Virtue or Vice

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. - Ralph Waldo Emerson



Who is one person that you’ve been dying to connect with, but just haven’t had the courage to reach out to? First, reflect on why you want to get in touch with them. Then, reach out and set up a meeting.
 
Virtue or vice and who have I been dying to connect with?  I am not sure that I understand the authors connection between the Emerson quote and his encouragement to reach out and set up a meeting.
 
When we have faith that Jesus is God and that he died on a cross to make us holy and blameless because he loves us, we are born again.  When we begin to see our actions as those things that cause us to have virtue, Galatians tells us that we become separated from Christ and fall from His grace.  So if Emerson is correct, when a person walks in faith, believing that because of God's actions, outside of his own, he is virtuous by faith alone, that person will exude virtue in every breath.  But if a person believes he is virtuous by his own actions, within himself, then by the principle that I see in Galatians, he will be severed from Christ and be left with only vice.  Vice being what the book of Galatians would call the works of the flesh. 
 
I find that I always look at principles in this fashion. What is the statement, how does this statement work with scripture that I know to be true?  These questions have led me on an interesting path.
 
Now I have been dying to connect with Donald Miller and John Townsend.  Both are highly successful and busy men, who don't know me from Adam.  I will invite Don to come to the University of Missouri and stay in my home while he is here.  I do not know how I will reach him, but I do know how to invite him to an event through his publicist.  I will put that action item on my list of things to do.
 
The reason I would like to connect with both men, is I have a hope that they would be very positive on the book I am writing and help me publish it.  That may be a fantasy, but it certainly is a dream of mine.  We will see where this dream goes.  I am not going to dismiss it, because that would be to not trust myself.