossed out as brilliant shards of spring would be shushed when anyone approached. Patient mothers were teaching their little ones that life is an incomparable treasure, but treasure does not eliminate danger. These little, hidden treasures would become ever louder as they grew. They would grow strong and eventually seek the independence of flight. Before the close of spring they would launch themselves in a gangly and awkward kind of flight. Curiosity would beckon them out to explore the places close to the garage, bursting into uncoordinated flight but never wandering too far way. Life would eventually call them out ever further from the clapboard garage until they were gone into summer’s embrace.
Characteristics of Treasures
Unobtrusive
Treasures are hidden away in quiet places. They speak in soft tones and often become silenced as we approach. They don’t beg to be found, but embrace us if we do happen to find them. They are the product of completely ordinary circumstances unfolding in wonderfully extraordinary ways. They are found hidden in the nooks and crannies of our existence; all around us if we quit allowing our attention to be captivated by that which is noisy and listen for that which is quiet and still.
The Product of Unexpected and Loving Camaraderie
Treasures are a product of treasures. Real treasure is the product of lives shared, experiences intermingled, roads merged into single lanes, sacrifices jointly experienced, the soulful laughter of two hearts in beat with each other, and lives bountifully expended in unity. Treasures are the step-child of lives lived out in shared experiences that dramatically multiply both the experience and persons in a manner geometrically beyond anything the persons could hope to experience alone. Treasures rise out of the relationship of people who are intimately woven together by the threads of time and the needle of experience.
Always Creating and Never Preserving
Treasures are not stagnant. They’re not to be preserved as in the preserving they will most certainly wither and they will perish. Real treasures begat other treasures. Real treasures are designed to perpetuate other treasures. Sometimes the perpetuation involves the replication of the original treasure, and sometimes the replication is something entirely different but just as wonderful. Treasures are ingenuously and deliberately crafted to enrich the world. If one thing is for certain, they are not designed to be encased in the lifeless museums of our making, or the vaults we create to keep them to ourselves. It’s in their multiplication that the cold of life’s winters are forced off the edge of the calendar to make way for spring.
Sown to the World
It’s our natural inclination to preserve treasures; to corral them and box them and seal them tight. We assume that unless they’re preserved they’ll be lost, which is entirely contradictory. In fact, they are designed to be launched and thrown out to the horizons of each of our lives regardless of whatever the season is that we might be in. Authentic treasures permeate our world; they gain wings of their own and they disburse so that they might reproduce in other places and in other lives. The stuff of treasure is irrepressibly infectious and prudently wild; intent on providing enrichment whenever and wherever it can. We must work against our own inclinations and toss treasures out to the world around us.
It would be tremendously wise to rethink the concept of treasure in your own life. What you may be holding onto may not be treasure at all. In fact, if you’re “holding” onto it, it’s not.
Wednesday Nov 10, 2021
The Problem is Not the Problem
Wednesday Nov 10, 2021
Wednesday Nov 10, 2021
We all have…problems. And there’s a real good chance that we have a lot of…problems. Life comes with problems. It’s part of the deal. It’s a natural part of this thing that we’re all doing called life. Life comes with problems. But the real problem is not that life comes with problems. The real problem is what we do with them.
The Problem is Not the Problem
In the majority of cases, the problem is ‘not’ the problem…despite the fact that we think it’s the problem. The problem is how we’re choosing to deal with the problem. That’s the problem. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in most cases the problem actually creates less problems than the way that we’ve chosen to deal with the problem. The ‘real’ problem is that we don’t want to deal with the ‘real’ problem. And all we have to do is look around at our culture today to realize that we have cultivated, and refined, and ingeniously perfected a whole bunch of ways to do that.
Wednesday Nov 03, 2021
Do We Search for the Truth - Or For Ways Around It?
Wednesday Nov 03, 2021
Wednesday Nov 03, 2021
Do we search for the truth, or do we search for ways around the truth? Do we even take the time to consider a question like that out of the long-held assumption that we are, in fact, looking for the truth because (we assume) that that’s the obvious thing to do? What insanity would behoove us to do anything less? But do we search for the truth, or do we search for ways around the truth? Maybe we should consider the fact that there are a whole lot of reasons why we actually might stoop to something less.
Do we search for the truth even when it takes the foundations that we’ve laboriously built with the sweat of our brow and the best of our years, and does truth handily expose those foundations as weak, entirely misappropriated, and as nothing more than sand piled in every place except the right place? Will we search for truth even when it looks us square in the face and tells us this kind of stuff? Will we search for it knowing that there is a very distinct possibility that it will tell us everything that we don’t want to hear in every way that we don’t want to hear it? Will we search for truth even then?
Wednesday Oct 27, 2021
Better or Worse - The Clouding of Our Choices
Wednesday Oct 27, 2021
Wednesday Oct 27, 2021
Will the choices in front of us make us better or worse? Will they improve our lives, or diminish our lives? That depends on who and what is informing those decisions. Is it people with questionable agendas, or is it a culture trending on a rogue wave of self-gratification, or is it our own lack of thoughtfulness and integrity? Whatever it might be, we might ask who and/or what is informing our decisions? And how much are they clouding that decision to the point that we will be set up to pay a potentially unimaginable price in making it…for we have all paid such prices before and we would be the fool to pay them again. For the wrong information, and the wrong motives, and the wrong value system will leave you on the wrong side of every choice, and choices that leave you on the wrong side never make your life better.
Wednesday Oct 20, 2021
The Battle - I'd Rather Be David
Wednesday Oct 20, 2021
Wednesday Oct 20, 2021
Battles. We all fight them. Sometimes they're just the minor things that are a natural part of the day-in and day-out living of our lives. Sometimes they're unspeakably brutal and unexplainably savage, making no sense as to why they're happening. Battles can sometimes be something more of a minor irritant, or they can be something that leaves our lives in flames, cinders and ash. At times we battle people, we battle circumstances, we battle society, we battle injustices, or we battle within ourselves. Either way, we all fight battles.
But how do we fight them? Do we fight them just to survive them? Do we choose not to fight and opt to surrender as the easiest course of action? Do we fight them by playing the victim and therefore not really fight them at all? Do we have someone else fight our battles for whatever reason we have them fight them? Battles will come as they are a natural part of our existence. But how will we fight them? And how much does that choice dictate the outcome that we will live with?