Consider this

                 Almost every culture has a genie-in-the-bottle-type story in which someone frees a being from captivity and is granted three wishes.     Often the wishes go wrong.   For example, the man who asks for a pile of money finds it difficult to know his real friends because everyone wants something from him.   The woman who asks for a life of leisure finds that a life without stress is boring.   The moral is that we do not know what to ask for and that what we think we need may harm us.                I bring this up because our prayers often sound like our three wishes list.   We ask for what we think we need and overlook what would be most beneficial.   On top of that, our prayers can become so repetitive that we just give up.   Fortunately, scripture shows us something better.   As Paul starts his letter to the Ephesian church,

 We think that we know what we want. However, some of the things we wish for would actually be harmful to us. What we really need is to know what is best for us and how to get it.  

 If you do not know this, you need to. If you do, you need to share it.  

           I am selfish and like to be left alone! There, I said it.   I want to do my own things, in my own time, in my own way.   I do not want to rearrange my whole day to help others.   Given the choice, I would spend every day off working in my garage by myself.   My idea of a great holiday includes an island in the middle of a lake in northern Saskatchewan, a canoe, a tent and silence. However, there are two problems with that sort of thinking.   First, many people have gone out of their way to help me over the years.   Tons of people put their own selfish desires to the side so that they could help me and teach me things that I did not know. Had they acted selfishly, I do not know how my life would have turned out.   Second, and more importantly, Jesus showed up!   John begins his gospel by remin

 Joy rests on perspective. Are you looking at what you have, or what you lack? Are you looking at how far you have come, or how far you have to go? At the start of Ephesians, Paul gives us some unchanging reasons to rejoice.  

 The fact that I struggled to explain this (and, in the end, did not do very well) is likely a sign that we do not talk about this enough. Sin is more than just one wrong action. It is forgetting who we are and who we are becoming.