More of the Same

Good morning and Happy Monday. Brand new week. Brand new attitude. The past is the past. The future is unlimited. Growing up in the area of 103rd and St. Lawrence I saw most of the same people on my way to and fro. I saw Big Cornell as he sat on the porch as I went to work/school and came home from work/school. I saw the fights at the McDonalds after the football games at Gately Staduim. I saw the same man hanging outside the store in front of the liquor store asking for change. In my neighborhood not much changed. I was able to find almost everything in my neighborhood. The weed man was on Rhodes and when I wanted that good stuff I went to my man on Eberhart. The man who ask for change in front of liquor store on Vernon would buy our liquor for when we not old enough to buy. The store that stayed open 24 hours 7 days a week was on King Drive. All of these things were within a five block radius. No matter what direction I went I saw the same thing. We as a people of faith have also gotten comfortable in our surroundings and have no need or desire to do anything different. We are giving the world More of the Same.

As I do in most of my blogs I often look to find the definition of a word in Dictionary.com. In looking up the word same it means as follows; agreeing in kind, in amount and in corresponding. In looking at the things in

we all agree in kind that there has to be changes. We all agree that the amount of changes has to increase. We are even corresponding to each other about how and why we need to change. But doing the same is not getting the job accomplished to where the killings stop, the drug use eliminated and the world changing. God needs to see more. I am going to use three examples in the Bible that shows how the More of the Same turned out for the people then.

In looking at my example for More of the Same in the Word of God I go Judges 2:10-19. In this passage the chosen people of God has a new generation that heard about what God had done but chose to go other

directions and serve other gods. God delivers them from this twice in this passage and they still kept going back. We who are in the world today are doing More of the Same. We are continuing asking God to get us out of situation that we had no business getting involved in and when he gets us out we are right back doing the same and asking him to help us again. God does forgive but what example are you setting for those that are unsaved. We must stop this More of the Same.

In my second example in the Word of God of More of the Same Hosea 4:1-13. Once again God is displeased with the actions of his people. In this passage it speaks of many things but in verse 13 it speaks of

sacrifice. In those days other nations sacrificed their children to other gods and sometimes the people of God followed their lead to become more like them. We in the world today sometimes sacrifice the needs of our youth and leave them hanging to follow the crowd into More of the Same instead of being that great example to show them the right way to do things. We must stop doing More of the Same.

In looking at the last example in the Word of God of More of the Same I go to Matthew 12:1:14. In this passage we see where the Pharisees are holding on to More of the Same. They start with Jesus picking corn

and then get even more angrier that he heals a man hand on a Sabbath. The bad part is that they actually dared Jesus to fix the man's hand and when he did they did not rejoice but wanted to kill him because of this. We in the world today have a duty to spread the Word of God but cannot be restricted by just spreading them to each other on Sunday, Wednesday or whatever day we congregate. We cannot get left behind as the world goes forward. We must stop More of the Same.

In closing I read an article where most of the businesses in America are getting rid of something we all are familiar with and that is a cash register. This will make the sales people more mobile and make lines at the stores a thing of the past. We must take an active approach to how we are going to change things in the arts, in entertainment, in business, in family, in education, in media, in religion and in government. More of the Same is not even a consideration. We must agree in kind on the strategies we are going to implement and then implement them. We must agree in the amount of hard work and energy to make the world better for our youth and be better examples. We must agree in how we correspond to get the Word of God into the areas I spoke of earlier in this paragraph. The we can change from More of the Same to More of a Difference. May God bless those who read this blog and I give God all the glory and the honor for allowing me to be able to teach through blogging. Have a great week. Join me Friday for my blog More Applause.