Value

Value = The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance or preciousness of something.

The Millenial Generation: high speed internet, mobile smart phones and social media. With all this technology at our fingertips one thing is certain - anyone can become famous and it seems that being famous = great value.

There has been no other time like this, where we can take a photo or post a blog or twitter update and in moments it can be seen anywhere in the world, by anyone and everyone. And most people can get their 15 minutes of fame - Andy Warhol famously predicted that in the future everybody will be famous for 15 minutes - but in 1963 he changed that quote saying " I'm bored with that quote; now I say in 15 minutes everybody will be famous" - he did not know how accurate that statement was.

We can all publish instantly our own artwork, photography, books, tips, recipes, songs, videos... anything at all, without waiting for approval from publishers or record producers. Literally in 15 minutes or even less time everybody can be famous.

If I become famous do I become more valued or more valuable?

And it brings me to the question that has been underlying our whole existence and probably yours. Am I of value?

Isnt the biggest struggle of all of our lives how to fit in? Whether to try hang with the 'in' crowd. Being accepted. Our value in other peoples eyes.

If we place intrinsic value on being accepted, when we are not accepted we see ourselves of having little to no value.

If other peoples opinion of us dictates our opinion of ourselves we are going to find ourselves tossed about as people are fickle in their opinions.

If our own value and happiness depends on our looks, pretty soon we are going to disappoint ourselves as age takes its toll on our bodies and our faces.

If our value is based on what we earn, the house we live in and the car we drive we can find ourselves in debt over our heads just so that we can feel that we also have value because we live in a beautiful house and drive an expensive car.

If our skill in our profession is what brings value to us, what happens to our value when someone else is more skilled?

Maybe being a good person or a good parent brings us value... so what happens when we lose the plot for a moment and act out of character? We are no longer of value in our own eyes.

So our value and our opinion of ourselves and our happiness has to come from a source that is unchanging, immovable, and bigger than us.

It has to come from within so that it can dictate to the stuff around and about us and so that it can shine out of us.

A gem is of value because it is both rare and beautiful. How apt a description.

I believe that the only way we can truly value ourselves independently of anything that goes on in our life, of how we look, feel or how others see us is for us to be valued so deeply by someone whose value does not depend on anyone or anything else.

The bible says in John 3:16 that God SO LOVED the world (me and you) that he gave his one and only son (to die on a cross for us) that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have ETERNAL LIFE.

Thats true value

I do not believe fame makes us valuable - if it did the people in Hollywood would be the most grounded and happy people on earth. Their marriages would be stable and there would be no divorce and no drug issues. Famous people usually find more emptiness than most would understand because they look to have it all but they feel they have nothing.

"and what do you benefit if you gain the whole world and yet forfeit your own soul? (Mark 8:36) Jesus.

Jesus actually answered our question of value and what is life all about when he stated "whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.36 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? 37 Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?"

The only road to happiness and finding the weight of our own value is to lose our life in giving it away in the service of others.

Our ultimate reward for this is not on this earth.

Its time to have an eternal perspective. A long term view of life. And to give ourselves away. Not seek value for ourselves but to see value in others. Jesus did not come to be serve but to serve. And we need to do the same.








  
  
 

Friends

Psalm 60 says that God is a father to the fatherless a defender of widows... He sets the lonely in families.

There are times when each of us feels lonely, and not just lonely but really alone.  Its a funny thing.  Even surrounded by friends we can feel alone. In the lonely times, we often reflect on our friendships. We may  wonder if we even have any real friends.  We may look back over our life and miss the friends that have moved away, the ones we enjoyed doing life with at a particular time. 
Any good psychologist will tell you that friendships are vital for wellbeing and even God says in Genesis it is not good for  a 'person' to be alone.  So what makes a good friendship?

William Arthur Ward writes “A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.”
So I ask myself "Am I a true friend?" Am I even a good friend? Do I encourage, fortify, bring vision?  I have always believed that if you want friends you have to be a friend and that often means making the first move, being the first to smile say hello and ask to spend time together.

There are times when our friendships are tested.  These tests that come either fortify the relationship or tear it apart.  I think the difference is our heart.  If we truly believe in our friendship, we weather the storms and become stronger and closer, we choose to forgive, we choose to turn the other cheek, we put aside jealousy.

I saw this posted on a friends facebook page.  It challenged me.

I challenge myself to honour my friends, to assume they are doing their best, to put myself in their shoes, to stop criticizing and expecting more than they can give, to accept who they are and love them like family and to help build them up and to recognize and celebrate their giftings. 

 "You use steel to sharpen steel and one friend sharpens another."

Let us not fall into a trap of self pity when we feel lonely or alone.  Lets remember the great friendships that we have or take the opportunity to cultivate new ones.   Relationships take work so start working on them today.

Have a blessed day.

spoiled for the ordinary

I wish I could write a blog about the beautiful flowers and trees and places I have been.  I admire people who can use words to paint a picture, pull out the minute detail that may have been overlooked had they not described them.  But for me, my heart always wants to go deeper.  I always want to know the why behind the what.  So in writing this blog you need to understand that there are many unpublished pages of thought spilled out like water onto a parched canvas of dusty earth, do I capture it or let it fall to the ground?

To open your thoughts to others is to make yourself vulnerable. To be judged.  Far better to remain silent and have people think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt - is a famous quote.

But it is far to simple to describe the delicious fragrance of a flower or the softly beating wings of a butterfly, things of exquisite beauty.  I am allured by the danger of going deeper... my mind is intrigued with the inner workings of a clock (I once or twice took one completely apart to find out how it worked), the page source of a web entry (right click and you will see it), the programing of a computer.

Revelation,  that "ah ha - I get it" moment is what makes life interesting.  It is what makes us want to find out more about a person, that promise of more.  What we see in part, that we might know in full if we just look a little deeper. 

When I was in my very first high school assembly I heard somebody read these words "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it" - I felt as though someone had just handed me a puzzle, a combination lock, that if I could just hear that again and understand it, i might know something more than I knew already.  What was it they had read?  was it shakespear? It took me a long time to find it and an even longer time to find out what it might have meant. 

We are all on a journey.  Some people really enjoy journeys and others prefer destinations.  I went on holiday with some very good friends once.  I am not a morning person and was a bit miserable at 4am, until my good friend told me, its not about the destination, its about the journey.  It changed my whole outlook.  We had fun the entire 22 hour drive and every stop along the way.  

Life really is about the journey.  

I cant remember accurately the quote or who said it, but it is something like this.  Once a man has tasted of heaven, he is forever spoiled for the ordinary, for forever after he will walk looking at the sky...... 

It implies he has been changed, he has seen something that he now longs to know more of, that he cannot live the same life he once used to live, he has been changed. Changed by the journey. 

morning musings - I love the road

I love the road.  There is something about a long stretch of open road that gives me a sense of freedom and adventure.  Like a breath of fresh air, it is easy to leave behind all of the tensions of everyday life when I hit the open road, I could drive for hours.On many occasions I have.

I used to like to drive past all the familiar sites and onto the unfamiliar, to try and get lost and then re-trace my path back to where I had come from.  To feel the freedom of not knowing and then the rising panic of thinking I may actually be lost as I try to navigate my way back and then finally catch a glimpse of a tree, a bend, a fence - my way home.That flood of relief. 

Before I could drive I would try to get lost in other ways.  I would catch a tram home from school from a familiar stop and then travel on from where I should have gotten off, let it take me off the path of what I knew, to a place I had never been.  Once I did get quite lost.  I had to retrace my path and hop on and off trams as they took a different route.  There was no safety of a mobile phone or gps, no facebook, twitter or instagram to capture the moment or dialogue with an unknown audience. 

As a child I would run down to the river at the very end of our street and then walk and run along the banks until they narrowed and I had to scramble over branches and thru thick scrub to follow the river to its destination which I could never reach.  I would dream of floating down it on a raft.  One day my accomplice in crime and I found a raft.  It was left over from one of the raft races held at the river each year and had caught in the trees nearby.  The river was high and fast due to recent rains and flooding but children do not often see danger, not me anyway, I just saw adventure.  In trying to reach the raft I had to climb along a thick branch of an overhanging gum tree.  Its end with me on it dipped into the fast flowing river.  With my friend cheering me on I got my feet onto the raft but it suddenly seemed unstable and less of an adventure... more like foolishness. I realised too late how cold and fast the river was as it tried to drag me off the branch - hanging on waist deep in water, being pulled down stream.  It took some struggling to lift my sodden wet fully clothed body back onto the branch.  We walked home leaving a track of wet muddy prints all the way up the road - 2 blocks and a terrific story that we could not tell our parents.  I snuck in the laundry door and put my wet clothes in the washing machine.My parents were none the wiser.

So why this thirst for adventure in the ordinary of life? I think in some way each one of us wants to do something different, to stand out, to leave our mark, to have an effect. In all of my wanderings I was role playing.  No longer just an ordinary kid, not just one of the crowd.  Perhaps this sense of adventure was put there in order for us to search.  To find the buried treasure in life.

 Maybe Ecclesiastes 3:11 can shed a light on this when it says ..." He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end."

It is one of my favourite passages. And it describes a search that began for me I am sure when I was born. 

 I read a quote once that hit a chord and has stuck with me ever since. 

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

Here is the work in its entirety. 

Robert Frost (1874–1963).  Mountain Interval.  1920.

1. The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

  -  Morning Musings -