Self-reliance

I read a book last week called The Anybodies. (I'm always trying to keep up with my children's book and young adult book reading for school.)

Anyhoo, I came across this quote, "Sometimes you need to dig down deep, to rely on your own resources. This is a very American thing, self-reliance. Our forefathers and our foremothers, and, for that matter, our foreaunts and foreuncles, would say that self-reliance is a cornerstone of something or other."

Is that true or what? On a more scholarly note, I read last night in a cultural survey that the United States receives the highest ranking of ANY nation as far as self-reliance.

On one hand that kind of makes me puff up a little proudly, on the other hand I know that in God's plan we are to be dependent on him and not self-reliant. We are also supposed to be inter-dependent with one another in the Body of Christ.

It makes me think of the times I've heard you say - and recently - why didn't she call me for help? I've heard you say it about one another. We are too gol-danged self-reliant -- and I'm talking to me too. The end.

Highlights of my visit home

Lice and Object Lessons

Every Sunday at church I give an object lesson for the children - a spiritual lesson using concrete objects to help them understand the concept. I've been thinking a bit about lice (and you all KNOW why lice have been on my mind).

I think that if I used lice as an object lesson, I would use them as a concrete example of those "sins that so easily beset us." An example of those sins that we fall back to again and again and are so difficult to get rid of.

I don't know what yours is, but I know what mine is. In order to get rid of them, it's going to take a super-awareness of them, a dedication to do everything it takes to get rid of them, and - of course - a dependence upon God.

By the way, this is the least-disgusting photo I could find relating to lice. I think if we were as disgusted by our "comfortable" sins as we are by lice, we would get rid of them in a big hurry!