As the sun cascades down, light like a warming blanket draped over your shoulders, the glistening reflections of light twinkle gently off the needles of the frozen evergreens reminding me of the ever-flowing and changing life we all face. Almost every moment can have its beauty if one stops and looks for it. Whether you think it’s good or bad, the modern way of living is about shortcuts. Short cuts can cause us to miss the moment for something else. Seriously, what did it used to take for a household to hunker down for the winter? Uh…you prepped for it months and months in advance. Now, with electricity or gas, the only thing we change is the thermostat and the clothes we wear. We don’t have to stock a root seller and for the most part, we don’t chop wood for heat unless we want to. What have these shortcuts done? I am not saying it’s bad I am just saying if you took a group of us back to 1800 we were not fair well. The pace of life would mean we spend most of our days surviving. These days we spend more time trying to figure out what we are going to watch on tv instead of prepping for cold weather.
Trust me, no sir I don’t want to go back but I am just putting it out there…there is something lost in the quality of our lives when it doesn’t cost us anything. It’s just like when you are gifted something vs. earning it yourself. It’s a whole different ball game.
As some of you know my son left and joined the Marines. The great crucible of being at boot camp produced letters of apologies, letters of regret, and 100% realignment of what he found as important. Things like ‘missing home’, being away from good food, going to church together, a good night’s sleep, and one of the biggest is ‘family’. How does a 19-year-old come up with a realignment of values?
Drop-in some pain, take away what he took for granted, mix it with some serious suffering, stir and beat till soft and bake at 350 degrees…
Out-come ‘alignment’…
Alignment by my definition is putting in order what’s important and leaving behind what is not. If your life is like mine, your days present a lot of options of what to do. Many are just time wasters, many fill our souls with the junk food of life and just slow us down. If you were to step back to the 1800’s you just didn’t have time to sit around and ‘decide’ what to do. Living off the land and staying alive meant you already had a job.
Live…
When life doesn’t cost us…look what we get. A generation that now has a large component that doesn’t want to work, doesn’t know what to do other than find what is wrong with everything we do and highlight the misses, downplay or ignore the successes. The image comes to my mind of an ambulance trying to get a critical person to the hospital only to find the road blocked by protestors. In what world is this justifiable or okay?
I feel at times we’ve lost our way, lost our perspective, and lost the joy, the love and just embracing the day. I know there are those that suffer, I know there are those that struggle. We’ve all been there. It’s been around since God walked Adam and Eve out of the garden. I heard not long ago that life is to be enjoyed for what it is…life. Don’t read anything else into it. Make the most of every day. Do good to those around you, help those around you, and be thankful for what you do have.
That is alignment. Before today rushes at you like the waves and tides at Hatteras, take a moment, look for the beauty and work on what’s important for today.
Peace on your Journey this week.
