i think rather than write myself, i should be a conduit of great thoughts coming through the pipeline of lea. i think that my place in life is to read. because i read some really great stuff. writing is harder. and i read better than i write. like i spend better than i earn. and speaking of money...
i read this editorial “filthy rich” from touchstone magazine today (we actually get its sister publication SALVO and LOVE LOVE LOVE it for the way it makes me think and think hard and deep and sometimes makes me look up words. their blog is great too) and this one part of the editorial BLEW ME AWAY...
The poor teach us what our vices mean, because we have not the self-knowledge to see through the disguises we ourselves have given them. When we see the poor doing what we would not, let us not say, “There but for the grace of God (or family, social class, or education) go I.” We must say, “There are my vices, walking.”
“there go my vices, walking”. skipping. jumping. in every sin that i see in the world. every heinous deed. everything that makes me shake my head and go “WHO DOES THAT?!?!” the answer is “i would do that”. there is my sin. unleashed. unrestrained by the ongoing all sustaining power of the Holy Spirit. do not let me go Lord. do not let my vices walk around... for if You don’t control them, they will walk in me. and in my children. and in generations to come. and it will not be pretty. it will steal, kill and destroy.
perhaps that is why these words are my favorite ones... the ones that make me tear up every time i hear them and sing them. they are the truest words ever sung about me.
o to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.
let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.
prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.
and don’t let my vices walk around. they are death.