Wasted time

It’s odd how your life can change with one action. One man’s decision to cast my family out of his church has shaken my life to its foundation and yet life goes on the same as it ever does. It is hard to capture the emotions that go through you when something like this happens. When your whole life has revolved around a singular purpose and suddenly its focus changes…you become disoriented. You become frustrated, angry, bitter. And it’s human nature to let these things rule you; to let these emotions overtake any logical thought, or any feeling of grace or mercy when you think about it. It’s hard to capitulate these emotions to more positive ones. As a man of God, as someone who has unlimited grace and mercy bestowed upon him, I am supposed to give it to the ones who have wronged me. But why is it so hard, when I have an endless well of grace and mercy, for me to dispense it myself? I know I am supposed to forgive, and it’s not an epiphany when I realize this. It doesn’t take time to figure that out. So why do I not do it instantly? Was it really necessary for me to harbor these feelings inside when I knew the whole time I shouldn’t? Knowing all along that these things would eat away at me and my relationship with the only one who matters? I suppose this is all human nature…or at least my stubborn nature. All it amounted to was wasted time. I’m going to have to account for that when my time comes. There was so much I could have done with it. All I did with it was go backwards. And I’m paying the price for it now. But you live and you learn. Life goes on. And other aphorisms about getting over stuff….I’ll stop rambling now.

Hate

What causes us to hurt one another? What motivates us to harm someone else for no reason? To take something that isn't ours? Why does it seem that we are not inherently good but evil? I look back and see the genocides of the Holocaust, Darfur, Rwanda, and Cambodia and can't even begin to understand how we can do such things to one another. The amount of hate it to takes to think that killing millions of people, for no other reason than their ethnicity, is a good thing is staggering.

Is it that hard to love one another?

Last Breath

You only remember the highs and lows in life. The mundane and the superficial we forget.

Passion leads to soaring heights and diving chasms. Pain and joy are things you take with you for the rest of your life. No one can take these things from you. They help shape who you are. And when you lead a life with fervent passion the peaks outnumber the valleys.

When you are drawing your last breaths will you remember your life? Will it be full of memories and accomplishments. Of love and giving. Of pain and tears. Of lessons learned and hard fought battles. Or will it just be a gray twilight of superfluous existence?

It's not too late...

Mystery

I am someone who likes to have all the answers. When someone asks me a question usually I am able to answer it. If I can't, I can atleast reason through to give an educated guess. And I'm the type of person who later tries to figure out if his guess was right or wrong so he doesn't have to guess again. Humanity as a whole is like that. We strive and yearn for the answers. We are proud when we have them. And when we don't we will try to give it our best shot but sometimes we are left wanting. And the more questions we answer the more that get raised. I try to act like I know everything, but I couldn't tell you how a collection of atoms creates a living, breathing, thinking being; so obviously I don't. but I would like to. I don't think we are supposed to get all the answers. I think some things are supposed to be mysteries.

Changed

I will never be the same
I will never be the same
You rose from your Grave
So I could be changed

And I will never be the same
I will never be the same

You came to save
You came to save
You bled away my sins
You washed away my pain

I surrender because you took the pain
For the rich and the poor
You died to save

And I will never be the same
And I will never be the same

Tick Tock

Unchanging and inexorable
It speeds by when you want it to slow
It crawls when you want it to dash past
Looking back there wasn't enough
In the moment there's too much
...A constant that is always the same but never the same...

The Lake

As I stand and look across this lake before me, a peace sweeps over me. As I watch the lake undulate slowly but surely a serenity is creeping over me. As the wind causes innumerable ripples to play across the surface of the water the tranquility of God is beginning to saturate me. The cares and worries that have been holding me down are starting to lift.

As I take in the simple beauty of this lake I realize that I am only to comprehend this world, and the God who created it. I am only waist deep in my relationship with God, and I am just beginning to grasp that this lake, this relationship, has no bottom.

I'm not perfect but I know of someone who is. And I don't just know OF him. I know him, and he knows me. He's standing on the other side of this lake. He's crying out for me. Telling me to come toward him. He's wading into the water coming toward me. And I realize e stopped moving.

I've been watching him as he comes to me. He's tells me that he wants to show me the deep things of this lake. The things you can't see from the surface. I nod my head in agreement but do nothing but watch.

Then I close my eyes and dive in. I'm going to meet him at the bottom. I've decided that this is a race and I've given Him a head start. But if there was one thing I was always good at, it was swimming. And besides I don't like to lose.

I'll tell you more when I win.