Finding Peace

 

There are many metaphors, images, concepts, and types that communicate how whatever things we put into ourselves will directly impact the quality of our lives. The food we eat will have an influence on our health, on our ability to function in life, and how we physically feel as we move through each day of our life. I would like to be able to say that most people understand how the quality of food will impact our overall health.

The person who limits his dietary intake to fast food, snacks, the cheapest food available at the grocery store should understand that his energy levels, his body fat content, and his muscle tone will be in a negative state. With a diet like this, one will not have the energy to exercise, build muscle, or be fit and strong.

The same approach can be understood when we consider who and what kind of people we allow into our lives. If we choose people to be our friends whose lives are vain, foolish, and distracted, we will find that they will negatively influence us. A much better path would be to put in the effort to find people of good quality, full of wisdom, pursuing success, and knowing how to love others rather than simply appealing to their own passions.

I encourage you, the reader, to give careful thought to those around you, those who influence you, and those who have direct influence upon your thinking and the quality of your life. Do these people bring peace, do they bring joy, do they bring happiness, or do they bring confusion, despair, grief, and pain? Be thoughtful, be attentive, and be deliberate about who you allow to influence you.

Pursue quality, pursue excellence, and put in the effort to make every area of your life better, stronger, healthier, and focused on making your life and the lives of others better. Do not settle for sufficient, do not settle for the basics, and do not allow yourself to be content with “just enough”.

One final word of encouragement. Be thoughtful about what you take into your mind, into your heart, and be attentive to what you think about when you are not focused on your employment or on your time with others. If you are filling yourself with immature vanity, foolishness, and juvenile entertainment, you are doing yourself a great disservice. Do not be content with empty distraction or with childish entertainment, instead put in the effort to find movies, music, and overall entertainment that is high quality and has been carefully and thoughtfully created.

Be deliberate, be wise, and be thoughtful about what you take into yourself.

Foundationally About Love

 

It is safe to say that everyone wants to be loved, wants to be recognized as important, and enjoys interaction with others. Be the person who is willing to step away from situations that most would find uncomfortable, do not judge others for their life decisions, for their sins or for the way that they approach life.

The metaphor of being a light in a room, and using that light to make existence better for others is found in Holy Scripture. One does not walk into a dark room with a candle and then hide that candle under a basket or under the bed. Be the one who brings light, who brings joy, who brings quality and peace to those around you.

If you are honest with yourself, you should be able to recognize and acknowledge that you struggle with certain sins and of all people you need to be the hardest on yourself for repeatedly falling into those sins. This is why confession and repentance are so important, if you confess a particular sin, put in a great effort to not fall back into that sin, remember the shame that you previously felt when you go to confession. Remembering that feeling is vital to our success in life.

Yes, we can look at others and wonder why they allow themselves to be corrupted and deceived by any particular sin. It is a reality that others may look at us and wonder why we do the things we do, why we think the way we think, and why we do or do not do some things. Do not condemn others for their sins, instead harshly judge yourself for your failure to avoid falling into sin.

There are some sins and perversions that most will find extremely distasteful and morally disturbing. Instead of thinking negatively about those people who fall into those sins, do not judge them, do not condemn them, but instead pray for these people that they will be strong and will be thoughtful about the quality of their life.

Look at yourself, document what you do, what you say, how you spend your time, and how you spend your money. It is with thoughtful attention that we can become successful as we move forward in life. If we recognize our weaknesses and our inclination toward certain sins and perversions, we can then be attentive to the reality of our situation. Which will give us the opportunity to seek help from others, seek prayers from others, and make the effort to base our lives, our thoughts, and our actions on love rather than selfishness and comfort.

Put in the effort to restructure your life upon the act of love towards others, words of love toward others, and reject the emptiness of vanity, of greed, of lust, and of foolishness.

Suddenly Gone

 

It is probably safe to say that most people see themselves as important and under the delusion that they will always exist and will make a positive impact on their world, their culture, and their social circles. Depending on your childhood, your parents, your extended family, and your education, and what you do with the details of your life, how you use your intelligence, your financial success and your social skills will hopefully make a positive impact on those you know.

Each person passes through various stages of life: childhood, teen years, college years, and adulthood. As someone transitions from a time of life when they seem to have limitless energy and motivation to accomplish great things, eventually they will come to understand that old age will eventually catch up with them and they will become weak and need the help of others.

Over the last many millennia, there are very few people who are remembered and known as having an impact on the world in general. If you spend your time, your energy, and money on making yourself comfortable and distracted, then you are failing in your efforts to be a good influence and leaving a mark in history.

One day you will repose and a funeral will be held for you and hopefully there are many people who will attend that funeral and say good things about you. Will they remember your home, your car, your clothing, or will they remember you as the good person who was generous and willing to support others?

Unfortunately, sometimes funerals are held and no one attends them. There is a practice in the Netherlands called “the lonely funeral”. In this instance, someone reposes, and no one attends the funeral, but a poet is hired to write a poem about the deceased and reads the poem even though there is no one there to hear the poetic offering of the person’s life.

Think carefully about your life, and put in the effort to be the good person who is concerned with the wellbeing of others. Hopefully when a funeral is held for you, there will be many in attendance and they will say good things about you. Don’t be the person that everyone sees as selfish, comfortable, and lazy, but instead be the one who is generous, is loving, and sees the image of God in others, making sacrifices upon yourself so others can be cared for.

Misusing Authority

 

Authority is an actual situation under which we will always find ourselves. We can be the one with authority, or we can be one who is under someone else’s authority. Having a role of authority can easily be misused or abused, if you have others under your authority, you need to understand the responsibility of your role and the position those under you find themselves.

When someone becomes married and begins having children, those children are completely dependent upon their parents, they have needs both physical, emotional, and mental, if the parent is not selfish, is not thoughtless, and understand that everything they say and do will be observed by the child. The parent needs to understand that the child will see hypocrisy and will be confused if the words of the parent and the actions of the parent contradict one another. Children need to be loved, need to be protected, and need to be led toward a life of self-sacrifice and a focus of concern for others.

If you are an employee with a boss who is only focused on seeing success for themselves, hopefully you will recognize that you are in an unfortunate situation. If the boss always takes credit for the success of the people who are under his direction, then he is not a good person, he his not concerned about overall success for everyone, and is foundationally a selfish and greedy person.

When someone is in a position of authority, for example, the police, hopefully this person will not take advantage of his position of power and will be focused on doing what is right, what is legal, and what is in agreement with the current legal system. It is possible that one can find himself in a situation where those in authority are manipulating the facts of whatever situation. This is why it is important to have several witnesses to any situation, so that the facts of the case can be correctly identified and articulated.

When someone is young, when someone is weak, when someone is fully dependent upon someone else, the person with this responsibility needs to be loving, thoughtful, and concerned about the wellbeing of others and not simply focused on his own interests, his own pleasure, or his personal success. Love those around you, protect those around you, and always do what is right and good for those under your authority.

Taking advantage of someone who is weak, who is unable to care for themselves, and is doing all they can to simply survive and thrive. Our goal in interacting with others should be focused on helping others to pursue love, to pursue holiness, and to become good, holy people. If someone is fully dependent upon us, then we need to not be solely concerned with our own satisfaction but we should be doing all we can to help them.

Bringing Joy

 

Be willing to be critical of yourself, how you use your time, how you use your money, how you talk to people, and how you talk about people to other people. The foundational question here is do you bring light, life, joy, and happiness into the lives of other people? Do you exist to make the world a better place, do you improve the quality of life in your culture, in your social circles, in your family, and in your extended family?

Do not judge others for their failings, for their life choices, or for the way they speak, act, or treat other people. Be the first to judge yourself, find your weaknesses, find the areas of life in which you have failed, and begin to make adjustments to these so that you bring joy and excellence to those around you.

If you are a parent, are your words and your actions in agreement with one another. The way you raise your children, the way you live and the way you speak will form your children into something that will most likely correspond with your life choices. Are you striving to be holy, are you striving to be different from the culture in which you live, and are you putting in great effort to be contrary to the corruption that surrounds you?

Pay careful attention to what you take into yourself, like food, like exercise, and your use of time, are you putting beauty, health, and quality into yourself? Or are you finding yourself entertained by the vain and empty Hollywood mindset? Do not settle for childish things, do not allow yourself to be filled with foolishness and mindless violence. Find excellence, find quality, and fill yourself with these things, do not allow yourself to be distracted by entertainment that is directed toward children or those who are immature.

Roles and Responsibilities

 

We can all think of different people, different responsibilities, and different roles in many different areas of our lives. The traditional family is made up of father, mother, and children. The extended family includes grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. It is incredibly important that each person involved in the family fulfill their responsibilities by providing, by loving, by protecting, and by training their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews to love God, to love their neighbor, and to pursue holiness.

Father and mother have an incredible amount of work before them, which includes living a life that is a good example for their children. When children see their parents speaking and acting in certain ways, they will likely imitate them. The responsibility of the parent is to live a life that is a pursuit of holiness, walking a path that the child will see as worthy of imitating. If one or both of the parents are involved in any kind of immoral or depraved behavior, the child will become confused and will wonder why their behavior does not align with their professed belief.

A parent that abuses their child, does not protect their child, or introduces depravity, sensuality, or perversion to their children are certainly failing for the work that has been set before them. A child should feel safe, feel protected, and know that they are loved by their parents, and should not need to look elsewhere to feel safe and loved.

If a child lives in fear of what their parent may do to them every day, that child will be miserable and terrified about the quality of his or her life. When a child is happy, content, and is excited about spending time with their family, then you can know that the parents are doing something right. It is when a child is frightened of being alone with a parent or other family member that something is seriously wrong.

Psychology experts talk about recognizing behavioral signs or speech patterns in children. It is important to know your child well, to understand if they are happy and content, and if they are not then you need to put in extra effort to help that child feel safe and loved. If you see strange behavior in your child when they are around certain people, you need to uncover what is happening that would make them respond in such a way.

Possibly the most important aspect of being a parent is to train your children to love others, to serve others, and to treat others with respect and honor. Just as Jesus did not live for himself but instead, he sacrificed himself to save mankind from the corruption of sin and death. When a child sees their parents acting and speaking in love toward and about others, the child will imitate them.

Transition

 

There are two types of people in the world. One, there are “the people of God”, that is, the Church, and two, there are “the not-people-of-God”, that is the world and any other religion. When someone is baptized into the one, holy, Apostolic Church, there should be a radical transformation that takes place in their life. This is about transition from living in a worldly manner like the culture in which you currently reside. To living in a way that is focused on loving God, loving your neighbor, and pursuing holiness.

This concept needs to be given careful and articulate thought. Drive away from your mind the image of the typical American Evangelical church, which is really just a showy performance, usually led by a rock band performing for the audience to watch. This so called “worship music” is then followed by an inspirational and typically money based “sermon”, where the speaker is emotionally, and psychologically manipulating those in attendance.

If you are careful and thoughtful about the history of the one, holy, Apostolic Church, you will see that what is sold today as American Evangelicalism is nothing like how the Church has worshipped over the last twenty centuries. A genuine worship service is based around prayer, the reading of Scripture, beautiful music, candles, incense, and beautiful icons. The worship service is not about being entertained, listening to a long sermon, and simply watching others perform.

Historically speaking, the one, holy, Apostolic Church did not have long wooden benches upon which to sit. Instead, everyone stood and there were a few places to sit for those who are elderly or handicapped. The entire service is about being involved in worship, in singing, and in communal prayer. One of the most important aspects of the worship service is about staying focused on what is being said, what is being prayed, and what is being sung. Do not allow yourself to be distracted by worldly thoughts, vain entertainment, or concerns about what you will be doing the rest of the week.

Think of your mind like an airport, if or when airplanes arrive, you do not need to watch them, think about them, or entertain their distraction. Focus on your love for God, your desire for holiness, and the hundreds of images around the sanctuary, which are a cloud of witnesses, who have lived lives that are a good example for you to imitate. Do not be like the world who allow themselves to be distracted by vanity, wealth, comfort or pleasure.