Joy, service to others or the center of your world.....

Anyone that spends any amount of time with a child knows that part of the development of a child is self centeredness.  An infant's world is all about them, we all were once the most important thing in our lives.  You can watch the growth of an infant to toddlerhood as they go from spontaneous self centered behavior to after a short period of time they demand self centeredness.  As a child grows they learn empathy, sympathy, love of others and service are more important than the world revolving around them, well I guess some people do.  Maybe it was, that is how a child used to be raised but more and more children are being raised into entitlement.  I am not just talking about the entitlement that the government fights about.  Yes, there are those that are the victims of generational welfarism and that is the way they are raised but that is not the only entitlement that is burdening our society and in the end destroying it. 

We hear daily the loud screams about welfare recipients, the people on Medicare,  Medicaid and Social Security but what about the entitled that are looking down their noses at these but working the system in ways these groups haven't got a clue about.  What about the overly educated that feel they are owed an education on the backs of others but think they are better than the "uneducated people on the system"?  The way I see it these people are some of the biggest hypocrites in our society, they are entitled to their education and they deserved all those grants, yet they scream loudly about all the users on the system never realizing they are cut from the same cloth but are so self centered they don't see it.  What about the Occupy Wall-Streeter's from last year, they were all over the news screaming about the one percenters but in the end when time evolved and we got to see who they really were it was found that most of them were part and parcel of the one percenters, they ended up just being more of the entitled self centered youth that wanted to make headlines and the main stream media were played like a song by them.  Funny how all of a sudden the mainstream media just didn't talk about them any more and they faded away with no embarrassing explanation or revelations by them. The entitled are many, and I have not the space here to detail them all, but our society grows newly birthed factions each day, week and year.

I had occasion just lately to listen to a young person telling about how she was raised right.  Her parent raised her up right, disciplined her and made her into what she is now, admirable.   Had that been where the conversation stopped it would have been a wonderful testimony but the young person went on to say that she was the only person she knew raise so in this day and age.  She saw herself as the only example of being raise right, that because of this she and her mother had the only relationship she knew as close as they are.  She saw no one else as good as her relationship with her mother, she became the self centered persons she was trying to be better than, sad.  I think she may be has a special relationship with her mom, and that is wonderful, but why does her blessing have to be better than the blessings that others share and were given to them by God with their parents? Though entitlement expounds it is not the whole of our society, there are people still raising their children right it is just he exception not the rule now.

I don't believe anyone can love any one else unless they love themselves first, well right after their love of God.  I don't believe that loving yourself is about serving yourself first though, it's just that having love for yourself  makes you know how to love others.  I think that serving in J-O-Y is important.  We should serve Jesus-Others-and Yourself, Joy, in that order.  Entitlement has nothing to do with J-O-Y, and all to do with what I can get for the least amount of effort in this life.  Jesus knows our hearts and asks us to serve and be humbled, I don't think that entitlement and God plans for us are simpatico by any stretch of the imagination.  I hope you remember to love yourself, but the love the Lord more.  I hope you remember to serve yourself but do it after you have served the Lord, and after you have served your fellowman.  I hope you remember that this life is about service, repentance and God's grace and no one is entitled to any of those....... tomorrow.