Remember the Sabbath

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
Exodus 20:8-11 (NRSV)


Do you want to avoid the sin of gluttony? Observe the Sabbath. Stop. Think about what you are doing. No matter what the activity is, whether it is work, eating, watching TV, stop and think. Think about the purpose of the activity. Think about whether you honor God by doing it. And be thankful for the privilege of doing it. That is how one avoids the sin of gluttony.

The irony of gluttony is that it is a passive sin that is committed by activity. When God created the heavens and the Earth, He was doing what was natural to Him. To stop on the seventh day took an act of will. In the same way, when a man works, he is doing what comes naturally to him since the fall. It doesn't take any thought to work every day, especially when one's survival depends on it. To take a day off is an active choice. We are naturally gluttons for work.

The most obvious way this can be tied together is with food. It is natural for a man to eat even past the point of satisfaction. It takes an act of the will to stop and think. A choice must be made to take pause and thank the Master of the Universe for His supply. So in saying grace we are, in effect, observing a Sabbath.

Now I'm going to take a break from writing. And I pray that in doing so that I will honor God in the act of writing itself.

Luxuria - The Lust of The Flesh, the Lust of The Eye

Well, I feel
Like I have to feel
Something good all of the time
With most of life I cannot deal
But a good feeling I can feel
Even though it may not be real
And if a person, place or thing can deliver
I will quiver with delight
But will it last me for all my life
Or just one more lonely night

Lust.

The vapid desire to be constantly stimulated, to be pleasured, to be entertained, to have something to fill our eyes, ears and minds so that we do not have to come face to face with the reality around us. In order that we not spend time contemplating our lives and confronting our own shortcomings and limitations, we create an artificial bubble through social convention and "quick-fix" laws. We think we are circumventing that most distasteful of all conditions, "Hard Work" and pat ourselves on the back at our own genius. We think we have bootstrapped ourselves to a higher plane of existence through confabulation, developing a freer, more open society and wonder why we are being sucked into the abyss faster than we can legislate, condemn and ignore our way out of it.

We self medicate our way to pseudo-euphoria through alcohol, drugs, self-delusion and all manner of perversion and wonder why one day we wake up and find ourselves not worthy of even a placemark in the lives of others, having done nothing to build them up and indeed often degrading the quality of their lives by the waste of ours.

Conversely, why do we seem to at the same time, wallow in self-pity; that most cancerous of emotions? We seem to have no balance. We are unwilling to accept the fact that life does not come forth without great agony, sustenance cannot exist apart from back-breaking work and peace is not the absence of war.

Why are we deluded into thinking we must always "Feel good"? Can we not shut off "American Idol" (Whose title alone should give us great pause), and "Dancing With The Stars" long enough to listen to the voice of reason over the cacophony of madness? Can we not shut off "Wife Swap" (Are we seeing a pattern here?) and "SuperNanny" long enough to peer into our own hearts and rectify what is wrong there before we gloat over how much better than others we are?

"For the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?"

#1 - I can't get no satisfaction

The Seven Deadly Sins

Sin #1

Lust

We all gotta die of something.

Nigel Barker; photographer, model and judge on America's Next Top Model. Nigel Barker is most likely the sexiest man I have ever seen - yes - even poor Colin would take a back seat of that bus. Nigel, sweet beautiful Nigel....my oh my..... Yummy.

Moving right along, because that is what we do - or do we?

Say we don't.

Say that all I can think about is Nigel - every thought in my day is spent thinking of him - every part of my being demands it.

Wow. Lust sucks.

And you know - I know this one well. I know most of you may not want to hear that. You have this other idea of who Keely is - but if you don't know that side - than you are seeing the side I want to be. The truth is, I have been a slave to lust on and off during my lifetime. And you know, in our American society today, I am welcome to be a slave to lust - except that we celebrate it, and say I am not a slave, rather I am liberated. Some freakin' liberation.

The crappy thing about lust is that in it you can never be satisfied. You are in a constant search and hunger to fulfill your ever increasing need. Lust can never be fulfilled - it can never be satisfied. It can only be fed, and the more it is fed, the larger the beast becomes.
And they call this liberation, and confidence - and sexy.

I would rather search and be satisfied.

Deathtrap Daisy

For the commandment is a lamp,
And the law a light;
Reproofs of instruction are the way of life,
To keep you from the evil woman,
From the flattering tongue of a seductress.
Do not lust after her beauty in your heart,
Nor let her allure you with her eyelids.
For by means of a harlot
A man is reduced to a crust of bread;
And an adulteress will prey upon his precious life.
Proverbs 6:23-26 (NKJV)

It's such a sad story. The woman in these verses was not born a seductress, nor was she meant to become one. In the same way, desire was not originally lust, nor was it ever meant to become that. God gave us this wonderful gift of sex. We've perverted it. I have to wonder what we've lost by doing that. How would we experience romantic love, even erotic love, today if it was still as God created it? Who would this woman be if her purpose hadn't been twisted somewhere along the way?

What's ironic is that we think we've pulled one over on God. We wave our fornication, our adultery, our hedonism in His face as if He's the one who has lost something. I can see this woman called Lust joining us in our derision of the Creator, not knowing that her contempt is for us as well. We have paid the price for buying into her deception. Now that we've given ourselves over to her, she's gained a part of us, a part we can never recover. Just as the young man who gives into temptation has his vision of women forever dimmed, so has humanity's idea of sexuality been permanently colored by Lust.

The answer provided in this passage, however, is not to disengage from our desire. It is to approach it with wisdom, which can be learned from God's commandments and guidance. We must acknowledge that our own vision is obscured, and that we should move forward only with the help of the One who sees rightly. It is in our despair at having become a whore that we look to Him and regain the hope of becoming His pure bride.

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Genesis

It is said that some people march to the beat of their own drummer. We are those who kick the drummer in the mouth, take his drum, and create our own beat. We are drawn together by rhythms we find at once familiar and exotic. The reader of this blog will at times hear us resonate with masterful precision and at others rage in a disturbing cacophony. Rest assured that even if we're not smiling, we're enjoying the music. We hope you will as well.

Leaving the magical world of metaphor behind, it is enough to say that we are friends. We share many values, ideas, and tastes. That said, we are as different as we are the same. Things just wouldn't be as interesting otherwise. Things wouldn't be as fun.

Our task here is to surprise and challenge each other. To that end we will agree on a topic, write on it without consulting each other, and post the results here. Readers are also encouraged to visit the individual blogs kept by the writers. Links, if not up already, will be up soon.