I’m trying something new this year. For my own reasons I
won’t be divulging all the details for the whole world to see, but I will say
this – there will be more writing, lots of memories, new experiences, and
hopefully a changed and more developed me at the end of this project.
The name wasn’t intentional, and internally I’m not even
calling it that, but it might help explain what’s about to happen. Just because
I turned 30 doesn’t mean that suddenly I’m washed up and old, even if I do tend
to get tired by 7:30pm. And, just because I’m no longer in my 20s doesn’t mean
that all that much has changed yet either. I’m still me, for better or for
worse, and I might as well use my latest candle blowing ceremony as an excuse to
do something fun.
So, today I bought a cork board, some glittery paper,
vintage pins and other cool scrapbooking items and will be using the cork
board and this blog to follow my project to completion. I expect epic
adventures and lots of just ‘newness’ to engulf me as I mark off each goal and
watch the list get smaller. One of these goals involves reading, something I
already love to do. So I guess I’ll make my first full blog post by sharing a
quote I found interesting while reading a new book today:
“Men, thinking to better their condition, are always ready
to change masters, and in this expectation will take up arms against any ruler;
wherein they deceive themselves, and find afterwards by experience that they
are worse off than before” – Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince.
What’s so interesting about this quote is that Machiavelli
is writing about how to run a kingdom and acquire Princedoms after watching and
observing the political struggles of Italy and France. What he may not have
known is how this statement rings so true to the Christian life. When things
don’t go our way, we start looking for a new master, and without fail, we find
out too late that our new one makes things worse off than before. Our
selfishness and need for self satisfaction takes over and we can’t possibly imagine how
staying with our true Master will make our dreams come true, when it couldn’t
be further from the truth.
Think about any major dilemma in your life that you’ve
struggled for power for. Was it wanting a position that wasn’t right for you? A
significant other that you knew probably wasn’t God’s best, but you just had to
be with him/her? A gray area that you wanted so desperately to find a good
balance in, but failed every time? When we make anything
else our master, and fight to keep the right Master out of our
lives, we always deceive ourselves and experience life in the worst way
possible. We aren’t meant to live any other way, and therefore when we choose
to walk down the wrong road, the one that requires us to take up arms against
our Ruler, our Savior, our King, we’ll find very soon that we have been tricked
by our own doing.
But, the good news is, because we serve the rightful Lord,
when we come crawling back, licking our wounds and admitting defeat, we know
that He is ready to welcome us back with open arms and a huge feast waiting. We
don’t have to worry like those rulers of France and Italy that the subjects
will consider us traitors or exile us to some far off province. We have the
amazing and glorious truth of unconditional love, no matter how big our failure
or how giant our deceit.
Not a bad situation if you ask me… and all that from a quote
written almost 600 years ago.
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