"Deflections"

"When I wept, and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach." (Psalms 69:10) I know this might seem a little off, but how hard is it to live on the streets today? I can't help it, but we have a lot of homeless people here, and I can't help but wonder what it is like to live that way. You almost need to make yourself a little crazy to tolerate the conditions and to adjust to being wild. Any who; the word "reproach" is a word that speaks of shame or rebuke; it is a lot like Job sitting in the dirt, scraping his boils, and then his wife saying, "Curse God and die." The point being, a reproach is not necessarily what we are, but it is more how we are looked upon as by others. It is like all these homeless people on the streets; many of whom had some really bad luck, and wound up that way; while some, they have chosen to live that way; but no matter how they got there, they are all pretty much looked at the same. There is nothing wrong with weeping and fasting because you feel like doing it; but as soon as others know what you are doing, they place you in a certain category, mostly that of being covered in shame or remorse. Not that there is anything wrong with that, because we all should feel remorse and shame in the light of what Jesus suffered on the cross. He took the punishment that we deserved; He suffered and died for our sins, not for anything that He had done; and He did it willingly! That's almost too much it bare when you consider how willingly we sometimes sin! Talk about someone making themselves crazy; what sort of crazy do we need to make ourselves when we sin the way that we do? We know the price He paid for our sin, yet we sin anyway; that's crazy...
"To what can I compare the people of this generation? Jesus asked. "How can I describe them? They are like children playing a game in the public square. They complain to their friends, 'We played wedding songs, and you didn't dance, so we played funeral songs, and you didn't weep.' For John the Baptist didn't spend his time eating bread and drinking wine, and you say, 'He's possessed by a demon.' The Son of Man, on the other hand, feasts and drinks, and you say, 'He's a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners!' But wisdom is shown to be right by the lives of those who follow it." (Luke 7:31-35) NLT