My Favorite Character Words

Common Sense Commentary: There aren't many things that are absolute. One of those things is change. No one on earth is the exact same today as they were yesterday. We all grow a little older, happier or sadder, fatter or slimmer, plus a million other small and large differences...change. Age, experiences, maturity, and companions change a person's perspective over time, their favorite things change, their temperament,patience, and many many other aspects of life change constantly. We change but God never changes. He grows no older, no more mature, no more knowledgeable. What he believes does not change one iota. He Knows everything in His universe in finite detail. He knew it all before the beginning, he knows it all in the present and always shall know with perfect knowledge.Prophecy is a small sample of the foreknowledge of God. "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Heb.13:8. He IS the "beginning and the end", "first and last", "He who was, and is and is to come".

My Favorite Words(I do not classify God,Jesus,Holy Spirit or even people as "words".

In 1952, as a young minister with a conservative heritage and not long out of the Marines, my philosophy was reflected by my favorite "character" words....truth, courage, work, honesty, patriotism, commitment, loyalty, dependability, punctuality, and strength. I was an idealistic zealot with unlimited energy and no patience with cowardice, laziness or vacillation.

Such young people are essential on the battlefield, athletic field, oil field roughnecks and as law enforcement officers. Alone, however, these dynamics are not enough to guide a parent in bringing up children or a pastor who must minister to faulty human beings with every conceivable problem, heartbreak, divorce, wayward children, indebtedness, out of work, emotional and mental problems plus every kind of sin.

Many years of parenting and pastoring have adjusted the above list of traits and personal description of who I wanted to be then. It isn't so much the difference age makes except as age relates to passing time, pain, a vast store of experience, failures, disappointments, a wounded heart, greater sensitivity to sin, and a deeper knowledge of the holy attributes of Jesus. At eighty, God has changed me and added some milder, kinder words to my list of favorites....Moderation, kindness,love, leadership, patience, faith, forgiveness, maturity and balance, balance, balance. I still hold on to the first list of favorite words but hold just as closely those God's Holy Spirit has added.

God is neither a zealot nor a pacifist, an extremist or a compromiser. God is neither a legalist nor an apologist. God is in perfect balance. God's universe is balanced. If you don't know it yet, you will ....in time....if you survive. Excess kills, temperance heals. I will write on Balance soon. Pass It On. RB