Saturday, September 14, 2024

Morning Reflections, 9/14/24

It is 3 AM here. I am sitting at my coffee table writing this. Suddenly, a thought occurs to me out of nowhere: you have everything material that you need, and more. You eat well, have a great place to live, you can get quickly treated if sick, and other things. From this space I can improve my relationship with God, analyze my actions from the past in order to understand myself better (thus minimizing future suffering, and maximizing my potential). Self-centered indeed, but with a view to be a better self. Why, you ask, why would anyone want to have a better self? What's wrong with just being happy with who you are? Well, I'll share my thoughts with you on this subject, which appears related to the question, why be good? Aside from the comically obvious, the short answer is: in order to better serve others, and to please God.  Also, I know that happiness as a goal is doomed to failure-one mishap in life and it's gone. Happiness, exactly like success, is ephemeral and as such, not worthy as a primary goal. These things are by-products, often the mere result of living life in a manner proper to human beings. A better self, or, a self better than who he was yesterday, is desirable because it enables him to be more effective in serving others. So this morning, by focusing on gratitude and humility, I chase away a million useless, often harmful thoughts. It occurs to me that humility and service are indeed humiliating to the person who is proud, arrogant and filled up with the hubris of intellect and accomplishment.  Humility is realizing and accepting the simple truth of your own inadequacy, the truth that you know very little and therefore what you don't know is more important than what you do know. Service to others is not  being their butler, maid nor slave; it does not mean that you sacrifice unnecessarily (i.e., just for the sake of sacrifice). No, it instead means (in this context) a willingness to help others with love and sincerity. 

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes  so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other."

John 15:1-17/NIV


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