Forged By Faith

1 Peter 1:3 NIV A living hope And that it’s novel too as is seen through the promise being stated that says it comes from a new birth which hints always toward a new life as is ever defined as one not lived as of yet, well, this seems then to mean that perhaps what we had been living wasn’t a life as it had for us to find no hope that was itself alive as instead maybe we had all died already back when we walked inside what was not a life but rather a time in which it sure seemed as though there were times in which we thought hope we did find. But even then, if that hope wasn’t alive then, well, what was it then that we had found? This is something of a question that exists as something of that thorn in Paul’s side as so too do I ride this train of thought seeking for what I’ve lost in what I truly thought was a life. Indeed, just last night it hit me yet again as I brushed my teeth preparing for bed. I realized that somewhere across the space and time that has been my life over the las...

Mark 16:6 NIV Mercy accomplished You know, I doubt there’s ever been a time in the entirety of human history in which a handful of folks were that excited to see a whole bunch of nothing. Rather most often in life we’ve learned to seek the filling of everything in what’s become a mindset sat upon this endless assumption of such lies as extravagance and luxury and comfort and complacency being the goal as we hold fast to this idea that contentment is only gained when we’ve nothing else to crave of all we’ve come to want. Indeed, wanting more and more has long become our only estimation as to the very meaning of our being. And so for those few followers of His to have raced to the place where He’d been laid probably somewhat halfway assuming that they knew what they were to be finding, feeling, and that this feeling of their faith fighting to find what logic said they had no business believing they might, it really must have been an impossible delight to see the light that poured from th...

Psalm 27:14 NIV … Oftentimes in within this life life itself feels as if this swirling sea of uncertainty that comes rolling daily upon the shores of what we thought we were sure about only to bring with the torrents this tearing apart of all we thought we knew. So many days find us feeling as if our beliefs are only at best broken and battered as they’re sometimes left to the breakers and betrayals of the betters for which we’d again dared believe. For indeed, belief is a truly powerful thing as it inspires us to press forward through whatever may lie along the way to our much-anticipated brighter day. But the storms, oh the storms. And that they’re mixed with an oddly screaming silence in which we’re finally left to hear the honesty of our thoughts, the tragedy of our attempts, the reality of our inability to really make anything happen at all. It’s like it all just arrives us to this place in which everything is ripped apart and we’re left so unsure of where to start that sadly we j...

John 19:30 NIV “It is finished” And by it He meant all of it. Every bit of the Old Testament and every prophecy spoken within it. Every ounce of the waiting and worry won within the hearts and hopes of those who’d lived it. Every moment in which mercy was needed but never given. Every time that love was offered a chance to come to life but was elsewise rejected. Every word spoken that had no business being uttered. Every action ever undertaken that caused only the sort of suffering that He had now completed. Every life that had been lived in an enemy’s enmity as thrown in the face of the God who had now come to help us see what we had become. It was over. This is in every possible way one of the easiest ideas to contemplate and yet arguably the most difficult to even begin thinking about. For in this life we’ve all been given the ability to have met many things, thoughts, theories that have long since met their conclusion. We know the gravity of something ending. And, well, we know tha...