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Good Things


       The discerning heart seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly. (Proverbs 15:4)

        One of my friends reported that she’d seen interviews with college students who had gone to Florida for spring break in spite of warnings about the Wuhan coronavirus. They weren’t going to let the virus interfere with their fun. The governor of Florida finally closed down the beaches.
         Young adults aren’t the only ones with this sort of attitude. For years, people have told me that we only live once, that they’ve worked hard all week, they deserve to be able to kick back and have fun. So, let me begin with a disclaimer. The purpose of this blog posting is not to tell you that you are not to be happy, that you’re not to have fun, be amused, or experience excitement. It’s not here to rain on your parade or be a party-pooper.
       But…
       There are people who seem to think they deserve to be happy, to be amused, and to be excited. I know people who seem to have the goal of shutting down their minds and throwing responsibilities out the window. There are people who insist that they should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as they believe they aren’t hurting anyone, and it involves consenting adults. There are those for whom amusement, happiness, and excitement become the end.
         Consider the popularity of movies, TV, video games, amusement parks, restaurants, malls, trampoline places, hair and nail salons, and bars with loud music.  The point is that it doesn’t require that something be bad for you for it to separate you from God. The positive separators are better at separating us than the negative separators because we recognize the harm the negatives ones do more quickly.
Like so many of the others, the belt of truth and the sword of the Spirit are vital weapons but in this case, the breastplate of righteousness may seem to work against us because the happiness created by doing good can create the separation we’re trying to avoid. This is one of those cases when we can say, “WDA!”

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