Word of the Day (3-7-12)

Good Morning Everyone

Today is Wednesday March 7, 2012

The word of the day comes from

Ecclesiastes 2:20-23

The Message (MSG)

 ^20-23 That's when I called it quits, gave up on anything that could be hoped for on this earth. What's the point of working your fingers to the bone if you hand over what you worked for to someone who never lifted a finger for it? Smoke, that's what it is. A bad business from start to finish. So what do you get from a life of hard labor? Pain and grief from dawn to dusk. Never a decent night's rest. Nothing but smoke.

My Interpretation

I wonder how many people feel how Solomon felt when he wrote this? Does it bother you to work hard knowing that someone else is going to benefit from it who didn’t deserve it or didn’t earn it? Does it bother you to sacrifice your hours, your time, your energy, your money, your love for someone who may not appreciate and value what you have left them? Does it bother you that what you are working hard for now may not be as valuable to others as it is to you.

Anybody who knows me knows that I am a collector. I have bookshelves upon bookshelves of movies. So much so that I just told Christen we need more space to house them. On top of that, I have shelves, containers, crates, hard drives full of music. They mean the world to me. I worked hard buying and collecting them since I was in middle school. I have all types of movies. I pride myself on having a wide collection that ranges from romantic movies like “The Notebook” to Christian like “The Passion of Christ”, to gangster like “The Godfather trilogy”, to sci-fi like “The Matrix” to horror like “Halloween” etc. I just love movies. The same can be said about my CD collection. I have gospel, I have rap, I have r&b, I have country, I have pop, I have rock, I have reggae, etc. I love music and I am particular about who I lend them out to (if at all) and for how long. Christen always jokes with me that if a fire were to break out in the house, after I got her and the kids I would probably run back in to see how many movies and CD’s I could save. I have to laugh. Would I be crazy enough to do that? Who knows but I do know that I value them a lot and am always looking to add to them. So it bothers me when people don’t value them like I do. They borrow them and don’t put them in the case when they aren’t using it. They put it in a case in which it doesn’t belong or they leave it out on the table, floor, etc for dust, for scratches, for damages, for cracks to potentially occur. I had to stop letting my friend get CD’s because I feel like he uses it as a plate. It ALWAYS comes back with what look like knife and fork impressions lol.

But I thought about something. You know who had something and gave it to someone else who didn’t deserve it or lift a finger for it? Jesus. He gave Himself up freely and we didn’t deserve His love, His mercy, His grace, His propitiation, His forgiveness, His sacrifice, His righteousness, His shed blood, His salvation, His acceptance, His reward, His eternity, His heaven, His Father YET AND STILL, God willingly gave to us knowing that we wouldn’t all appreciate it like we should. That we too would put Him in places where He didn’t belong or leave Him laying around to get dust, scratches, damages or potential cracks. Jesus loved us enough to realize that it wasn’t a tragedy to leave His work to us and the fruits of His labor. He realized it was the only way and counted it as joy to rectify the issue we had which was sin.

We can be so quick sometimes to not want to do for others because they won’t appreciate it or they will take it for granted or they will not handle it with the same type of care that we would show it. Do you think Jesus has the right to say that about how we treat Him? Yes He does! Does He though? NO HE DOESN’T! That is something to be grateful for. That is something to thank Him for! That is something to rejoice about! That is something to help us put a smile on our face and enjoy this middle of the week Wednesday. That is something to say that Thank You for being MY GOD!

Have a wonderful, blessed, productive, stress free day!