Hello Again

It's been awhile...

  In looking back over this blog, I realize just how disconnected I've been over the last year +.  To say that things in life have gotten a little chaotic would be like calling the Eiffel Tower a building.  Needless-to-say...chaotic is the understatement of the world.  I'm sure over time, I'll hash all of that out in one way or another, but for right now, I'm back.  I'm glad to be back.  I've missed it, really.  Funny how life can seem to get the best of us.  When we're not looking, little by little, we start to put away the things we enjoy and replace them with work thinking this is what we are expected to do.  In the process, we, little-by-little, begin to eliminate pleasure and joy.  Of course, one must take into consideration whether or not what you're doing is in fact an activity that will bear fruit, but assuming that it is, what a pity to pack it away because we are pleasure-phobes.  We are so guilted and shamed by factions of our culture for doing anything that involves enjoyment and the self.  Why is it that we believe we must be self-sacrificial and unhealthily so in order to be "good" people?  If the Lord's greatest commandment was to love and sub-section C says we are to love ourselves (love your neighbor AS YOU LOVE YOURSELF), then why do we fail to heed this part of the GREATEST commandment...as if it doesn't exist?  As if loving God and self are mutually exclusive, or loving neighbor and self are mutually exclusive?  Christ doesn't say to choose which one we'd like to do.  He says we are to do all three when living out love.  But, and I'm speaking very loudly on behalf of my own struggle here, why do we struggle so much with where the line is between self-love and selfishness?  Why do we punish ourselves for taking 15 minutes to laugh, or read a book, or stop and tickle our children?  Are we humans or machines?  Were we not made in the image of a God who fully and completely created the human need for joy?  Do we think God doesn't understand pleasure?  Why do we keep from ourselves that which God intended for us?

  On another note to that, my sermon for this weekend is on worrying.  I think it goes hand in hand with this idea of pleasure.  Do we force ourselves into pits of worry and anxiety