For those who do not have magic mirrors

 Day 1 

The morning was cold. Cold and cloudy with a thick, dark backdrop in the east bringing a sharp focus to the naked brown trees of winter. Some indirect sunlight was finding it’s way to this late winter scene through a thinner layer of cloud to the west. A bit of freezing rain has added it’s trancelucens to the trees nearby, in our yard and at the adjacent park. There was little wind and the temperature was just a few degrees below freezing which made my morning play time with the dogs tolerable. No gloves needed this morning. Now warm and in phase 2 of my day, that is breakfast, play time and dishwasher loading behind me, I am free to observe the day. Observe with gratitude what my Heavenly Father has allowed me to experience. Another slice of His incredible creativeness that we call a day. Another day to look, not only at His magnificent creation greeting me here in flyover country, but another day to see if I can uncover something of His image in me, (think about that for a moment), that has been waiting patiently for my discovering. 

    This struggle of uncovering what God has put in me that resembles Himself is a struggle of great difficulty. It congures a strong emotion in me, still today, to hear those old clips of Billy Graham saying that God loves me. My mirror does not lend itself to such thoughts. I’m told we can’t love others until we love ourselves, and while that may be true, it is, in my estimation, bad news for those around me. I’ve managed to tell people that I love them but I’m not always sure how much I love them or if they should take that as good news. No, I haven’t murdered anyone or molested children or cheated on my wife. But the absence of those acts does not make me lovable or innocent. Listing all the areas I have fallen short of the target, (that is, all the times I have sinned), would rival the word count in Moby Dick. So I’m trying hard to let myself believe that God loves me, He is, after all, God. But I can’t pretend to have found a path to that place for myself.

    I’m wondering if I’m left to pray, as I often do, that God will find a way to use me in spite of myself, as being my best approach. That is something He has accomplished in the past on occasion. Sure I can say yes to opportunities to help with this or that or serve the church is some way but am I hoping someone is looking and noticing that I am doing “good” or am I exercising a Jesus like servants heart when doing these things. There just seems to be selfishness residing in all I say and do. So God can love me in spite of all this but how do I love myself?

    If loving myself is such a difficult task then so too is coming to grips with the idea God’s image resides in me somewhere. In Hebrews 12 Jesus is given one of His many titles, namely, “the author and perfecter of faith”. Faith that was perfected though His suffering. I think this is where I will start trying to find my way to a more meaningful and effective faith. Even faith is a gift from God. If my life were an unbroken string of triumph after triumph as far as hitting the target, as it were, even then my faith would not be defined by my efforts. Living in a continual state of defeat is unhealthy and unproductive. It’s like building a house and getting half way through with it and stopping your work so you can spend the next 5 years reviewing all the times you hit your thumb with a hammer or had to re-measure a board 3 times to finally get it right. Once you’ve accumulated enough “mistakes” to brood over you will not have time to finish the house. This is a house we cannot build and we will destroy ourselves through the ambition of building it. Faith is a gift from God. God loves you and me. That house is already built. We need to walk through the door of the gift of our faith and start looking for evidences of the nature of the one who built it. There is a story in the rececesses of my rather dull mind I will try to get at least partially right. A man approached an evangelist after a service one day and said he was saved a few years back at one of the preachers crusades. The man was obviously drunk. The evangelist looked at the man and said, “yes, you look like some of my work”. The point here is that our efforts are not significant on their own. If we fail to point someone to Jesus then we have indeed failed. (Please read the proceeding story as a teaching tool. A drunk can, indeed be saved but it is the involvement of God’s spirit that brings about change).

Day 2

    Another morning to wrestle through some of this mystery. Filling in some of the previous ideas I will relate a story. A true story from my personal experience.

For a time in the 80’s I worked with a ministry called “Christ in the streets”. Animal, (his nickname), organized the work. One Christmas we were given the opportunity to visit people in the hospital who were left to celebrate Christmas not surrounded by family and friends. I decided to help with this effort and while there was no obvious sense of selfishness in the decision I did think in terms of my involvement being something I could do for God, as it were. We were encouraged to sing a song or two, (that’s where I was plugged in), and just visit with the people who were there a bit. Upon leaving we would ask for permission to pray, a request that was granted at each of the rooms we visited. We entered a room where there was a mom and dad and a young man lying in bed. While not remembering his exact illness, it was quite severe. We visited a bit and asked if they and their son would like a Christmas song or two. They said, sure, and while our son is largely unresponsive to any sort of communication they said he likes music and would appreciate the songs wheather he showed it or not. As we began singing, I think it was Jingle Bells, the young man’s face lit up like a candle. A smile and some movement from his body told us he, in fact, was loving the music. At that moment I saw how limited my understanding of my time there truly was. I didn’t need to go “do something” for God. God wanted to bless the living daylights out of me. ME. The guy that looks back at me in the mirror. The guy who can’t figure out why or how to love himself is loved by His creator. Still the emotion of that moment wells up in me. I’m left having to simply accept something I cannot explain. Maybe that’s where so many people loose their way to faith in Christ. Much of it is quite counter to our earthly natures. Yet something deep within speaks with a language deeper than words that we are loved by our Creator. So much so He sent Jesus to rescue us. He must be frustrated by people like me who can’t seem to move beyond a self centered analysis of life to find the beautiful truth that is beyond.

GOOD VIBRATIONS

     What does it mean to be made in God's image? When the dogs bark loudly or another significantly loud sound is introduced within the walls of our house, it will set the strings of the myriad instruments hanging on my wall to vibrating. An effect akin to an echo if you will. Are we a physically manifested echo of God's image? He spoke the worlds into being. Genesis talks of forming the dust into man by His breath. (Gen. 2:7)  The dust + God's voice brought us into being. This would suggest an intrinsic connection between us and God. We are not God but an echo of His nature. An echo does not generate sound. It is wholly dependent on the voice (or sound), that created it, but offers the same characteristics as the original voice. Our highest goal should be to uncover that part of our life that is an echo of our Creator.

PIANO'S AND CRITICAL THINKING
Now that I'm retired I've considered several activities to engage in. Engage in at my leisure and in a way that suits me. Hmmm. That sounded kinda selfish, but there it is and I can't really change the statement substantially and still say what I wanted to. So, one of the things I would enjoy would be to teach begginner guitar and mandolin to those who have a desire to learn how to play them. When teaching these instruments I try to include some music theory, (as much as I feel the student can stand), because music theory is applicable to any instrument they may care to learn in the future and will help them be a more complete musician. As it happens, the piano is the best way, in my opinion, to teach music theory. It's kind of like a physical representation of music theory and can open up a deep and effective understanding of music in general. What I've leaned in my music theory classes, and piano lessons has been invaluable in my advancement on other instruments I have learned to play.
    Critical thinking is similar in another area of our lives. If we learn to analyze things systematically we can apply that process to situations as they present themselves in our lives. We cannot use this process to make decisions, but we would be silly not to use the process to HELP us make good decisions. If I may offer a quick example. We may not have delt with new car salesmen before but even on our first encounter we can benefit from analyzing the process. When a salesman says your used trade-in car is worth 3 times more than your friend was willing to pay you you may think your friend isn't as good a friend as you first thought. But if you are appropriately skeptical of the amount of money the salesman is offering you you will likely learn that your car's value is actually more in line with your friends offer. A new car price often includes a significant markup to allow the salesman the chance to offer you the excessive amount of money for your car to give the illussion that they are being very generous to make the sale more likely. They may offer you 3,000 for a car that they will wholesale out for 1,000 while still making a nice profit on the deal. These facts are there for the learning but are seldom discovered. If we know the value of our car before the negotiation we become skeptical of the process and can learn how the new car selling game is played. Then we can negotiate from a position of strength. Strength provided by our knowledge of the process we are engaged in.
    This ability to reason is something our schools use to focus on. Unfortunately we have entered a time when colleges are more interested in advancing a particular ideology rather than teaching the ability to form an opinion based on the logical analysis of the available facts. Just like music theory can help us with our endeavor to learn any instrument, so, too, does critical thinking help us in all aspects of decision making.

A STEP FARTHER

    Still working on the health-care issue in my rather limited mental capacity. See if this clicks at all.
Insurance is, (originally anyway), based on risk. The more risk the insurance company takes on, the higher the premium.
    The "risk" that someone with an insurance policy will get the flu, or a cold, or bronchitis, or an inner-ear infection, or etc. etc. is 100%. This means that the insurance company, before any other calculation, must account for the cost of providing services for these common illnesses. To provide services for these common issues that virtually every person will need, the insurance company relies on internal and external bureaucracies. These layers of red tape are required to oversee the system and verify needs, etc. These expenses are much inflated at the insurance company level over what they would be at the individual level.
    A visit to a direct care doctor for an illness and the subsequent treatment is exponentially more efficient and effective than going through the insurance company's bureaucratic environment.
    Since I have retired, I have engaged in a contract with a direct care physician and have a small sample of personal experience to draw from. I make a monthly payment for his services and then pay as I go for additional items. A recent blood work-up and an inquiry into prescriptions I need for eye drops revealed an incredibly low cost on both accounts. The blood test was around 20 bucks and one of the eye drops was about a tenth of what I'd been paying even with prescription coverage on my old plan. Additionally, I can call him 24/7 and know that I will get a doctor on the phone. I can email, text or use the handy on-line app they provide. I then purchased a policy to cover any major medical issues I may encounter and the combined costs of both are significantly less, (about half), of my previous employer-provided coverage. Yes, there are still questions and scenarios that may reveal issues with this set-up, but it's the kind of effort I expect from a free society. A society, a citizenry, that is losing freedoms by the day and will quickly lose much ground in this regard if we let the government seize control of our health-care system. (now, back to our regularly scheduled discussion).
    With a direct care model in place, (or something similar), the insurance company's would be free to return to their more appropriate place in the system and provide, true, risk-based coverage for people. This would see a dramatic drop in costs because the 100% risk factor will be replaced by a much lower factor and the common, predictable illnesses will be covered by the much more effective and direct approach offered by the doctor-patient contract mentioned above. A significant outcome with this arrangement is the person's more direct involvement in his health-care services and costs. The individual replaces the incredibly ineffective bureaucracy the insurance companies had previously relied on.
    I don't have a solution to our complex medical insurance situation here in the US, but doesn't it seem incumbent to consider some viable alternatives? This model has been around for many years and is available in all but 2 states as of this writing. If you were wondering how you can bring back a more free society, exercising some initiative and individual responsibility is one way. Please consider taking your health-care back from the government before it's too late.
    Thanks and have a nice day.

Where has all the common sense gone?

    Does common sense and logical thinking evaporate? Sublimate? Hibernate? If not, why is it so hard to find these days? And while we're out with our flashlights in the night looking for common sense maybe we can locate that elusive critter called dialogue and civil discussion. Heck, I'd settle for any discussion, civil or otherwise. Do we take our positions so personally that we can't risk actually listening to the other side? Or have we prejudged the "other side" so negatively that we can't even stand to hear it?
    Newsflash. There are thoughtful, compassionate individuals who don't think "gun free" schools is the way to go in a country saturated with guns. Not offering an opinion on gun ownership here, just making an observation. We surround celebrities, public servants, politicians of every stripe with people trained in the use of firearms to protect their subjects from harm. Somehow, we have decided a cool-looking international symbol printed on a sign at the entrance of our children's schools is supposed to protect them. How could any gun-inflicted harm come to our children with such a solid line of defense right there at the school's entrance? If I may say, it doesn't seem to be working too well so far.
    Given the reality that gun confiscation would be messy at best and against our Constitution , and would take years to try to enforce, (likely with little success), it does not offer us an effective solution to this rising problem. Left-leaning ideological thinkers pretending to state their more conservative counterpart's positions by these vague and far reaching "silly" statements isn't exactly interpretable as offering a meaningful solution either. It seems like with such an important subject we need to have a discussion, not a verbal bumper sticker convention.
    By the way, if our children are the priority of our society (as they should be), maybe we should consider another shot at prohibition since drunk driving is one of the leading causes of death among young children. And don't forget that swimming pools claim far more innocent children's lives than guns. Guns are very powerful and need to be handled with the respect they deserve but honestly, fatal accidents involving guns are rare and these school shootings are not revealing a gun problem, they are revealing a society and culture problem.
    "There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws; or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality."
                                                          Alexis de Tocqueville

FREEDOM THROUGH THE BARS

I've noticed how discussions about healthcare often move quickly from the subject of healthcare to other less central items. For instance, people who have been diagnosed with a serious illness immediately feel compelled to share the guilt they would have, (and we SHOULD have), if someone would have a similar diagnosis without healthcare. Therefore, we need universal healthcare to assuage such. And if your job includes healthcare then you feel guilt about having your job as well. 
Never mind that handing the government absolute control of another 1/6 to 1/5 of our economy will hand them yet more power over the individuals whose votes they so badly want that they will lie, cheat, steal, take bribes, etc., to get. Never mind that this power would singlehandedly  change, in a negative way, the relationship between the government and the governed. This would be one small step to avoid guilt and one huge step for Progressivism. Put another way, another large chunk of our individual rights would be handed over to the ostensibly compassionate and egalitarian government. For the last hundred years or so this country has been undermining its very nature. We have used law against itself and when necessary ignored our founding principles in order to move to the Progressive agenda. Personally, I believe we are all made in God's image and that we have certain unalienable rights. Rights that our founders felt compelled to try and protect from the new government it was setting up. While our system of government was elegant and effective it was also flawed. No more or less flawed than man himself. The framers knew that this new government was vulnerable to the same weaknesses that haunt us as individuals. Our inability to exercise, or indifference toward, the idea of self-discipline. We have laws to try to contain these preclusions on an individual basis, (though no law can contain an amoral society), but our system of government needed to protect the people from the negative effects of these facts on the governed. So our constitution provides for a remedy to an out of control government. One that is in the hands of the people but that will not be employed by a citizenry that is happy to willingly hand over its freedoms to the government. Yet, our founders worst case scenarios are coming true. We are watching our government grow into Tyranny. A socialist state that no longer offers its citizens said protection of their individual freedoms from an overreaching state. We have, in fact, become the "Soft Tyranny" that Alexis deTocqueville warned us about. On the one hand we talk about diversity and its import in our culture and our society, and on the other hand we are moving at breakneck speed toward a country that not just rewards but demands sameness in the name of the "greater good" or the "general welfare" of its people. The latter of which is a term that is badly mis-understood these days to the advantage of our power-hungry politicians. We are made in God's image as unique people and are most able to pursue the diversity that is intrinsic in our God-likeness as a free people. But we are now, on every hand, encouraged, intimidated and even compelled to conform to a particular ideology in order to earn the status of a member of this society. We are a long way down the road of sameness while carrying the banner's of diversity and individualism with us on our journey. Unfortunately, these banners are only used to identify us so they know which victim line to put us in to receive our voting instructions and protest slogan signs. After all, we wouldn't want to admit that we are, in fact, practicing precisely what we accuse others of. Intolerance. Do we really think that our laws should compel a Muslim auto mechanic to fix a pig farmers truck even if doing so would violate his strongly held religious beliefs. I don't see any way to answer in the affirmative here. He is living in a country that allegedly protects his individualism. His right to pursue, (of course within reasonable bounds), life, liberty and happiness. Why would the government, (or the media,(please note the absence of the word News)), try to force our Muslim friend to fix the pig farmers truck? It; they; shouldn't. And yet these situations are manipulated and remade into hammers to club certain people, or actually, certain ideas or positions, over the head with to mold public opinion into a more suitable companion for our governments march toward Progressivism. At this point in our history I believe we can restore our country to the lofty goals, (at least the pursuit of such), that our framers put in place. We are quickly approaching a point where we will not be able to find our way back, however, because the path we have been on is being bulldozed and re-landscaped so we can't find our way back. Leave healthcare in the hands of the medical community, actuary tables, and the good people of our great country and get the government out of the way so we can fix the mess they have made.

"It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent, and guided. Men are seldom forced by it to act but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy but it prevents existence. It does not tyrannize but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes and stupefies a people until every nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd ".
Alexis de Tocqueville

BY HIS STRIPES

    In the 53rd chapter of Isaiah we read a description of the Suffering Servant. The Messiah. The Christ. It's quite a dramatic depiction of not just the suffering of the Lamb of God but also the accomplishment of Salvation through His sacrifice. It is a passage that most Christians are at least vaguely familiar with and includes the statement that "by His stripes, we are healed" This comment refers to the scourging of Jesus before His crusifixion and points to the fact that Jesus suffering was necessary to bring about the forgiveness of sin. My understanding of this relationship took a leap forward a few years back as I sat at one of several stations during a Maundy Thursday service. This table simply had a Bible and paper and pencils for writing down your thoughts as you considered the whole story of Jesus' crucifixion. Following are my writings from this time.
    "By His stripes we are healed. Those stripes have a very personal origin. My sin. My shortcomings. My intentional turning away. I am not a bystander in this crucifixion. I am actively involved. The beauty of this is that God twisted things around to use the very thing that brought His death to bring me life. No wonder it all confounds the intellectuals so.
-----though your sin be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.
-----He doesn't say wait till tomorrow, 
           or you should have been here before.
    He just says come.
     He is nothing like me."