Trying to Better Express (so help me, God)

Mercy, how disjointed my previous post; but here again, the Spirit helps revise.  It is not an easy topic to express--the seeming temptation of some to react to and follow what others are doing.  Perhaps this is because it is easier, or else it is insecurity--thinking what we might think or say or do is not creative or good or will not make us esteemed. 

Here is a little example, though, of someone who followed the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and how it turned out.  The late singer-songwriter Roy Orbison was guest on the late Johnny Cash's television show.  Johnny asked if they had ever met before; Johnny could not recall.  Roy, in his unobtrusive way, said they had, and that Johnny had told him he would not make it in the music industry if he did not change his name and lower his voice range when singing.

Johnny was aghast, having forgotten what he advised years earlier, and apologized to Roy then and there.  "Oh, no!  How could I have said such things?"  Roy did not mind--did not mind a word Johnny had said years before in their one-time meeting.  Johnny had given his advice to a desirous singer-songwriter, Roy, and Roy did not follow what Johnny Cash advised nor what slews of other entertainers (and many people all over the world) do:  Change who God made them and in what ways God inspired them, to follow what others did and do.

Here is another example.  George W. Bush read that Winston Churchhill took up oil painting in retirement years. He was encouraged--not to paint just as Winston did, nor use the same medium--but to paint.  He asked an artist to give him some instructions and said, "There is a VanGogh inside me waiting to be unleashed."  He did not say, "I want to paint like Van Gogh."  Any number of others could have read that Churchill became an artist and not had a spark of desire from the Holy Spirit to try painting.  "W" did, and he is now an "inspired" portrait painter, drawing upon his impressions of public figures he met while in office.

When we let what others are doing, saying, being become our means of doing, saying, being, we circumvent what His Real Presence desires to do, say and be:  through, with and in us.
  
That is probably the best way I can express it.  Jesus' Living Words in the Matthew 10 Gospel got me to thinking about these matters, along with intriguing examples of when people follow others and try to replicate what others say, write, paint, think, do rather than always seeking our soul and sole essence created by His Real Presence.  This is the gift.

The sadness is of people changing what God might otherwise have inspired, spoken or done through that person.  Instead, what we have are reactions to what others have been inspired to think, say, write or do.  It is even more distressing when people lose their very beings--hinder their lives and souls by reacting to what they do not realize is simply God's grace He infuses uniquely in each and every soul.

Now, I am heading out to put a watering hose to the base of trees, one at a time, and ponder how the trees' thirsts will be quenched from their direct-line drinking fountain, just as I am fed from the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ--His direct-line of living water and true flesh.