Evaluating your life

Here is one person's perspective.
http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/graham.htm?source=DailyDig

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My way

Why can't things be the way I want them to be? After all, I know best. I feel this way more often than I care to admit. I have remember the words of Abba Nilus: "Do not be always wanting everything to turn out as you think it should, but rather as God pleases, then you will be undisturbed and thankful in your prayer."
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Homosexuality

Much is being written about how the church should deal with gays & lesbians. May those in committed relationships be ordained? Should committed relationships be blessed by the church? Most of my reading/discussion on these questions has centered around the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). A recent letter in The Metro Lutheran (in response to an earlier letter) caught my eye and made me pause:

A letter writer from the May 2005 issue says, "Ordaining a gay or lesbian is an insult to God. Wake Up! The majority of people in the United States don't want changes that will divide their church." I am reminded that well-meaning churchgoers have often said that. It may be black or Hispanic people, it may be women or the disabled. Some always want to treat [some] people as the "other."
It is within the realm of possibility that I am wrong to value and affirm the lives of gay and lesbian people. However, in the end, if God is to tell me I was wrong, I will be able to respond that I loved them. If on the other hand, your letter writer is told by God in the end that she was wrong, she will have to admit, she judged them.

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Anger

The older I get, the harder it is for me to control my temper; although I hope that with God's help I'm improving.
Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness.
James 1:19-20

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How do we evaluate ourselves? What standards do we use? Too often we measure ourselves by comparing to our peers -- be we doctors, lawyers, or preachers. The Bal Shem Tov, a great Jewish teacher, said:
Compare not yourself with anyone else, lest you spoil God's curriculum.

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I've been in a "dry" spell lately. Time to get out of it. The following by St. Thomas Aquinas helps:

It is better to limp along the way than stride along off the way. For a man who limps along the way, even if he only makes slow progress, comes to the end of the way; but one who is off the way, the more quickly he runs, the further away is he from his goal. . . . Therefore hold fast to Christ if you wish to be safe. You will not be able to go astray, because he is the way. . . . For he says: "I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly."

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