Pursuit of the Sacred

 It is a common belief among Christians that we should give God the glory for what he has done.  It is not about glorifying ourselves or showing people how great "we" are.  It should be all about him and drawing all people to Him.   We do work with God though, so we do have a part to play.   The act of our "freewill" either has to give us some credit, or we have to say that we have no freewill.   However, the fact that we have free will is because of God.   It is an interesting topic for sure, and one that can make you go cross-eyed if you think about it too hard. :)    What I am thinking about today though is not about who gets credit for the good things, but how do we handle sin and who gets the blame for that?   The enemy is not the opposite of God.   That would make him far more powerful than he actually is, so we can't exactly flip what we believe on the good side of things to the bad and call it s...

The concept of the family is not a human invention. It is one of those things that has "just always has been".  It is even easily observed in the animal kingdom.  A human family is naturally created by a man and a woman having a child and caring for each other as well as the child.  That is the most basic definition of a complete family.  Over time their have been different expectations for parents, different styles of parenting, different expectations for children.  A lot of shifting has happened over the centuries that has matured, the idea of the family. Their have also been many times throughout history where the sacredness of the family has been lost, and the effects of that have been devastating.   In simpler times the family was an autonomous unit.  Each family had a tremendous amount of freedom to run their family as they saw fit.  In those simpler times life was not complicated but it was very hard.  The goal was to sustain life...

"In the beginning God created..."   That is how the Bible begins to explain the origins of our existence.  Along with the foundations of the physical universe came life.  (plant, animal, and human).  With that physical creation comes a countless number of foundational truths that tie physical creation together with emotion, and spirit.  We as humans are miraculously conscious at least in part to this design.  These rules  bring order and tie everything together to create a healthy ecosystem.   We have an ability to manipulate this ecosystem to do amazing things.  Just as God created, we too have created micro-creations within His creation.  These creations many times have made us more productive, safer, stronger, and all together made life better.   As it goes with creating/inventing/exploring, not everything works out for the better unfortunately.   While there is a lot of room for us to be creative, buildi...

 Psalms 119:32 -  "I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free"   I read this verse this morning on July 3rd.  The word "free" stands out since Independence Day is tomorrow.  How interesting is this verse?   I run the path of your commands   - for you have set my heart free.    What do commands have to do with freedom?   A lot more than we think in todays culture.   Today freedom means you can do whatever you want and that is considered freedom.  And by definition that is true.  I do think it is short sighted though.  Today's definition is really a humanistic only view of freedom.  For a person to make any decision in their life that they want is certainly freedom if you consider nothing outside of your physical life.   We are more than physical beings though.  If we are free in our flesh, but enslaved in our spirit, is it really freedom?    ...

 I have started this new blog as what I believe will be an outlet for my next focus.  I say "believe to be" because the term "pursuit of the sacred" is only a couple days old in my thinking.  Maybe I will reword it, or decide a slightly different path, but I wanted to "try it on" so to speak and see where it goes.    The thought of pursuing the sacred is something that excites me.  It is a heavy/difficult pursuit.  It is one that I don't want influenced by the popular culture, other than to look at current conflicts and to discover the sacred truth to know where I should stand on a topic.  I have a hunch that on most issues I will not be on one side or the other, but likely in some mix of the two, or possibly nowhere near either side.  At the same time, I can't really live in a bubble and God uses other people to speak into our lives.  I guess what I am saying is that I don't just want to follow some human reasoning and call it "sacred...