Forged By Faith

Matthew 23:16 NIV As it was then, so it remains now. For we’re still but a people so blinded by the presents that we can’t even begin to pretend we appreciate the presence. No, it’s quite amazingly tragic, a true horror story of old, this story still told of just how tarnished our devotions have become as they’ve been nothing ever but a replica of the revolting irreverence of all those degenerate generations who’ve gone before us. Indeed, we know only to rinse and repeat nearly all of life. Sure, we tout our technological advancements and boast about our bravery in this so called and self-perceived assumption of our having progressed something. But there remains this underlying reality in that we’re nothing at all any different than the blind who’ve always looked only to follow those who likewise will not see. For the truth is that we’ve all eyes which could but yet we’ve hearts that won’t simply because to care is to fight but to live is to buy and you just can’t buy belief nor the co

Hebrews 13:5 NIV Money, as has been made manifest in the manmade idol of mammon, has indeed become the root from which grows greed which plants the seed that makes us see only that we need what we don’t yet have, a lie leaving us thinking that life as we get to live it in the light of His love isn’t enough. Thus forsaking, perhaps even forgetting the beauty of all we do have as defined by all He did to give us what we know now to only always take for granted. That is the heartbreak of what we’ve socially and selfishly and so spectacularly forced into this existence excited by, existent in only this sense of entitlement which breeds this idea seeking always the enhancement of all experience considered able to somehow expound upon the provision we’ve had to come to see as standard assumption in order for us to always want for the more that this world says we need to ensure is always in store if we’re to know the very limits of a life’s enjoyment. Yes, we live full speed in search of some

Luke 12:15 NIV It’s almost as if Jesus has this thing about offending our present conditions as conceded upon possessions proving to those blind that what we have is worth more than who we are or hope to be. But indeed, though considerably contrary to the seed planted by greed, no, neither is life made more meaningful within an abundance of possessions nor can an abundance of possessions contain anything that could in any way be considered a life. For the gravity of greed is that it’s always going after what can be gotten. It’s a mindset set upon a thing, always a thing, something somewhere that someone says we need more near. It’s an idea, an ideal in which resides this lie which says our lives are not as vast or valuable presently as we presume they’d be if we could just get our hands on what someone else is always holding. Yes, we live as if someone else is always holding something in which our lives are to be lived better if we could just have a share, a spare, a replica or reflect

Matthew 19:21 NIV And thus it would seem as though a faith’s perfection resides not in possession but rather in submission to the reality that hope in Heaven is far too big to fit within all this that’s considered somehow leaven. For leaven is an addition which is supposed to add something to something that then makes the outcome better than the beginning. But we seem to insist that we fail to see the necessity of loss if we’re to find what we can’t afford to force to fit within the little room we’ve left after a life lived looking to the world to make itself at home in us. Yes, we’ve come to invite so much of this world to stay within our focus, as within it we think we’ve found our fortune, that we now know not how to sell off what to us has come to be worth the souls we’ve sold to get what we never actually needed. No, such is the saddened assumption of a life as lived lost within this world lost in love with glitter and gold, so too do we agree that our lives must too be worth only

Hosea 12:8 NIV For a people who propose their purpose is proven via profit and prize, the popularity of personal possession then purchases only an indifference toward anything other than prosperity and politic. And this outlook, as outlined here within Hosea’s warning of such worthlessness as worldly wealth and its ability to make one believe themselves better than they are, well, it’s one still rampant within our world today. Slow learners, as it seems we’ve chosen to stay, find only reasons to refuse the lessons not learned by those who’ve already proven within the past a pitiable life perfected by personal preference as opposed to eternal effort simply for the sake of such effort being needed for us to be anything more than we’ve been, which many if not most within this place still today say is more than enough. Yes, we think ourselves more than enough, a lie given life by the cheers from crowds wasting in awe of the crowns of crayons we color upon our caricature of an existence in

Matthew 4:9 NIV “For what will it profit a man…” Indeed, what shall it gain if we’re to gain all there is to gain only to lose it all again? For that is the trajectory of life itself, is it not? That all that is had today will one day be held no more? That whatever we find or favor within this life within this world will matter not when we’re no longer within this life within this world? Yes, such is a certainty as the grave demands a loss of everything as even the clothes we wear within it are left to rot and return to the dust from which they’re made. And thus it’s back to the dust for us, for such is from which we came too. Yet looking around at how others are choosing to live and then even judging our own hearts and minds and plans and times as lived within the ways of this world we watch daily run itself wicked, burning a soul at both ends just to come away with some trophy that we pretend tells of our triumphs over life’s demand of our meaning, it’s all but obvious that we’ve no