Southern Mexico around 1200 BC was a fairly busy place, all things considered. The Olmecs became what experts consider the first Western Civilization proper. Not only did they build permanent structures, they traded raw materials and finished goods across hundreds of miles.
Later Aztecs and Maya culture left much more in the way of pictures and evidence of their common daily life, but the Olmecs left little in the way of day to day culture, much of it deteriorating in the humid region in which they lived. The massive stone carvings that they built in their cities parlayed little to us in the way of the demise of their cities and states. While dramatic and frankly a bit overwhelming, these enigmatic stone structures offer little in the way of the loss of the society.
However, despite the clarion call of studying the massive heads and stones, the key to the massive dying of their civilization is not held in the massive structure, but in the minutia of the mundane. It would take someone looking at the issues from a much different aspect, one that looked to the everyday life as opposed to the massive monuments that are still there.
In some ways these are monuments, not of success, but of strict failure. Yes, they remain. Yes, they still stand. Yes, they are beguiling. And yet, the ones that built them have no future.
Digging around in the ruins, the answer of the loss of this civilization is found. It seems that their culture destroyed the surrounding areas by simply depleting the area of food. This was followed by a dependence on maize, and it simply took a few years of drought and disease to ravage an entire culture.
It is in the small things that we find death and life. We can build great monumental church buildings and be forgotten overnight. We can erect monuments that perpetuate our legacy without explaining how and why we got there. We are guilty of the sin of forgetting the small things. . . .
There are times where it is a small prayer that touches heaven, a 63 word prayer that brought fire down, that got the job done that day. I submit that there were times of prayer that were day by day, week by week that are and were the key of understanding how this prayer worked. It is true that some things come not but “by prayer and fasting.”
We can become so preoccupied with the monumental things of life and soon forget that there are small things that need tending to. It is not in the ethereal world that we often find ourselves bogged down in, but it is the practical world that we lose sight of the important things.
It is a truism that loss can happen on a magnificent scale, yet it usually happens that things don’t blow up, rather they fizzle out. Isaac and his wife had a beautiful relationship from the outside. . .yet the inability of Isaac to communicate found its ugly end, not in massive fireworks, but by fizzling into a feud between his two sons that was fueled by the parents. It works like that in the spiritual world also. Simple noncommunication across the spiritual world leads to demise in the relationship.
When we leave the essentials in pursuit of the massive monuments, usually we are confined before long in the coffins of carnality. Monuments may stand, but it is my observation that these merely become a mocker of our lives.
Prayer is the investment of the kingdom. . .study, its sustainer, and fasting oddly enough the food of choice. . . . Don’t forget the lessons of little things.
Later Aztecs and Maya culture left much more in the way of pictures and evidence of their common daily life, but the Olmecs left little in the way of day to day culture, much of it deteriorating in the humid region in which they lived. The massive stone carvings that they built in their cities parlayed little to us in the way of the demise of their cities and states. While dramatic and frankly a bit overwhelming, these enigmatic stone structures offer little in the way of the loss of the society.
However, despite the clarion call of studying the massive heads and stones, the key to the massive dying of their civilization is not held in the massive structure, but in the minutia of the mundane. It would take someone looking at the issues from a much different aspect, one that looked to the everyday life as opposed to the massive monuments that are still there.
In some ways these are monuments, not of success, but of strict failure. Yes, they remain. Yes, they still stand. Yes, they are beguiling. And yet, the ones that built them have no future.
Digging around in the ruins, the answer of the loss of this civilization is found. It seems that their culture destroyed the surrounding areas by simply depleting the area of food. This was followed by a dependence on maize, and it simply took a few years of drought and disease to ravage an entire culture.
It is in the small things that we find death and life. We can build great monumental church buildings and be forgotten overnight. We can erect monuments that perpetuate our legacy without explaining how and why we got there. We are guilty of the sin of forgetting the small things. . . .
There are times where it is a small prayer that touches heaven, a 63 word prayer that brought fire down, that got the job done that day. I submit that there were times of prayer that were day by day, week by week that are and were the key of understanding how this prayer worked. It is true that some things come not but “by prayer and fasting.”
We can become so preoccupied with the monumental things of life and soon forget that there are small things that need tending to. It is not in the ethereal world that we often find ourselves bogged down in, but it is the practical world that we lose sight of the important things.
It is a truism that loss can happen on a magnificent scale, yet it usually happens that things don’t blow up, rather they fizzle out. Isaac and his wife had a beautiful relationship from the outside. . .yet the inability of Isaac to communicate found its ugly end, not in massive fireworks, but by fizzling into a feud between his two sons that was fueled by the parents. It works like that in the spiritual world also. Simple noncommunication across the spiritual world leads to demise in the relationship.
When we leave the essentials in pursuit of the massive monuments, usually we are confined before long in the coffins of carnality. Monuments may stand, but it is my observation that these merely become a mocker of our lives.
Prayer is the investment of the kingdom. . .study, its sustainer, and fasting oddly enough the food of choice. . . . Don’t forget the lessons of little things.
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