Thinking is hazardous to your health...

There are pros and cons to living alone with an 8 year old. I won't bore you with the details, but I will say that being the only adult in a household leaves a lot of time for thinking. I spend a lot of time alone, pondering events of the day, the month, the year...my LIFE...sometimes all that thinking can really exhaust a girl.

(Side note: Hey God, how come thinking doesn't burn calories??)

Here's the other thing (person) who really gets me thinking. Jimmy Wade. You should check out his blog(www.jimmyincharlotte.blogspot.com) Anyway, Jimmy's my Pastor and today at church he continued dissecting the book of James. I gotta admit, when Jimmy announced awhile back that we'd be studying James I kiiiind of thought I'd be falling asleep. I mean, honestly - I'm pretty sure if you were reading the bible and sneezed you'd probably accidentally skip right over James. But apparently Jimmy kind of knows his stuff, because I've been pretty enraptured every Sunday. Turns out there's a whole lotta relevant stuff in that book. I guess that's why Jimmy's the Pastor, and I sit in the seats and listen. Anyway - today Jimmy discussed the passage where James says, "Look - you're gonna want all of these things in life. Some of them you will get, some of them you won't. And it's going to make you really mad when you don't get certain things. And it's probably because you're not consulting God about these desires to make sure He's cool with it. But, on the off chance you ARE talking to God about it, it's probably because what you desire is selfish and maybe you want it for the wrong reasons."

Ok...what?

That's a lot to swallow. All this is followed with a verse that says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. So I was sitting there, scratching my head thinking - well, really none of that adds up in my head. Because there are a lot of crappy people in the world rising to the top. Good things fall upon them wherever they go. I know you know someone like this - I sure do. I was struggling with this concept when the thought occurred to me...ok, so that's not necessarily favor from God. Right?? Getting favor from the "world" is CLEARLY going to be different than getting favor from God. And that's really about as far as I got in this whole thought process - because that in and of itself is going to require a lot of pondering. Seeing people who are seemingly "blessed" with successes they don't deserve...all this time I wonder, why is God blessing those people? Why do they have so much?

What if the real "favor" and "blessing" comes much, much later...

Well, shoot. Of course it does.