Do you ever get tired of talking? Do you ever get tired of trying to do the very best you can do? Do you ever get tired of encountering people who have one desire and that is to shut you down? As the political season escalates, I have become more and more discouraged with our American lifestyle. I wonder why we have so many missionaries heading for other countries and not hanging around in America... maybe it is become Americans (in general) have become so hardened by the Word of God? Our hearts are no longer focused on selfless love. Life is about using all the time you have to please yourself. The word sacrafice is quickly dissapearing, and we no longer reach out to our brother and sister in love and peace. The best and worst thing about reading articles on-line is that people can comment. I get a better idea of where we are at as a country by reading the comments. For example, two people may be discussing difference in political ideas, but instead of discussing what is better for a country, the discussion can quickly turn into a conversation of hatred by throwing verbal abuse back and forth. These people may not seem very intelligent, but these people are normal.
Ugh! So many random words, and I still feel like I haven't gotten out my point! I was reading an article about the new HPV vaccine. The government now recommends having teenage girls betweent he ages of 12-16 (or something like that ) get this vaccine because the idea is that basically all girls between these ages will become sexually active even if that doesn't include direct intercourse. Now apparently some religious group decided that this vaccine would actually cause girls to become more sexually active, so a bunch of researchers got together to prove that the vaccine did not cause girls to increase or decrease their sexual activity. The comments on this article are fun. Most of them are about how this stupid religious group should be ashamed of ordering this study (which if I read this correctly the group did not order the testing).
Anyways, they go on and on about how the vaccine is so good, and then one woman posts about how she has taught her daughter why it is important to wait to have sex until marriage, but when her daughter was 16 she had her daughter take the vaccine for extra protection. I guess you would call this absence plus education (which by the way everyone was commenting about how absence plus was the correct way to teach children about sex). The next comment was directed at this mother. It told her that more than likely her daughter was having sex by the age of 12 because most girls are having sex by that age and she was a horrible mother for not getting her daughter vaccine before 16. The comment went on to say that if the government tells us to do something it is for our safety and it is good to just do it especially when our freedoms become a hazard to our safety.
I wanted to cry. Another dad posted something about teaching his daughter morals, and the comment in reply to him was simply, you are not a moral person and you have not taught your daughter anything to give her any moral background. If you are using that book of Bible stories as your basis for morals then you are teaching a bunch of lies.
OH YES! That is right... whatever the government feeds us must be fact, but anything else is a book of lies. Where do I get my plane ticket out?
All that is a little harsh. I love America. I love my soldiers. I love my state and my freedoms. I do lose hope. Don't get me wrong, I do not think God has pulled His hand away from America or His people, but I do get so frustrated. The church is told to speak out in love. LOVE is the only way to fight or win any battle. It is the only thing that will defeat the enemy. Education, money, and giftings are all great, but according to the song, "If I don't have love, then I am bankrupt."
You know what though.. it is hard to love. It is hard to continue loving when someone throws everything you have ever believed or hope for back into your face. It is hard when you are faced daily with lies that contradict what you know to be the truth. Our kids our fed this daily, and so are we. We love and love and love and then someone tells us we are bad parents, liars, manipulators, etc. and so forth. So what does the church do? We grow hard against the world. We begin holding riots and picketing without a single ounce of love in our hearts. We decide to fight hatred with hatred. UGH!
I am split. I know that I must continue to love, but I get so angry. I ask God all the time, why do I have to love that person? Why did you allow me to invest time in that person to have it thrown back at me? Why am I so open for attacks? I think about buying a little house with a nice little fence, two sweet little cars, and working to buy nice things and raise two children (because anymore would just be ridiculous). I smile about how safe that sounds. Then reality comes in, and I realize that no matter what, as a believer, I am not safe... not from the world anyways. Jesus said there would be trouble. So, I get over my little dream, have my pity party, and keep moving. I keep trying to love, and failing miserably, and asking God to pick me back up. I keep falling into self-absorbed world and struggling again. I ask God to give me the wisdom to determine an outright lie to an half-truth to truth.
And life goes on.
