Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Great Leaping Lizards




Leaping Lizards is an alliteration. What’s that?  Alliteration is a linguistic device consisting of two or more successive slightly different words starting with the same sound as in dare devil, tip toe, star struck, feeding frenzy, swan song, back biting, soul searching, or any hundreds of others.  Brand name alliteration is everywhere. Coco Cola, Pay Pal, Krispy Kreme, Best Buy and many others.  Alliteration and alliterative phrases are commonly used since it adds interest to a sentence and can be a great way to help you remember names and phrases that you might forget.  Alliterative phrases are fun to use at parties.  Say each of these three times quickly in succession: “She sells sea-shells down by the sea-shore”, “Peter Piper Picked A Peck Of Pickled Peppers”.  They are called tongue twisters.  Alliteration is a literary stylistic device used in songs, poems, jingles and different areas.  Right now let’s stick with real leaping lizards and dare devils.  
Draco Volans
      

The flying dragon of Southeast Asia glides from tree to tree.  They look like leaping lizards.  They are known as “gliders” because the flap of skin between their front and back legs isn’t movable like a bird’s wing. About eight inches long, they maintain a relatively flat flight path on their journey between trees. Imagine the jealously of other reptiles who have to crawl along on all fours?


People have discovered that if you wear a skintight suit that has solid webbing between your outstretched hands and feet, you can leap off tall cliffs and glide effortlessly for miles. And if you carry a parachute for when you can’t glide anymore, you can live to do it all over again. Leaping lizards versus leaping dare devils. One is designed and engineered by the Creator while the other is designed and engineered by copycats.

Do you see a parallel between gliding through life with all its complexities and yet landing safely to continue your forward momentum? We physically climb to reach the higher altitudes of fame and fortune, business and success, balancing work life and home life while attempting to avoid danger and temptation. When we’ve reached a comfortable altitude there is the impulse to jump for that greener grass or that greener promotion or that greener trinket. The impulse is always going to be within you, but bear in mind that with jumping and/or gliding gravity does its best work.

Achieving a position is usually accomplished with steady work. Leaping and gliding to a new position can deplete valuable resources and without many guarantees. If you quit climbing, you have settled for mediocrity. If you quit gliding, you have settled for ordinary. Gold and silver aren’t found lying on top of the ground; you have to dig for them. Bible knowledge and wisdom aren’t waiting to fall into your lap like an apple from a tree. God is waiting for you to put forth the effort and seek His help. Gliding is fun, but climbing from basics to fundamentals to precepts to the Truth is the greatest leap of all.

Bottom Line:

“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”  Matthew 6:33   Now, that’s a guarantee!

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