day no. 15,916: problems welcomed

"As Elbert Hubbard said of it, 'The only way to get away from opportunity is to lie down and die.'" -- The Armed Forces Officer, U.S. Department of Defense (1950)

God has given us a world of opportunity. He has hidden gold in the earth and eggs inside chickens. He has placed honey inside combs and milk inside cows. He has hidden salt inside the water and water inside the clouds. Everywhere opportunity abounds. The only way to be outside the reach of opportunity is to lie down and die.

Ecclesiastes 9:4
A living dog is better than a dead lion.

To be full of potential, but dead on the floor, is to be of no benefit to anyone. Burying your talents instead of turning a profit on them profits no one.

Opportunity is what we call a problem when it is welcomed. A problem is what we call it the rest of the time. All opportunities are problems; however, they're the kind of problems we should want to have more of.

Ecclesiastes 11:3
In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.

The fallen tree has escaped the problems of opportunity. It has no more problems... except for the one obvious one.

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” — G.K. Chesterton

day no. 15,915: the plot thickens in the kitchen

"The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born."-- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

Few things are more shocking than the habits of those people with whom we share a last name. Who are these people and where did they come from? How could so many with so much in common be so different? How could so many with the same nose prefer such different smells? How could so many with the same teeth pick such different dinners to chew? Variety is forced upon us at home. We leave to escape diversity, not to find it. We seek uniformity. We prefer entitled egalitarianism to sovereign synthesis. We like where our one note is sung instead of the harmony of different voices.

"Of all these great limitations and frameworks which fashion and create the poetry and variety of life, the family is the most definite and important... When we step into a family, we step into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy tale."-- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

Life is more like a story than an equation. When there is math involved, it is always a story problem. The digits must add up and end a certain way, but life isn't like that. It could go any direction. It could be a tragedy or a comedy. It could end on a crescendo or a fade to black. The plot thickens in the kitchen. The pot boiling at home on mom's stove is magical. Poetry is in your own kitchen, not in the drive-thru. Anything might come out of your pantry, but a number six no pickles is always the same at the chain wherever you go.

day no. 15,914: relentlessly diverse

"We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor... Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody." -- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

The world down the street and up the block is larger and more varied than the big, wide world we imagine is outside of our neighborhood. There may be more geographical space and square footage outside our city block, but what we would seek out there are those of a similar mind or station to ourselves. We would select from society those with whom we would commune and would find a smaller world, not a larger one. We don't flee from our families or our neighborhoods in search of more variety, but less. What could be less diverse the Coachella?

We don't leave home because it is too oppressively stale, but because it is so relentlessly diverse. It won't stop insisting on things we don't care about. It won't stop bringing up topics we're not interested in. We are too weak for family and neighborhoods, so we seek the comfort of clubs and mutual congratulation societies and refer to them as being outside and open-minded when in reality they are a retreat into a gated community of closed-mindedness.

"It is a good thing for a man to live in a family for the same reason it is a good thing for a man to be besieged in a city.... They all force him to realize that life is not a thing from outside, but a thing from inside."  -- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

day no. 15,913: the fastidious and the furious

"Fastidiousness is the most pardonable of vices; but it is the most unpardonable of virtues."

-- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

Paying close attention to detail and desiring everything to be in its right place is the most understandable of character flaws as long as it is confessed as such. The one who wants everything to be just right, but knows enough to apologize for it when it becomes overbearing or inconvenient to others is readily forgiven. It's easy to give a pass to someone doing their best to see that details are not dropped or duties left undone.

However, this same attention to detail when worn as a badge of honor is intolerable. Few things are less pardonable than being looked down upon by someone who is upset at you for not looking up to them. Fastidiousness in this form is high pride and rubs everyone wrong. Few can find it in themselves to overlook or forgive the audacity that requires an apology from them.

Fastidiousness then, as Chesterton points out, is forgivable as a vice, but intolerable as a virtue. We forgive the one who agrees with its flaws, but resist the one who sees only ours.

day no. 15,912: blood-education levels

In reading Rebekah Merkle's Eve in Exile, I came across the following quote...

A little learning is a dang’rous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

-- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

In this respect, alcohol has an inverse relationship to education. A little alcohol keeps one sober whereas too much intoxicates, but too little education intoxicates whereas more will sober you up. To be drunk on education is to merely sip at it. To be sober is to polish off the bottle. It is only safe to operate a household with a blood-education level of 1.00 or more whereas a meager 0.02 level is too be black out drunk. In other words, a little wisdom makes things blurry, but more will clear them up.

day no. 15,911: we still to conquer go

On earth the usurpers reign,

Exert their baneful power,

O’er the poor fallen sons of men

They tyrannize their hour:

But shall believers fear?

But shall believers fly?

Or see the bloody cross appear,

And all their power defy?

Jesus' tremendous name

Puts all our foes to flight: 

Jesus, the meek, the angry Lamb,

A Lion is in fight.

By all hell's host withstood;

We all hell's host o'erthrow;

And conquering them, through Jesus' blood

We still to conquer go.

— Charles Wesley, Angels Your March Oppose

quoted in Charles Haddon Spurgeon's Morning and Evening

Christianity is nothing short of the conquest of the entire world by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.

Revelation 12:11

And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.

The meek inherit the earth. The buried seeds are reborn to brighter skies. Those whose blood is poured out upon the ground will inherit the dirt as their very own forever. 

Habakkuk 2:14

For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

The world will be overcome by resurrection and the dead in Christ will cover the land as the water covers the sea.

1 Peter 1:24-25

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

The grass may wither and the flowers for now may fall, but the word of the Lord is forever and those who place their trust in it will be evergreen and in full bloom and eternal sunshine where no frost or winter can wither ever again.

day no. 15,910: lilith and eve

“To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve.” -- C.S Lewis, That Hideous Strength

Lilith is satisfied by inspiring desire, whereas Eve insists on satisfying the desires she inspires. Eve wants to create want in order to satiate it, whereas Lilith wants to be wanted in order to withhold it. Eve wants to empower, whereas Lilith wants to be empowered. Eve uses her beauty to adorn her king, but Lilith uses her beauty to usurp the throne.