Duties before rights.

Everyone wants to concentrates on the rights that they think they deserve, without thinking about fulfilling the duties that they are bound to preform.

For example, our "inalienable" rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Why do we deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? We don't, not really. We are creatures of the fall, doomed to death from the day Adam bit the apple. The only reason we can hope for, or expect any of the above mentioned three things, is because God sent His son to be an propitiation for our sins. But still, unless we live by God's law set forth for us in scripture, we cannot expect these "rights". It is our *duty* to glorify God and follow His law, before we can expect any "rights" from Him. If you think about it, any country that has turned away from God's law, and stopped preforming their duties towards Him, has had these "rights" taken away from them. Think of Communist run Governments, think of the French revolution, where
"Every last king should be strangled with the entrails of the last priest" Those people lived in fear of being reported or turned in, they could not leave there own country freely, you didn't want to try and rise above the common man, for fear of being killed. When we turn from our duties to God, we automatically give up any "rights" that we think belong to us.

So, in reality, every man has inalienable duties, and if those are preformed, he can expect some "rights" because of that. It is a reward from God to His people, it is God keeping His covenantal promises to us. If we Obey, serve, and glorify Him, He will bless us.

A New Years Inquisitory

Have you wished the year goodbye?
A kiss, a wave, a smile, a sigh.

Have you bid the year farewell
with a song so sweetly, sadly, sung?

Did you welcome the New year in,
Surrounded by many, numerous friends?

Or did you softly let it go
In peaceful solitude?

Did you , with gladness, welcome in
the New year, as if a long lost friend?

Or, shying back, watch warily go
the old year leave, the new a foe.

Perhaps, perhaps, it matters not
in time to come, as in ages past
What has been, will be forgot.