Forged By Faith

Mark 2:21 NIV recognizes the reckoning Because there comes a point, and it does come for each of us, in which we’ll look up and realize both the sheer gravity of our guilt as gained thanks to the sum of all the wrong things we’ve done and there too the necessity then of our changing. And that, well, everything. For when you’re made aware of all the years spent living as if you didn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t care, it becomes perfectly clear that continuing along within the same mindset sat atop the same course, it would only serve to make everything worse. Even if the outcome were to be our highly prized ideal of staying mostly the same. For what is there to gain inside the choice made to remain so unchanged when what we come to see ourselves as having sadly come to be is indeed something that makes us sad or angry or guilty or ashamed? Why seek to remain any of those things? Granted, the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot seem to anymore see...

Luke 14:33 NIV welcomes the loss Among the many oddities that are Christianity, which there are indeed many, one of the most glaring is this entirely unique feeling which I’ve felt along what’s been this walk that I’ve done my best to undertake behind He who undertook such a loss in order for my gain of everything. It’s this odd curiosity as to the necessity of changing the same: everything. And that’s because what we’ve all become is a people who neither change nor delight in curiosity, in wonder as rather the both seem matters of worry and woe. At least as far as we know. But that’s the oddity. It’s that this faith finds for us that we don’t. We don’t know. In fact, one of the strangest gifts given us in this faith spent behind He who gave His life in our place is that it brings with it this humility that all but violently inspires us to at the very least consider that we know less than we’ve long fought to suggest, and even then only agrees to ever there begin. Because the entirety ...

Proverbs 4:7 NIV considers the cost Because, well, nothing in life is free as rather everything costs someone something, even things given unto us without a cost which we need to pay. For even then, say someone gives you a gift without any strings or stipulations, even if this person is someone you will never ever see again, they literally just walk up to you on the street and hand you something for free and walk away, even then do we not have a price to pay? Even then are we not indebted in some way? Even then has not the sudden, entirely surprising gain of this new-to-us something brought with it a cost of finding room for it, appreciation of it? Is not being grateful a cost as it does cost us at least the effort of emotion? Are our emotions free? What about our time, our interest, our attention and effort? How can these things be free whenever we could give them to something other than whatever we do? Have we always given them unto the best things we could have chosen to? Or is this...

Psalm 34:14 NIV chases after change Which is by no means anything that anyone ever seeks to chase as to chase demands we crave and we most certainly do not know to crave change. Rather we’re a people who clearly prefer the ease and comfort of staying always the same. And that’s simply because it is easier. It is more comfortable. It is in many ways utterly comforting to stay who, what, where we are doing there whatever we’ve been doing as it demands nothing of learning, of trying, of hoping even. And that’s simply because a hope had is, to us at least, the best thing we could ever hope to do with hope. To have it. To hold it. To know it and thus to fear it being lost as none want for that for which we’ve hoped to ever become that of which we’d known. No, rather we want all our hopes to be ever with us, to be always near us, to continue this journey within us so as to give us that esteemed assurance that no matter what comes nor where we go nor if we fail, we’ll always have that somethi...