"there is a season"
Ecclesiastes 3:1
Does it look like Autumn yet, where you are?
It doesn't here. Believe me, I know, because I keep checking. I'm looking forward to Autumn. Summer is my 5th favorite season.
{I know, but that's how much I dislike summer...}
The kids and I will be starting school on Monday, so they want to decorate the house with our fall decorations this weekend. We're bringing in fall whether the weather wants it or not!
And the forced (and eventual) coming of Autumn has me thinking about how it won't be long before Christmas is here.
Which is how I ended up thinking about Christmas today. While it was 97 degrees outside.
And what I ended up thinking was about the concept of the Naughty or Nice list. My kids and I like to read Calvin and Hobbes comics, and there are often story lines about Calvin's attempt to be "good" as Christmas approaches.
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| Credit: The talented Bill Watterson |
Belief in Santa was a great incentive when I was a kid. I mean, I really tried to be good all the time.
Most of the time.
I think.
My mom might remember it differently...
Anyhow, I didn't just try to be good in December. But when December came, I was more aware of my behavior. It was easier to be good, and while I was on my best behavior, it was easier to look in the mirror and see a good child.
I recently heard a pastor say that we tend to place ourselves in a "pocket of self-righteousness". I thought that was a very interesting concept. And probably more true than I'd like to admit. I think maybe sometimes we surround ourselves with people who make us feel better about ourselves, and then when we do a self-evaluation, it's when we're at our best. It has to be, because when we're at our worst, it doesn't even occur to us that we should be checking our behavior. But the reverse is true, too. As soon as we catch ourselves in sinful behavior, we on our way back to the right road.
There's righteousness, but there's also self-righteousness, and God's righteousness. That should be my heart's desire, in any situation I'm in ~ Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall.
~ "Then it will be righteousness for us,
if we are careful to observe all these commandments
before the Lord our God,
as He has commanded us" ~
Deuteronomy 6:25
~
Yes, that's all well and good, but remember that the prophet Isaiah says in 64:6, "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away."
ReplyDeletePaul wrote in 2 Cor. 5:21, "For he hath made him [Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." That's my only hope, to be accepted in the Beloved because I have no righteousness of my own. Only Him.
Exodus 34:9 it reads, "And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance." If/When we make it all the way home, it will be because of the Lord, not because of anything we did, regardless of how good it seems.
Well-put and well-quoted. Thank you for the reminders!
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