Thirst for Power
And its cure.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln
So where does this thirst for power come from?
It comes from being a human being.
This was how we were born and what the Bible means when it says we were “born in sin.”
Every baby cries and from their cries they should learn a number of important things.
They should all learn they are loved and special in their parents’ eyes.
They should learn that their needs are met by crying out.
But they will also learn there are boundaries to their demands and that the answers to their cries, like the toy on the store shelf, are not always provided,
Now I say this is what they should learn, but we know this isn’t always the case. We and others can become spoiled, which simply means we have learned something about life that is distorted or warped; a lie.
It is always harder to unlearn lies than it is to learn the truth, and the truth about life as it relates to us is that we are both loved and flawed.
We need the courage to change ourselves and yet also the serenity to accept what is beyond our powers to change. And part of learning how to do this involves not time management, but self management as it comes to dealing with time.
We have the capacity to remember parts of our pasts and the imagination to envision parts of the future, but where we have any control over our circumstances has to do with our choices and these are always made in the present.
To curb our natural lust for power and control it is wise to appreciate our amazing limitations — that there is much about the world and our lives we will never understand, let alone control.
That’s why God has given us a sense of humor rather than unbridled power.