My very own blog! Who would have thought? Who will read this? Does it matter? After sixty years and more, maybe a blog serves as my journal of successes and failures that might just help someone through a rough spot. Perhaps some insight will strike a chord, not of dissonance but of harmony.

But let me begin.

This morning on radio I heard a popular author and preacher say, “If there is discord, someone is being selfish.” Not disagreement, which would be a healthy way of getting a good plan in place, but discord, the absence of harmony. But, “couldn’t just one person create discord in the life of another?” I mused. “No,” I argued, “not unless the other person permitted it. Well, what about arguments where both parties accuse the other of being selfish? Surely that could be true, couldn’t it?” I pondered.

Then I think I hit on something that was helpful…to me at least. Discord occurs when one’s attitude changes toward that person who has a different opinion; when we no longer view that person with value. We label them a trouble maker, ignorant, shallow, narrow. And those are the nice words we might use with a third party, not the words that lie close to the surface and right on the tip of the tongue. Those words that only our ‘stellar’ reputation prevents us from mouthing.

I think sometimes God just sits and laughs when he considers who we think we are.

Sometimes I laugh with him.