July 16, 2012
Old Dog, New Trick
Sometimes our older generation is laid back and can be seen as being
sweeter and mellower than they were when they were middle age. However, there
are also others who figure their age has given them to the right to be
outspoken and say whatever they want to say, whenever they want to say it.
Regardless of the various aging personalities, I have to laugh at the visual of
our older folks, or even those of Paul’s time, attending a class which is
intended to teach them to how to be temperate and self-controlled. “Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy
of respect, self–controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.”
(Titus 2:2 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----”All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit.” (Prov 16:2). I suppose the perception of one’s own purity grows with age. I suppose the risk in this matter may stem from the fact that God weighs the spirit yet gives the man no irrefutable weigh ticket showing the poundage He found. So we are left to piece together from empirical evidence by logical process what such a ticket might show. Yet even in this effort we fail before beginning, “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.” (Prov 27:2) Why else would we be searching for what a wiegh ticket might say but to praise ourselves?
-----Possibly because we love the Lord so passionately we are very needy to know we truly are being obedient to His Word and pleasing to His desires. That’s what I hope about myself. But even in that, how well I am reflecting His character might be better answered by focusing the desires of my heart more upon the doing of the simple behaviors and attitudes listed by the Word as pleasing to Him and less upon some acknowledgment of my having done them. If any philosophical extension of this might be needed to know whether or not I do the deeds for the right reasons, it will emerge from understanding the nature of what I’ve done according to the experience of those to whom I‘ve done it.
-----So of course it remains that we must be sure we are taking the Bible in the right sense when we read it for what pleases God. It would be easier if God would occasionally hand us a weigh ticket. But He doesn’t so obviously. I truly believe He does hand us such a ticket in the pattern of effects we have upon others. Through our concern and care and honor and respect for them we can see the truth of our effects through the scintillations our actions make upon their well being. Through our concern and care and honor and respect for ourselves we are blind. And in such blindness we can do every deed mentioned in the Bible and make no benefit to our fellow nor pleasure to God. One must open His eyes to the conditions of his neighbors to even surmise the true weight of his own spirit.
-----That weight is important to know. Some old people make lots of noise. I know I’m making more as I age. Others are dead silent. Neither is right merely for its silence nor its speaking out, but rather for its weight upon the Lord‘s scales. “Righteous lips are the delight of a king, and he loves him who speaks what is right.” (Prov 16:13). “Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.” (Prov 17:28). “There is gold, and abundance of costly stones; but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel.” (Prov 20:15). “A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to himself.” (Prov 18:7).
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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