- Not The Only One!
- Post # 96
- 21 Sept.23
- ” Like Mike!”
- Howdy,
- Thanks again for checking in . I got to travel recently and to spend some time with some new friends. My brain can be a bit weird at times and this post came about from a conversation that we were having over dinner one night. We live in the age of the goat and also the age of the copycat. If you are unfamiliar with the phrase the ” goat” , it stands for the greatest of all times. There are people that we idolize and put on pedestals and then there are others who attempt to surpass them or to out do them and to become the new ” goat” ☺️. We usually associate this with sports figures such as Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, or maybe Muhammad Ali. I think that there are probably other places that we could apply that, such as , with CEOs who run fantastic organizations or who has the biggest pay checks☺️☺️,,or maybe with Presidents, for instance FDR, served four terms before they passed a constitutional amendment limiting them to two terms, so no one is ever going to top that one. It would be a novel idea if we could apply that same practice ” term limits “,to the senate and congress to eliminate career politicians, but I digress ☺️☺️☺️. There is no doubt that being the Goat ,inspires others to try and accomplish great feats, or to be the person to pull the platform out from under the current reigning Goat. There are other considerations to apply to the situation, which will probably come into play to ensure that the current reining Goats will be in place for some time to come,, and those are free agencies and salary caps.
- Michael Jordan has built a tremendous brand and some would say empire, and now decades after his playing career is over he has inspired countless kids and adults as well to want to be ” Like Mike “!. We often gage greatness by the number of championships won, or in Ali’s case how many fights won , or how many times they were the Champ or for how long reigning. We have seen LeBron James switch teams, more than three times to try and catch Michael Jordan’s number of six championships. I’ve probably mentioned on countless occasions about us comparing ourselves to others and the consequential damage that can be done to one’s physic when not quite measuring up. It can at times feel like an exercise in futility or lead to the road of destruction and or depression.
- There is a flip side to that coin and it is when other people set a standard or some threshold that they wish for us to obtain. Now! ,, maybe your mind ran off to your job, and things that may be in or out of your job description, and that could certainly be one. However I’m thinking about those situations that are often more implied than actually expressed. This is almost exclusively in the context of some kind of relationship. It can be when a parent has more than one child and the expectation is that the subsequent siblings will hit all of the same markers and achievements as one of the earlier children. It may be something hinted at or around, and sometimes expressed in a negative fashion , as in ” why can’t you be more like X”, or you feel in the blank. I can’t think of a single solitary parent that doesn’t want to see their children excel and be the opposite of ordinary. ☺️If we are on the outside of this and if we aren’t vested in a very similar situation, we can quickly point out the potential for this doing harm, becoming destructive and spiraling out of control, and sometimes for decades to come and in some extreme cases, over a lifetime. If that one doesn’t resonate with you, think of any social setting or organization that you are a part of that comes with some sort of responsibility attached to it. There is always this one person who isn’t pulling their weight or doing their fair share. Maybe it’s the person who bolts after a neighborhood block party. When everyone else is cleaning up and putting things back in order, they are off to catch the latest episode of the Kardashians, and you are thinking….really??☺️☺️. We see this way to often at work, whether it’s someone who fails to clean up after themselves in the breakroom, the person who drives the smallest car, but still needs a space and a half to park their car, the person who will not put more paper in the copier, when they knew that they just ran it out of paper or ink, and sometimes both , and the worst of all is the person who takes credit for someone’s else’s work or ideas. The common thread here is to hope that people will step up and do the right thing. That all being said and done, there was an expectation there that wasn’t met or miserably and completely ignored☺️☺️. This is the thing or the rub, yes, there is totally something about doing the right thing, but we make it about ourselves. We immediately compare them to what we would do, or what we think should happen. We think or believe that our kids should reward us by graduating from college and being successful like their older siblings, after all we did our part, whether it was saving for fifteen years or so, or signing or co signing for those student loans. ☺️☺️. We want our neighbors to do their part and keep their lawns clipped or whatever and we definitely wouldn’t take up two parking spaces on a rainy day, close to the building, or not clean up behind ourselves in the breakroom, paper in the printer or a hundred other little things, and it’s all based on what you would do personally, or think that you would anyway. Maybe we would or maybe we wouldn’t, but at least that is what we wish to think of ourselves….high standards ☺️☺️. Well!, here is the shocker or shocking part, other people aren’t us and they never will be because we give ourselves a ton of grace, while we are off judging them to the tenth degree and thinking ” how dare they”, or ” how don’t they not get this?”. A little more for you to munch on , not only are some of them not there yet, but some of them never will be, and if you are in a place of employment, just be glad that they don’t just up and quit ☺️☺️, because I hear that is a thing now☺️☺️. Now ,I know that some of you are just happy that you weren’t having dinner with me, and when it comes to putting dinner with Sandy on your bucket list, that’s just a hard NO!, or not so much!☺️☺️,,and I get that. The conversation over dinner actually evolved from a conversation about spiritual growth or maturity. Someone at the dinner party had encountered someone else in a spiritual conversation and whole heartily expected for that person to be the same place as they were in their walk or relationship with God. And just for the record, I was not on either side of that conversation. ☺️☺️ This is the stupidest thing but my brain immediately registered with both sides of the debate. I think unfortunately that I’ve been the snooty person who said or thought, ” how can you not get this “,, or at least I’ve been told that was me, so if someone perceived me that way, I’m going to just own it, it’s my junk. ☺️☺️At the exact same time I thought how absolutely ridiculous. We, In our culture agree on nothing, and i mean absolutely nothing, very few things in life ,and that covers a wide gambit of things including what color the sky is☺️☺️, or what is a red state or a blue state. I want to say on the surface, that two God fearing, born again believers should be able to agree and come together on certain truths and I have certainly experienced that…..but…I have also seen the opposite of that as well which perplexes me . I can be a little concrete in my thinking at times and I can also enjoy the abstract, but if we are all in the same army, wearing the same uniform, stained by the same blood of the same Savior, isn’t a right face, a right face, I mean you can’t turn left, when everyone else is going right…..right??…can you? The dinner party discussion didn’t become heated and for the most part played out in my head and on the words in this post, but why would we make a broad assumption about where someone is spiritually. If we want to play the card about us surrounding ourselves with people who look and think like us, that’s fine. However,!!!, however!!, one of the main places that we congregate with people who look like us and think like us is in churches all across America each and every week. This comes with the very sad indictment that churches are flooded with people every week who are Christians in name only. People who are doing their very best impression to fool themselves and others as well. Remember ,,God is on the outside of this and can’t be fooled, because He looks at the heart, and believe it or not, knows your heart better than you know your heart. This means He both sees and knows the ulterior motive of everything that you do and say, even if it’s not clear to you or others. Hold up!!, stop the presses!!,, you want to know how I’m so insightful and so sure of this,…..well, I’m just going by what Christ said, He said that we would be known by our love, but also by our unity, which makes perfect sense , because while the gospel message is about love and forgiveness, it’s about reconciliation. We who know God , have been reconciled to God. So, just step back and look at all of the love and unity amongst God’s kids…yes, I’m being extremely sarcastic ☺️☺️. Well, of course we are all along at different points in our journey with God and for some that starts very young in life, do I believe that a five or six year old can grasp the concept of sin and forgiveness, well God talks about us having a child like faith, so why it may be rare, it is totally possible. Some of us are a little later in life, and that can be anywhere from today to laying on a death bed, but the thing that must be present is a relationship. I just wrote a post on cynics and critics and you say how does a relationship happen on a death bed, I can’t tell you that I fully know, but there was this dude on a cross to the right of Christ and I fully expect to see him in heaven someday. We can’t expect other people to know or relate to God exactly as we do , one day we will, but on this side of eternity, we are all at different points of light. I’m not sure if I would be offended by someone making an assumption about my personal walk, but yes it would clearly be off putting. I think and believe that the longer we walk with God the harder it becomes for us to remember what it was like before that gift was accepted and that relationship put into place. I’m not saying that we some how become magically brain washed by God’s grace and mercy, because God wants to use that pain and hurt to reach others. Survey the landscape and you will find Christians engaged in all kinds of activities, both some we should be and other things, not so much!. Again!, what makes me so insightful? Well, again, what were the things that Jesus did , taught, places He went and the people that He hung out with . I know that is a broad list of people , places, and things, but at the core of things it was about announcing and proclaiming about the kingdom of God. We can be so all over the place at times and yet God simplified it for us, and made it about two things, introducing others to God’s one and only Son and making Him more known, that’s it, drop the mic and just walk off the stage. That being said, when you see us out there doing a lot of things other than that, it just means that we are off course, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, and sometimes, no clue that there is a course ☺️☺️☺️. I’m not going to be limiting into as to how that happens, because that is really super duper broad. It can be someone sitting in a rocking chair at a hospital comforting a new born that showed up early and under weight. Someone staying after school to give a struggling student just a little extra help. It could be a retiree volunteering at a library, hospital, a battered woman’s shelter, or even helping out with a little league team. It’s not always so much about a pastor in a pulpit or service man or woman probably wearing this nation’s uniform proudly, it may be or could be, but totally not necessary . The moral of this story is that no matter what your job is, teacher, garbage man, or student, God has a plan and a purpose for planting you exactly where you are. All walks of life and everywhere in life. I think that we like to resolve ourselves from the fundamentals of what God called us to do and be,” salt and light”. He may be, but its rare to ask someone to sell all that they own and move half way around the world to another country where they don’t know the culture or speak the language ,it happens , but not that often. The thing that happens a lot, probably to numerous to count ,is us interacting with broken and hurting people each and every day, at our jobs, schools, the grocery check out, and even that guy in traffic flipping you the bird☺️☺️, and if that’s not your cup of tea, way to many times we have that within the walls of our very own homes. God is not asking You to be Batman, or superman or any other ” superhero “, because honestly it’s just not within us or who we are at our core. However , He is asking us to be kind, compassionate, patient and understanding. When we look like and act like just like everyone else and again to be honest, a lot of people who don’t have what we have and know what we know and haven’t been given what we possess, just do a better job than us. Let’s put this in context, we are Chic Filet, and we are letting other people out chicken sandwich us…..really??, you must be kidding ☺️☺️.
- There are genuinely good and moral people out there, and that’s great that they aren’t out there killing ,raping and pillaging other ,what appears to be innocent souls, but honestly, there is just no such thing or person. We have all sinned and transgressed against God. See,, if you take the time to talk to the majority of these seemingly good and moral people and if they are honest. They are usually following some idea of the golden rule, which is usually like ninety-nine percent of the time is based on their good deeds out numbering the days when they aren’t actually what you would call pristine, than Bob who cheats on his wife, or you don’t yell at your kids like Amy does,, or if you don’t even let the occasional four letter word slip across your lips when you bang your toe on the corner of the bed,… that’s great, but the standard is can you walk on water??.. come on people, let’s just stop fooling ourselves about how good we are, because we aren’t, and that’s the bad news. If you can’t acknowledge who you really are, then you will never be able to see the need for your deepest need for a Savior. As Regis use to say…final answer! Yes, final answer, seek Him while there is still time.
- Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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