A Losing Equation Or A Winning Combination Series

A Losing Equation or a Winning Combination

I have always enjoyed math - because it just make sense (not like grammar with all it’s exceptions) and it always adds up. People who choose to love money and use people will always end up corrupt and ruined - always. People who choose right living and a fighting faith will always have a secure grasp of life - always.

The Losing Equation: ((Love + Money)*Evil) – Faith = Much Sorrow

Envy: I recently read about South West Airlines. After the tragedy of September 11th, South West has been THE only big carrier to still be making money (although they are still making about ½ what they had last year). All the other airlines are swimming in red ink and have either declared bankruptcy or are thinking about it – in order to try to avoid their creditors. So, in an atmosphere where most airlines are struggling to survive, SW’s employees have relative job security.

And yet, some of the workers in one of its unions is threatening to strike for higher wages. Why? Because comparable employees in one of those other airlines (that’s failing) make more per hour than they do.

Does anybody besides me sense the insanity of that? These union workers were not content, because somebody else (in a failing and potentially bankrupt airline) was getting more than they did.

Solomon wrote: “And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind” Ecclesiastes 4:4

Some people stop trusting God and start trusting things – and when they start trusting things they are capable of doing most anything thing – even the most despicable of crimes.

It seems that an elderly grandmother had been given a gun by her son in which to protect herself. On day after, she did her shopping and when she returned to the car where she found four white males seated inside. She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun, proceeding to scream at them at the top of her voice that she has a gun and knows how to use it: so get out of the car.

The four men hopped out and ran like mad, whereupon the lady proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and get into the drivers seat. And there she discovered that her key wouldn’t fit the ignition. Upon inspection she realized that her car was identical and parked four or five spaces farther down. The sergeant to whom she told the story pointed to the other end of the counter, where four pale white males were reporting a carjacking by a crazy old lady with a gun.

Now that’s funny but it is also points out how important things are to us.

It is our attachment to things that drives so many into crime or just in life. And so it damages our priorities our relationships and leads to all kinds of evil.

The most toured home in America is the white house. But does anyone know where the second most toured home in America is?

The second most toured home in America is in Memphis Tennessee. It’s the 23 room home of the King of Rock and Roll - Elvis Presley. Graceland is toured by hundreds of people every day. It is a combination of the home, an amusement park and an historic site. 15 million dollars a year is brought in by those visiting and looking at the cars, clothes, airplanes, records. And few people in his time made as much money as quickly as he did. Certainly no one else had so much fame and popularity.

Elvis seemed to have it all. money, airplanes, cars, mansions. But what is all that stuff? It’s T H I N G S.

And if you go fifty yards from the back door of Graceland you find a tombstone. Aug. 16, 1977, 42 years old. An overdose of pills. Depression. He was so drugged in the last days of his life that he passed out while he was eating dinner alone and he nearly drowned when his face fell in his bowl of soup.

THINGS did not do it for him. And though he had as much as anybody, he said at one point, "I would give a million dollars for one day of peace."

The Winning Combination: Run from “all those things” + "Living right“ + Good Fight of Faith = Forever Life

Run from what things? Well the love of money. Envy. Grasping onto stuff.

Hold loosely to things and watch out for the dangerous things really are.

Learn to be watchful and aware at how easily you can be led down this path.

Paul uses the term “trap”. The root means snare: translates as “snare” five times. 1 snare, trap, noose. 1a of snares in which birds are entangled and caught. 1a1 implies unexpectedly, suddenly, because birds and beasts are caught unawares.