Maintaining The Center

Change is all around. The world is fran­tic to get your atten­tion and to manip­u­late you for a quick profit. It is dis­tract­ing. Stay­ing on course is more dif­fi­cult than it used to be. We live in shal­low, trendy, super­fi­cial times. It is easy to feel that you are being yanked away from your life’s true pur­pose.

Do not cave into the attempts of oth­ers to man­age you. We live in Orwellian times. There is a split between the elites and the com­mons. Most of us are seen as sheep to be sheared. Our “over­lords” suf­fer from more emo­tional and spir­i­tual mal­adies than would fill a book on abnor­mal psy­chol­ogy.

Jesus faced the same thing. The sys­tem of his day was rigged by two very pow­er­ful religious/political par­ties (Sad­ducees and Phar­isees). There was a sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment that was some­where between amoral and totally immoral. Cor­rup­tion was ram­pant. Cyn­i­cism flour­ished and ate away at the spir­i­tual strength of the every­day per­son. Every­one felt used.

One man entered the scene with the abil­ity to stay focused. Rather than be manip­u­lated, he let him­self be exe­cuted. He made his point and God took him — body and all — out of the hands of the sys­tem. Before he died, he called oth­ers to be of the same mind.

They can take your job, your house, your car, and your pro­fes­sional titles, but they can­not take your soul — unless you let them. “The soul returns to God who gave it…” is the bot­tom line to the story. The rest stays here. The over­lords face death unpre­pared. All they acquired is taken from them sud­denly. Satan has played his most com­mon trick on the “best and the bright­est.”

In the mean time, we hold our cen­ter. We live in calm resolve. We know the Lord and he knows us. That is all that mat­ters. The rest is just the illu­sion of power. Death is the great lev­eler of all things. For some it is the great betrayal of life, for those that hold to their Cen­ter, it is just a transition.