What is your greatest desire? Is it to find a place where your gifts, talent, and passions converge and find a place of expression? Some people spend a lifetime looking for this, and some never find it. How tragic to have potential unrealized and unexpressed. Have you been successful in finding this for yourself? Was it like a journey with a roadmap and no delays or obstacles? Have you arrived yet? Ask the people who are performing in this place of alignment. Would it surprise you if they said that they were led to a place that provided fulfillment and a sense of destiny?

Do you take delight in the suffering of your children? What sort of horrible person would take delight in the pain their children experience from injury or illness? But there is another sort of suffering. What if they make right choices that are not popular with friends and classmates? What if they put forth the discipline and effort to excel in a worthwhile pursuit rather than living in casual leisure? Aren’t you proud of them for doing the right thing even if, especially if, there is some sacrifice involved, which could be viewed as suffering?

Do you find it easy to judge those outside of your group by worst examples they have to offer? This is easy to do. Within each group you typically find a spectrum, so bad examples are not hard to find. There is a logical fallacy called the strawman in which you create a false image of something you oppose and then point out its bad qualities. The strawman isn’t real, but if you search out the worst of your opponents you have in effect done the same thing and this is a weak argument for the qualities of the group as a whole, betraying prejudice and lacking rigor.

Do you like getting gifts in the mail? But isn’t it better to spend time in person with the people who would send you gifts, even if they arrive in person without bringing a gift other than their own presence? This would indicate that you are more relational than materialistic. What about gifts from me? Do you see the sun and the rain as gifts from me, that I send on the just and on the unjust alike? This could be extended to all provision. In continuing the parallel to gifts and presence above, do you see a difference between my gifts and presence?