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Sounds of Sinai |
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March 31, 2007 (Updated November 23, 2007)
Insight
What I write here is not intended to provide any guidance, but insight.
I could probably never become informed or wise enough to provide any other person guidance. By asking questions and offering observations, I might provide you (the expert on your life) information helpful to guide yourself. When we get trapped in distorted thinking or emotional thinking, a fresh view of the obvious from an outsider may break that thought pattern or at least balance it with fresh input. Ultimately, we are responsible for every choice we make about our life whether directly or indirectly.
I might provide questions that probe. Questions like, why I seem to be satisfied with so much less than what I say is important to me? What are my values, hopes and interests that will make my life complete and successful? When I look back on the year I have just lived, how is it less successful than it should have been? What should it have been?
In exploring these things, it always is rooted back to spiritual and eternal questions and answers. If God exists and has any kind of an interest in my life – what is it? Who am I and what am I doing? Most people, if they evaluate these questions, do so only in regard to the most significant decisions and events in life. I see them through each heart beat and breath and step taken.
As the majesty of a great tapestry is the accumulation of simple thread choices and positioning of stitches, our life becomes the result of many moment by moment decisions and actions. Those events that seem most monumental are almost always an accumulation point of all the things leading up to the moment. They are more a sign post on the road and not the road itself.
A sound and successful life, lived well in each moment, will accumulate into a life that is sound and successful. This of course is measured in the eternal. It is not measured in the temporal and superficial of this life as we have a tendency to do even if it is life and death.
Life and death is simply stopping for the light at an intersection for a moment while continuing on our journey through the intersection into eternity. It is our temporal nature to lose perspective at life and death moments. We have to reach into our eternal nature to get proper perspective. We need to practice living moment by moment with the eternal view, so our life and death moments are handled using God’s perspective.
I am not one to whom to look for advice on what to do. I am one that can talk with you about what might be helpful for you to think about when you are deciding what to do. In the same vein, I am not the one to judge you as to the quality or merit of your decisions. That is between you and God.
I do have this promise from God. If we give each moment to him, whatever quality it may be, he will take the thing of limited value and give back to us things of limitless value. He will take the moments we give of our past, present and future and do the same thing. A wise man invests in this promise by giving all future moments so he can enjoy the maximum that God wants to give.
Insight is a Godly view of a human situation that gives it value and perspective. It assesses the good and eternal in the midst of strong temporal and emotional motivations. With clear vision of what is important and necessary and a commitment to what is best for all, decisions can be made that improve our lives and those that we influence. It is a very personal thing and a place where we are naked before God in the bright revelation of eternal honesty and sincerity. Not everyone wants insight as some people prefer to live in the dark.
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