{"id":10356,"date":"2024-12-02T02:02:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T02:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10356"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:56","slug":"quiet-desperation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10356","title":{"rendered":"QUIET DESPERATION"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Melissa and I had the opportunity to have dinner alone with Caleb last night before he headed back to El Paso today.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I asked him how his acquaintances in the military compare to those he knew in college.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I suspected, a great many seem to be living rather\u00a0shallow lives &#8211; their time spent on chasing sexual conquests, drinking alcohol, and playing video games.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reminds me of the famous Henry David Thoreau line: &#8220;The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hedonism often does a good job of masking the desperation underneath, but it can never erase it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One can only hope that as the younger generation matures at least some will seek out the deeper things of life &#8211; and perhaps even find God.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><i>God intended that [humanity] would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. <\/i>Acts 17:27 (Paul flatly contradicts the tenets of Calvinism here, by the way.)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jesus warned, &#8220;The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy&#8221; and then added this profound contrast: &#8220;I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s a night and day difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Melissa and I had the opportunity to have dinner alone with Caleb last night before he headed back to El Paso today.\u00a0 I asked him how his acquaintances in the military compare to those he knew in college.\u00a0 As I suspected, a great many seem to be living rather\u00a0shallow lives &#8211; their time spent on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10357,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10356\/revisions\/10357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}