how do you help stop the bleeding? one person at a time. starting with you.

it would have been a lot easier if god had just put an electric shocker on anything that was sin.  if we picked up something to steal it.  zap.  not enough to kill the person, but just strong enough to remind them that what they're about to do is wrong.  it sure would make things a lot easier and save a lot of regret over wrong decisions being made along the way to wisdom...to salvation.  yet, god didn't put a shocker on sin.  he just gave us a conscience and an instruction manual.  the conscience part reminds me of a poem.  wait, let me share it with you.  for some it may be the first time you've read it.  for others, maybe you've read it before but had forgotten.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.

These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don't hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours.

Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life.

Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.

Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all die. So do we.

And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: look.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living.

Think what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

~ Robert Fulghum ~

that's a really cute little poem, but some of you didn't learn these things in kindergarten.  maybe you were taught the exact opposite on some or all of those things and still need to learn them.  now's just as good a time as any.  it's going to take some work on your part, but that "innate" part of you to strive to do and be better will gnaw at you until you do.  then there's the matter of our "instruction book", the good book...the holy bible.

there are lots of life lessons in there.  it will take you from the beginning to the end and back to the beginning again.  it takes you through the stormy but mostly loving relationship god's had with us since our creation.  imagine if you had the power to create something that had a mind of it's own....you'd love it, but then hate it at times and then just want to destroy it.  god has.  when he sent jesus though, he said he'd never destroy us again.

people were saved from "the original sin" of genesis.  people no longer had to offer up blood sacrifices.  you see, god's own son's blood was freely given for our salvation on the cross for our sins...blood that each time a sin is committed continues to bleed out of open wounds.  tears that spill from the eyes of a man who willingly let others torture him on the cross for our salvation.

how do we help stop his bleeding that he's bled all these years?  how do we help stop his tears?  with each decision that we make we help heal his suffering...we help heal god's anger at us and we help heal the world in which we live.