Forged By Faith

Proverbs 2:6 NIV What is knowledge? Is it nothing more than the sum of what we know? Is it perhaps more the mystery of the more we don’t? Is it something passed down to us from those who found it before us? Is it something we pass in the street as it lays there still waiting for someone to care about those who come next? Is it something that knows where better is, the very hiding place of that which is best? Is it the wonder won within wonder waiting for us to wonder about it? Is it the worry felt in worry and our being usually unworried by it? Is it in a hurry to get where it knows it needs to be? Is it patient enough to take it slow so that it comes to know all it needs along the way toward wherever it goes? Is it the learning we’ve met in the lessons we’ve learned? Is it an opportunity to learn still more than we could ever imagine we could still? It seems that we’ve all sort of settled upon this estimation of understanding that’s built upon the degree of knowledge already known. An...

Psalm 119:71 NIV What is learning? Is it a line leant unto little lessons which bring with them minor improvements? Is it a lane led into lessons lived seeking proven progress paved in progressive progressions? Is it a life lived straying from what we know toward always what we don’t? Is it a matter made solely of what we know already? Is it looking for the more we can knowing that the only way there is to be taken by people we aren’t yet? Is it appreciating who we are for the lessons we’ve already learned, many learned the hard way? Is it an opportunity to be hardened unto the battle still to come? Is it merely a person trying to prove they aren’t so dumb as their past tries to prove? Is it an opportunity meant to be taken so lightly as we do? Is it an affliction meant to be taken more gratefully than we have? Is it always good? Is it never bad? Well, I guess that depends on what it is that we learn and the process through which we do. But it seems that for a long time we’ve been of t...

Job 7:17-18 NIV What is opportunity? Is it really something always afforded better by the affluent? Is it the chance to experience that which is only exciting? Is it even always an excitement? Is it rather something we sometimes avoid because in fact it is not always void of the fear found in something we consider unexciting but rather frightening? Is it a feeling only felt by those who’ve found a choice they hoped to be able to choose? Is it something lost by those who elsewise lose out on the ability to see life inside life’s ongoing difficulty? Is it perhaps even an affliction which seeks to first make us its victim so that we can then better understand the eventual victory? What is affliction? What is victory? Are not both an opportunity? Haven’t both something to offer? Do not both give us something we’d otherwise have failed to gain without the strain put in place by that place to which we go seeking to find out what more we might know about who we are, what that means, where tha...

Psalm 73:14 NIV What is affliction? Is it is a symptom of some burden to be lifted that’s never taken away? Is it the weight of the way in which life never seems to go our own? Is it the wait through which we wade as we worry through weather and whether or not it’ll ever clear so we can see something better? Is it the knowledge that better is there but that we, for what seem a million reasons and regrets, just can’t ever seem to get closer to it? Is it the miseries we meet in this miniseries of a life laden with stories that tell only the tale of so many things that didn’t end well, didn’t go right? Is it the pain we find once we’ve found that there’s not much left to find on, in, of this ground? What is pain? Believe it or not there are things far worse that gnaw at a man than illness and injury, things he never lets anyone see and even fewer know, places that he's gone to which he prays he will never again have to go, things he's known that he wishes now he never did, a life ...