Your microwave is burning and polluting your home with smoke...but it was meant to do that. However, there is a zero emissions free fuel cell variant available right now and has been around since 1967. There is nothing to be afraid of. It just heats up your food and is like breathing air emissions free.

The truth is that all of the various facets of human nature are depicted in the first  6 chapters of the book of Genesis including envy, disobedience, competition with God ( wanting to be like Him) and jealousy.

The truth is that you might have had a culture handed to you that worked quite well for your pagan ancestors and all you can say now as a Pastor is that there are a few things that you recognise as not fitting into your calling.  It does not matter how someone feels to you or how they present to you in terms of their mammon.  You are a pastor.  Mammon comes and mammon goes.  You are pressing on to that great goal that transcends storing up gold and silver; right?  There are several verses on that and on not respecting people on their fashion labels and fine pottery collection but it is good to be prosperous while "..rendering your heart and not your garment."  So, amen!  You might want to believe that you are right about something and you will do everything you can to bring it to pass; including the writing of a suggestion or idea about someone but then you realise God has his own idea about that person and his plan and that you were right about his wife being a bad woman. Well, Michal was not so nice to David but at least he had faith and they stayed together until she said nothing he could do was good enough.  Sara was impatient and then jealous and controlling. Eve wanted to compete with God and Lot's wife  looked back to the direction of death and stagnancy. She was holding up the movement forward while she talked all day to her old boyfriends and admirers. She was told to let go or at least to communicate her purpose. She also judged her husband and compared him to others in their house like a young male cousin who was, on most occasions, also victims of her bitter tongue. You are not married to your cousin or son.  Who are you anyway?  At least, you floss your teeth and brush once if not twice a day. Most nice people brush twice but no one is judging you on something  so pedantic. 

A lot of people had little to say to Colonel Sanders or  that other franchisee who worked with the burgers and red hair when they opened the first of many outlets. Some shunned the idea of fast fried chicken and fries prepared by a Baptist colonel.  Some loved his vehicle and thought he was an A grade military graduate when it was free from damage. Some suggested he was a D graduate as soon as those other people down the road decided to take their feelings out on him and his '57 chevy doors for suggesting that they should not throw their burger wrappers in the pond near the Colonel's ancestral home.  Home is important if you only have one with running fresh water from mountain streams.  After it was given to you, you could always depreciate it  while not believing yourself to be a worthy person. You can communicate this self rejection to a million and one people and they may join you while trying to find another or better home.  It might be somewhere over the rainbow.  You will say this is just the way we do it I suppose. I know it seems counter intuitive but the world has to end sometime, you say, so why not. What about being a better "self" because there is always something wrong somewhere and what did you really need? You might have needed a confidante and mate that you can call a friend essentially that can say thank you for the apple pie you baked and you can be safe with his kisses and you can covet that affection because he does not intend to give his apprection for apple pies to anyone else or your any of your female friends.  You are reminiscent of a woman who felt a loss of approval quite early and never received self-approval. Without self-approval, how can accept anyone? You have not accepted yourself. How dare anyone even suggest that your ironing of clothing could fall short? Don't worry. It is so contentious that most men jus bargain for a happy movie on Friday night at home with the wife and if she cooks, that is a fringe benefit so long as you don't call all day suggesting he is cheating. That is just your emotional dependence. Can you depend on God?  It  is such a community now since you have company in this that you walk with others finding reasons to reject and deject. Look; there is a thread lose on that Hugo Boss shirt one day old. Do you have a sowing kit from Prada or Cole Haan? use the scissors to cut the thread and love the man wearing the shirt. He has a male Prada sowing kit anyhow and would have cut  the thread when he gets a chance at his home or(sorry) your mutual home. You can rip the car doors to prove he was not worthy or a  union after you got engaged but you broke up because you wanted to sleep around as you confessed.  You did not feel sufficient approval to be yourself and explore until his ring anchored you. This is quite amazing but there is no marriage in Heaven and the experiences of the patriarchs are good to keep in remembrance.  When batteries run out, nice men dispose of them.  There is always more opportunity for this treadmill of approval so long as your chosen pinata is alive one more day to prove you right in your fear of disappointment or wrong for that day's alotted chores and tasks but he is not thinking about your feelings. He does not even know you but you do feel quite burdensome to someone who knows how much time you spend rejecting your own reflection in a mirror or in your thoughts and it shows in how you treat those closest to you.  Disappointment is part of the equation and so is forgiveness and an apology. It is a mutual agreement.  You were disappointing to someone and they never let you forget it and you made sure you found someone on whom you could vent that horrible sense of being ostracised. Was it your husband or one of your children? So now declare God could be eternally disappointed but He has given His forgiveness for your sins past, present and future because if you were perfect like your neighbour who hates your curtains and your shoes, you would not spend so much time seeking their glance of approval as you shop every evening after work at TJ Maxx. Find a better man, son, life and planet because you are on someones treadmill of approval as much as you would like everyone else to be on yours. You asked for something and you could also appreciate it in thankfulness.  Look very closely. Now, let go because you need a hug for your burned rice, salty food  and under cooked quiche or do you need a man who will make sure you know you are working-working for approval? Let go and let someone be content as his imperfection did not mesh with your evident perfection. You are without sin and the bible says such a person who claims to be perfect is a liar. There is no truth in such a one but you can be self-forgiving and forgiving of others. You can also let go of a person who is abusive with double standards and expectations. You want people to wait on you. So wait on them. Just because you had to wait a few times for your ex to finish a call, it does not mean you won't be waiting for your husband to revise his teaching plans for his grade 1-10 class or for your fire fighter to get home from an emergency fire. At least you have someone that can share his grace with you as you learn to comprehend sharing and receiving grace but right now, you are in God's healing shop so stay alone and enjoy walking with Jesus because you called three times last night unknown number. Do not call again and leave that nice future seminary graduate alone. Let go now and enjoy walking on your own with Jesus. Jesus appreciates life while the devil  with cosmopolitan rules and yardsticks depreciates life. This is why you are single.  Just be happy with whom you will be with  or with whom you enjoyed a fling last night because you need to look very closely.  Look very closely because it just might have become your entrenched culture. In undoing this entrenched culture, it may take some time but let those people go to whom you have no claim  and  who wish to take their faith journey. Let them appreciate  the little God has given them but there will be those who wish to engineer a sense of failure over them and who might steal a cheque leaf or a favorite bible devotional to feel as if they have control over such a sojourner. I have no idea really. It was not in any school book or bible passage I could find but the first few chapters of Genesis must give us some idea as to why people would want worry about another human's fridge or stove or wardrobe( mammon) so much and you don't even live with them as a spouse, mother or father.  You just met your new pinata online or at the Starbucks. Let go.  It is better to have a little with thankfulness.