Today is the 10th day of January.

Wow, so like we're a third of the way into the first month, a week and a half, into the first month, and we come to the end of the first full week of the year.

A second time we've reached the end of a week, but that's just the first full week.

And so if you'll remember, at the beginning of this week, it was brand new shiny and sparkly

and we looked out over it. And we decided to get into this habit of becoming observant of

ourselves. Predetermining instead of reacting to everything.

So here we are at the end of a week, and this is that opportunity to kind of just take a second

and reflect back over it. How did we do? We can keep contempt and judgment on ourselves for our failures.

But that's not really the point.

The point is to get in the practice of opening our eyes and opening our ears to ourselves.

Becoming self-aware at the impact that we have on the world

around us and those that we love, paying attention to ourselves because it's very easy for

us to be paying attention to what everybody else is doing to us

as if life is happening to us instead of the reality that we are happening to it.

And people aren't just happening to us, we are happening to them.

And it matters. And to walk this narrow path that Jesus is

talking about and to really, really absorb and allow the scriptures to do what they do. We got to get

aware of ourselves. Otherwise, we'll just read some of this stuff for everybody else when it's truly

penetrating the falseness in us.

So here we are.

Looking back.

And we'll see that there were victory.

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