One Life

Whether deliberately or through casualness, accidents and omissions, each of us chooses (becomes responsible for) an emerging design pattern for personal living.  Some of those designs look like they were painted by Dali, others by Rembrandt.  Some reflect worry and lines of hard living, others with smiles and lines of solitude.  It all begins with the accident of birth.  (That deliberate to a parent is visited upon an embryo.)  We are born, so it has now been proved, with a DNA that suggests strengths and weaknesses in our physical natures (perhaps also in our spiritual natures).  We are the products of those who have lived in the blood lines preceding each of us.  Persons may go to extremes to escape some indications – as illustrated in some women who choose breast removal when they learn that cancer was common in their preceding generations, perhaps also showing in some current family members.  The matter ought to be met in less dramatic approaches.  The implications of the DNA are not verdicts.  The fears of ill health, poverty, violence, and whatever else generating fear, are to be faced with the resources that generate courage: positive attitudes, bravery, knowledge, attention, habits, skills, self-acceptance and prayer.  We are seekers of life fulfillment without violating minds and bodies.  We counter negatives, even those found in our genes, with resources available to us in our lives, as we also enhance the advantages of our DNA.

In health we are likely going to be on the winning side if we follow good nutrition and exercise.  These are most effective if they appear early in our years.  They belong first to our parenting, both in instruction and modeling, but they ought to be instilled in childhood as matters of habit.  We ought to avoid violation of the organs of the body, especially the blood, and so to seek a sound mind in a sound body.  All this can be done, not in any attitude of burden and boredom, but as a way of life that offers good health and proper longevity that relates to fulfillment and modeling for others, especially those close to us.

In marriage, the commitment to the same ideals in the various departments of life between husband and wife, carried over to the children, become a bonding methodology that serves the purposes of love and life.  The differences, which are certainly present and useful in the growth of personal wisdom, are countered by the affirmatives.  Couples committed to similar interests are not likely to permit differences to divide them, and cause sorrow, perhaps havoc, for both themselves and their families – by dividing loyalties and experiences.  Persons should not only study (gain counsel) for the meaning of marriage, but also the meaning in the light of what they have become and are becoming as separate persons – in tandem.

In the invisible world of the mind and soul, the persons in family, profession, friendship, society ought to be in agreement about rights in personal, intellectual and spiritual interests with a full complement of acceptance of others in love and peace.  This does not mean automatic approval, but with an underlying belief or feeling that if one’s own personal background were the same as that of the person before me,

I would likely be like that person.  This is an important matter that leads to positive persuasion and feelings about life.  I have been impressed how the society moves to lesser lightness of being when name-calling, violence, arrogance, ignorance, and the like have dominated in public and personal exchanges.  It falls to malaise.  Minds of persons are fed by education, both formal and informal. This requires alertness to meaning and constructive conduct.  It is possible to be a graduate of a college without being educated. 

Personal peace is related, sooner or later, with resolution of spiritual life, either for primacy of Deity or for natural life context to death.  For the Christian it is in the confidence that negative life (sin that violates the meaning of life to God) is rejected for the faith life in Christ that achieves the development of relationship with God, and moral management of life.  It is to fulfillment perceived to be victorious in biblical terms, and all that through the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those accepting God’s gospel.  For if we judge (evaluate truthfully) ourselves, we should not be judged (not faulted).  (1 Corinthians 11:31)