Beginnings

Even when you have more years behind you than are ahead of you, there are beginnings. They become less frequent as the years go by, but they never stop until you stop. Every moment is an opportunity for something new to begin. I have been married for 33 years and raised 3 people. I have worked ever since I was 15. I have lived a life that has risen above my expectations. That doesn’t mean the sun has always shined. It has rained. But for some reason the sun has been brighter and it has rained less often than I imagined it would. It’s hard to say where the expectations that my life has risen above came from. I just thought when I got here and looked back, I would not have enjoyed my life as much as I have. I feel there are two primary reasons for this.

#1 – I have great parents.

#2 – I found Jesus, (or He found me,) when I was 6 years old.

Because of those two factors, I have been able to make more good choices than bad choices. I don’t know why I had the parents I had or why God allowed me to find Him. I don’t know why other people have bad parents, or were born someplace where they didn’t find God. I do know that we live in a world we created. A better way to say it is, we live in a world we recreated. God created the world and mankind perfect. A part of that perfection was He gave us the power of choice. When we were confronted with the first choice between right and wrong, we chose poorly.  Our choice recreated the world. From the moment we did this, our choices from day to day and moment to moment have set into motion… disease, hunger, poverty, violence, injustice, perversion, lying, selfishness and everything else that flies in the face of perfection. We are responsible for all that is wrong in the world. Our bad choice even threw off the balance of nature and the universe. When what we call “a natural disaster” happens and things are broken and people die, the question is asked, “Why would God allow this to happen?” When what should be called “an unnatural disaster” happens, it’s our fault, not God’s. It’s our fault that there is hunger and poverty in the world. Even in this fallen world, we have the resources to meet most people’s needs…we just choose not to or turn away.

God is good, all the time. Satan is bad, all the time.

It was up to us which one to choose when the first choice was made. It’s been up to us ever since.