castle at segovia 

squeezing out God

I read this morning here in Madrid. It is snowing outside which is extremely unusual here. When I awoke at 630 am everything was white.

15Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. 16Practically everything that goes on in the world--wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important--has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. 17The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out--but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

I feel that this verse best sums up "life in a material world" and its effect on the follower of Christ. It is a challenge. It is a temptation. It is a subtle manner in which we may live. We try to live not of the world but in it as we learn in youth group in the 80s but we get sucked in by little choices as time goes on.

We want our own way.
We want things for ourself
We want to appear important.

All of these things can be going on in your life and you not really recognize it but then you realize that you have squeeze out God. You have lost your first love (revelation church)

We become as the paraphraser of the Message says: isolated from God. Help me today Lord to not make those type of decisions. Help me to include you in on my life and my decisions. I do not want to squeeze you out of my life. When I do ... I lose. I lose in my realtionship with you and with my realtnioship with other people that I love and other people that I do not even know.

lmc

castles

i am always amazed at the castles in spain. Today we went to see the castle called Melina del campo. It is so old but looks brand new. It is in such remarkable shape. To my knowledge like one near madrid called Manazares it never saw a battle, it was not used for defense but rather it was used for "show". The rich or the royal or both wanted to show off their fortress. They decided that building a castle would be the best way to show off their strength,their wealth, their position, thier :height over the common people. It was a design from the past when the defended themselves from the Moors. It was something created for rembrance. They now have many nice meetings in these buldings. They host important conferences. They have solemn ceremonies there. I wonder what are the similiarites between the castles and the cathedrals of spain. They both are large, beautiful, strong, and now often visited by tourist but at some point they were functional. They were used and attended. What are the monuments that we build in our lives that show off who we are, shore up or weaknesses or fears? What do we want to be remembered by?