Spiritual Ponderings

I have become aware over the past few years that I have a major deficit in my heart due to a lack of proper nurturing and training when I was young. I know that it comes from that time in my life because infancy is the maturing time when this vital component of life is supposed to be integrated into the fabric of each person's thinking and relating. But what I am now faced with is how to expose, address and repair this problem. The deficit is my tendency or lack of willing ability to receive before attempting to disperse. I have learned in the past few years that when a person is forced to give unselfishly before learning first of all to receive with joy, then the character is marred and that person becomes stunted and somewhat warped in this part of their experience. The person may or may not become a giver and sharer of what they have with others, but their ability to do so with joy and spontaneously with a spirit of cheerfulness is seriously lacking. It is like damaging an o...

A thought seemed to appear in my mind while I was sleeping this morning that persisted in keeping my attention until my conscious mind began to ponder it as I slowly began to wake up. Then I began to fear that I might lose it before capturing it here, so I couldn't go back to sleep completely. Since it is a thought that is rather new to me and also because I don't recall even thinking about this subject recently, I suspect that it wasn't an idea that originated with me. There is a teaching in my church about the time prophesied in Daniel that we are now living in. The period of time we find ourselves in today is called the time of the Investigative Judgment. There has been a great deal of debate about this concept or event, both its very existence and also the nature of what it really involves. Unfortunately this teaching has been abused by good-intentioned people far too often to promote a religion based on fear. They have done this because their perceptions of God wer...