Isaiah 3:9-10

"The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.
Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings."
Isaiah 3:9-10


The part of these verses that strikes me is the "rewarded evil unto themselves" part. I think that makes so much sense (yeah, brilliant comment... God makes sense. Nice that I finally noticed, eh?) ... God has us down here to learn and to grow and to become better than we are already, and when we don't take advantage of that, then we are doing ourselves a disservice. It makes it even worse if we start burying or losing the gifts that we are given. Unfortunately, this is fairly easy to do. All we have to do is get wrapped up in something that dulls our minds and our senses, or narrows our focus to only one thing. Myriads of things can do this, including the simplest of addictions such as television or computer games... and, of course, ranging up through the worst of sins. And I'm not saying that television or games are inherently evil... they aren't. Only that almost anything can distract us from our incredible opportunities, if we aren't aware. That high score on Tetris is very very cool... but the months that it took to get there aren't doing us much good in the eternal scheme of things. :) God's commandments aren't there to restrict us or punish us... they are there to remind us and help us towards fulfilling our potential. In the end, whatever we receive or become will be a result not just of God's mercy and grace, but our own choices. And if those choices are bad ones, we might not end up where we want to be. Let's work on rewarding ourselves with things that matter... things that last.