We're asking the wrong question

I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should ask what kind of me God wants for his mission. Christopher J.H. Wright

So often it isn't the mission that is God's focus as much as it is the people he's called to it. God knows when each of us are ready for the mission he has in mind. Problem is we want to push up that timeline - we focus too much on the mission and not enough, or at all, on the inner man. What do I mean by that? I mean that in order to set our hands and feet to the missions of God we have to have a healthy inner man. We have to have integrity in our personal and work lives, we have to know when to speak and when to be quiet, we have to have an awareness of the culture we are in, etc. I think you probably see what I am getting at. The beauty of God is that he allows us opportunities to participate in his missions at all stages of our inner man development. He doesn't say that we have to be "100%". If that were the case none of us would ever get to do anything for God! And on top of that it's a different standard for each person because we are all at different places in our journeys so I may not be ready for something but you will be regardless of how long each of us has been in relationship with God. We focus way too much on doing and not enough on being. God calls on us to switch that around. Start focusing way more on being and the doing flows from that. Start asking the right question. "What kind of me do you want and need Lord?"

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A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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