"Every wrinkle is but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well spent life''- Dickens
It's my birthday, so I write...!:-)
This year, I feel entirely different from all the other birthdays I have been privileged to. Good different and bad different all at the same time! I guess I'll give myself away as you read on as to why that is.
I remember some of my low- key birthdays because something went awry and grown ups deemed it was inappropriate to celebrate that much or even at all while my childish excitement was been hampered! Oh, being a child has its own troubles, I tell you!:-D Little selfish me just wouldn’t get it! I recall other times when I actually got a cake and the excitement of carrying it from the vendor’s to the house ruined the thing! Unlit candles fell off/ experimented the edibility of same, icing and decor on cake came off! Lol. Potholes aided the ‘death’ of a particular one...lol! I had insisted I was going to carry MY CAKE on my laps as we journeyed home from the vendor’s and each time the driver manoeuvered albeit tactlessly because of the car holes sorry, potholes, the poor cake was chipped till it looked really ‘cakey’ on arrival! Lol! Talk about literally ''having your cake and eating it too''. Children can be som'thing!
I’ve found spiritual benefit in the timing of my birthday been quite close to the end of the year because it helps me to feel more acutely the passing of time. And that’s very good for my soul because I need to be reminded that I’m getting older and that I have a limited amount of time on this earth.
You had better listen to birthday gal!:-)
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“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom but fools despise wisdom and discipline."- Proverbs 1:7
If we could take in and remember the teachings of the Good Book, we would be so shrewd! No situation would ever catch us out and no temptation take us by surprise. Seldom would we be deceived or beguiled by subtlety or cunning, because in them, we are prepared for the vicissitudes of life. The Truth sting a little and almost taunt in order to jolt us into recognizing that we are heading in some wrong direction. Most of us young people are completely ignorant of the storms, currents and quicksands that would come from the sea of life.
Thankfully, the timeless Truth of God's word equip us so that we immediately recognize different ‘characters’ or human situations, and are able to categorize them, and know precisely what to expect from them. Incidentally, no one is grounded or prepared for life in this way and everything has to be learned by bitter experience- personal and otherwise. We stumble into harmful situations and down we fall, headlong! And we are still stumbling through life and burning our fingers in our thirties, forties, fifties and sixties. If only we had given more shrewdness and insight into human nature at an early stage!
It is worth noting that the modern world is deeply prejudiced against the kind of character analysis found in the Bible, because it is offensive to human pride. People like to think of their lives as personal voyages of discovery and accomplishment. We like to think of themselves as totally one –off individuals who possess a very unique blend of views and abilities. We shudder at the idea that our character can be predicted accordingly. Human pride wants to think that we are vastly more sophisticated than this. People recoil from the reality – that ‘fallen’ human nature is insubstantial, and dominated by its many flaws.
In the Good Book, God has compressed a vast quantity of profound insights. Talk about the Truth being handy as a bottle of aspirin and we can call them to mind in so many of life’s situations. This present society is cruelly unkind to the young, treating us virtually as experimental laboratory animals. Millions of young people are being thrown to the wolves of drink, drugs, illicit sex and so on and our parents?! Most of them imagine that this is the modern, liberated, reasonable thing to do! Almost the entire younger generation is delivered into the clutches of the millionaire barons of pop, porn and dope, and nobody cares what happens to us. The young are encouraged to accept as legitimate and even necessary, youthful, pre-marital sexual adventures and are taught through magazines techniques for getting maximum satisfaction. The writers of these pieces of junk don’t bother to look into the future and consider the emotional and physical consequences of all these and the untold suffering to be reaped by thousands over many years! Not like they care about the human lives they hurl into the experimental cauldron!!
Here is hope...
God’s love is tender and protective and He has faithfully put instructions for daily living in His word in readiness for this sin- sick and chaotic world. Young people must be aware that whatever gifts and strengths we possess and however knowledgeable we are, there is always a degree of susceptibility connected with the early years of life. When young, we are vulnerable to ambush by false ideas and claims and the Good Book sets out to reveal the morass of deception in this world, and to give shrewdness and discernment.
‘’My son, hear the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother’’- Solomon in Proverbs 1:8.
These words are intended as a miniature parable in which father and mother represents the human tendency to rebel against God early in life. It applies particularly to younger people, especially up to the age of thirty. The idea is that self determination and rebellion surface in the human character in the early years of life when most people experience a powerful inclination to stop respecting God. This has little to do with the chemistry of adolescence as some people imagine. It is chiefly moral and spiritual! Because we are members of a ‘fallen’ human race, personal rebellion will soon express itself in an urge to consider ‘number one’, and resent all restrictive spiritual and moral values. Rebellion is the ‘model defect’ of human beings brought upon us by guess who ...us! Even non – religious people frequently come to see this as they get older. They come to accept that human beings are by nature cantankerous, rebellious, ambitious, covetous and lustful.
The trouble is that in early life we do not always realise that our strong, rebellious desires for earthly fulfillment arise from the ‘model defect’ of the human race. We do not know ourselves! We begin to want our own way constantly and strongly, and to seek our own gratification. We begin to pursue leisure and pleasure as if they were the greatest essentials of life; and to seek the applause and approval of others. But we do not understand what is happening within us, namely, that this is all part of the process of rebellion against the Creator and His standards. If as a young adult, I fail to understand that I have rebellious nature which is bound to assert itself, I will probably assume that my desires to strike out on my own and abandon the training of childhood are my more mature thoughts! I will foolishly assume that my earlier beliefs were simpler and less sophisticated than my present ideas.
The appeal of acceptance and approval - of liberty from all restrictions -of an easy time- of safety from consequence- of pleasure and wealth up to the appeal of solidarity... phew! I pause here and shudder even as my mind ponders...
We are constantly being lied to by the world about the painlessness of sin, and the absence of consequences –truth be told, its assurances are attractive, but are utterly false. Sin must be paid for! *Lordhavemercy*
...
As I turn 29 , I am aware that most friends are married and more would get married, and er... So will I! ;-) I understand I’ll lose touch with many more of them and our 'circle' gets smaller and our burdens become greater and truth is, what other people think becomes less important to us. But in early years, it can seem so important that we may sacrifice even our morals and our belief in God to keep in with the 'the crowd'. Solidarity or 'fitting in’ is an appealing fraud to which countless people surrender!
...
OK, am done preaching for now...
I solicit for your prayers:
Please pray along that God will save me from naive unawareness of my vulnerability and that I will recognize the stirrings and the tantrums of the fallen human nature within me. Since it is in understanding me and what causes me to be the way I am that aids this, please pray that I will be graced to approach the Lord in the right spirit, and seek forgiveness and conversion as I journey in this life. Also, am aware that our rebellious inner nature does not excuse our sins but draws us down an unbelieving, selfish, sinful pathway and that there is no greater tragedy than a young (wo) man who thinks that those urgings are the product of their free minds!
I have already yielded my life to the Lord Jesus Christ and I walk with Him,I only ask that you pray along that I won't be swept away when the old nature tries to reassert itself. After all, from the foregoing, 29 is legal but not grown!:-)
And talking about that, I honestly do not want to be fully-grown especially if that means a grinding halt on my dire need of a Saviour!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!:-)
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