Wrong thinkers would have us to believe—incorrectly—that the world is a soft, squishy, fuzzy, place of peace, platitudes……..sort of nirvana-esque. ‘Taint necessarily so. The real world is a place of “against.” People against people; systems opposing people; philosophies in conflict with philosophies; ideas at odds with one another……it’s a messy, chaotic, and somewhat dangerous place. Always has been, and always will be.<\/p>\n
I go squishy soft when I’m in the presence of a baby, don’t you? Fat babies, sleeping babies, crying babies, laughing babies, slobbery poopy babies……..wow! Who wouldn’t love a baby?<\/p>\n
I was reading in the Gospel of Mathew this morning and noticed that the very first thing that happened to baby Jesus was someone tried to kill him—when he was a baby! He hadn’t preached an offensive sermon, violated any religious code of conduct, or challenged authority. The most offensive thing he could have produced up to that moment was a really malodorous diaper. Yet right after his birth, the government marked him for death.<\/p>\n
Hmmm.<\/p>\n
Soft? Fuzzy? Squishy? Peaceful? NO!<\/p>\n
Against.<\/p>\n
What I take from that lesson is this: in this world you will have much trouble (Jesus said that). It is a place that is “against” occupied by people who are “against” and any notion of permanent ease and peacefulness this side of Heaven is folly. But I also know that Jesus said “I have overcome the world.” Even in this dangerous place we can live in joy, with happiness and confidence.<\/p>\n
I’m going to have a great day. It may or may not \u00a0be an easy one, we’ll see. But it’s going to be a good one and I will rest my head on my pillow tonight and sleep soundly knowing that I have done my best to make it better, to make a difference for others, and maximally use the life He’s given to me.<\/p>\n
Even in the darkness you can choose to walk in the light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wrong thinkers would have us to believe—incorrectly—that the world is a soft, squishy, fuzzy, place of peace, platitudes……..sort of nirvana-esque. ‘Taint necessarily so. The real world is a place of “against.” People against people; systems opposing people; philosophies in conflict with philosophies; ideas at odds with one another……it’s a messy, chaotic, and somewhat dangerous place. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,35,17,16,12,18,4,25],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-belief","tag-confidence","tag-courage","tag-difficulty","tag-evil","tag-fear","tag-god","tag-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions\/777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}