Comments on: Patience, endurance, and persecution. https://pukeko.net.nz/blog/2014/12/patience-endurance-and-persecution/ Bleak Theology: Hopeful Science Fri, 28 Apr 2017 11:05:49 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.4 By: chrisgale https://pukeko.net.nz/blog/2014/12/patience-endurance-and-persecution/comment-page-1/#comment-3974 Tue, 30 Dec 2014 21:03:00 +0000 https://pukeko.net.nz/blog/?p=5453#comment-3974 Oh, we are to be joyful, yes. But joy, like love is a choice, or the fruit of a choice: perhaps both. In love we put the desires and needs and best outcomes of another first. We hope for them: when they fail we grieve, when they succeed we rejoice. In living this way we find ourselves at peace and with a sense of Joy.

But we have to choose to live this way each day. We have to let the sense that I need to be put first go. We have to love for one another, not for ourselves. There is an obvious analogy with the marital act: it is in pleasing the other that the bonds of marriage are deepened.

I think women are being poisoned by a sense that they need to be happy and it will be all perfect. Children, with their inherent messiness, tend to deal with that. Men are equally poisoned by being told that women are better than them and they need to meet their whims — when instead they need to be out doing what is needful, from ensuring the plumbing works to preaching and pastoring.

You see, work exhausts one. (I am on holiday, two weeks in, and have just caught up on my chronic sleep deprivation). If you do your job with the effort it requires, you will come home 80% spent. I have not done that for years: academic work is not as emotionally draining and I have needed 40% left over because I’ve been raising kids solo. Having a wife would help — because you can push yourself further knowing that there is nurturing and caring awaiting at home.

And if there is not, then one should not be surprised if men work less hard, and are less willing to support: leaving women doing three jobs (raising kids is a full time job) and being exhaused, isolated, and joyless.

I hate the preachers of this modern heresy, for they make the bulk of people miserable, and I need not the work.

]]> By: Hearthrose https://pukeko.net.nz/blog/2014/12/patience-endurance-and-persecution/comment-page-1/#comment-3973 Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:15:00 +0000 https://pukeko.net.nz/blog/?p=5453#comment-3973 I think we’re supposed to be joyful. Ridiculously, annoyingly, joyful. Not always happy – who is? But joy-filled. That’s my spiritual challenge this year, to get myself out of the way and let God really pour through. Circumstances are circumstances, and to His glory, right? We get so caught up in ourselves and forget to dwell in Him.

Hey, what do I have to complain about? Dirty dishes? It’s ungrateful of me to be anything less than blindingly joyfilled. This world encourages us in dissatisfaction. Like this world is going to have perfection? Piff. But enjoy what you have, whatever it is. To the fullest. Share it. Smile – it freaks people out. 😀

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