Excogitations

They say that "home is where the heart is" but I think they have gotten it all backwards. My heart, in itself is deceitful and wicked and the things and people that it would desire and long for here on earth are not my home. Therefore my home is not where my heart is at, but rather my heart is where my home is at.
2 Corinthians 5:1, "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

When I was young I learned Galatians 5:22 from the NIV, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,"
I read the KJV now and thought for quite some time that the word "longsuffering" was so much more complicated than "patience" and so I'd just think "patience" when reading the verse. As I thought about it more and as I've lived longer the idea of longsuffering started to have some weight. Suffering for a long time? Now that is something. Comparatively, patience almost has a gentle, easy sound to it, as if it's something that can be easily done, though the situation may not be overly wonderful. I'm not saying that patience is easy.... but longsuffering? It is another matter!
Like right now in farming we need money and milk makes money but we are in a season where the cows dry up before they freshen..... no milk, no money. People think we should just give up and quit and yet we persevere even though it means suffering for a long time.
Longsuffering: when there was contention, hatred, opposition but they held off on going to war... they waited... and held on...
Longsuffering: when they held off surrendering even though the troops  were battered, food was scarce and ammunition was needed, but still they held on... and waited....
I am so thankful for my King James Bible.
Galatians 5:22, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."

I've seen a lot of people, especially young people, spend their precious time fretting about their single or lonely state. Their focus in life is to be with somebody. ...but they forget that in order to be with someone you first have to be. Instead of dwelling on how someone or something can fulfill their emptiness (only to discover that such emptiness cannot be filled by any earthly thing) but they are empty because they are not content first with who they are. To be full, to be happy, to be content... to be complete first in Him (Colossians 2:10). "To be, or not to be, that is the question:" but not as Shakespeare would have it, as in life and death, but as in a life where one truly lives because they are overflowing with fullness or where one lives because the simply are and nothing else.
To be or not to be, that is the choice we all face.