I allow the Bible to direct what I do or do not do. This didn’t just start after a Sunday School session or someone coming to my door telling me I would be demolished if I didn’t follow them. My acquaintance with the Bible started when I was around age twelve. I somehow managed to open the first page, Genesis, and then read the entire book over three years. Why? It caught me. It reached out and made sense and at that time my family was sort of falling on hard times. I won’t bother you with what that accounting was as that is now ancient history.
As I read the book I also forgot much of what I read and realized this later in life. So, I began reading it again in the mid-seventies. It helped answer many questions I had after Vietnam, marriage, children and life in general. Vietnam left me at a deficit for patience; both the combat and the social influences of the time which were against that war. I finally understood that despite all the flag waving that war was wrong on its face and that was that.
This being the case I asked for forgiveness and was granted forgiveness as my temper came under control and my spirit reinflated. I owe my life to God and His word, if followed truthfully, inspires and fills a person with patience and love of his or her fellow humans. Love doesn’t mean mutual agreement only the fact that we are all as imperfect as a rat in a trap. We screw up more than we get things right and that is a fact. To forgive is divine and that, my friends, is where this is going. Holding grudges or hating our fellow human beings leads to war, killing, robbery and rape. Hate with the excuse, he or she did it to me. Is that an excuse? Not in the eyes of God.
Love of God first and then our fellows is not an easy thing in this world, but there is another world coming. How we act in this world is how we will be judged to have a chance in the next. This is what the Bible tells us when all is said and done. That is the book’s purpose.
Views: 14