After several minutes of watching the latest news on the devastation of hurricanes in Texas, the direct hit over several Caribbean Islands, and soon to make landfall in Florida, two responses of those affected kept repeating themselves.
One type of response was clearly thankfulness for survival, and the other a resentment to the change in upcoming plans. People upset because airports have cancelled flights due to dangerous conditions and damage. Tempers flaring because rooms are full at hotels. Then, you have the ones who are just thankful to be alive and already out there helping to make right a catastrophe.
The human mind. So capable of selfishness; so capable of generosity. It seems so many of us have forgotten what we truly deserve. Or at least, we don’t address it. What do we deserve? The quick answer is ‘nothing, we deserve nothing’. The right answer is death, we deserve physical and spiritual death.
It’s so common to separate people into categories and then point out what’s wrong with thinking that is not in agreement with your own. Aren’t we all desiring of kindness, generosity, and acceptance from others? The Bible says we are created in God’s own image. Who came along and decided in man’s eyes what that image should look like?
Selfish thinking puts me first. Above all others, on the throne in my soul. It sometimes even treads over others to build our precious kingdom of self filled with imaginative rights to protect. Selfishness is being concerned chiefly or exclusively with oneself. It’s looking to your own advantage while choosing to remain unconcerned about others. Is that how you want to be described? Are you delusional with the belief that all existence centers on you for your benefit? What do you believe you deserve?
Re 3:17 ‘Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,
Le 19:18 ‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.
I wonder what would happen if complaints about what we lost, or not getting what we think is due, was looked at with an eye of understanding, thankfulness and love.
People are suffering because of nature’s fury. How important are your plans that anger is permissible when flights are cancelled or cruises are shortened or hotels are full – all as a result of something we can’t control? If we have the mindset that these things are undeserved, but rather gifts, we may find ourselves more concerned about loving others and looking to their needs.
The Delusion of a Deserved Soul
It’s so common to separate people into categories and then point out what’s wrong with thinking that is not in agreement with your own. Aren’t we all desiring of kindness, generosity, and acceptance from others?
