Forged By Faith

Ecclesiastes 7:4 NIV The hope of loss It’s quite clearly something we’ve lost as within this world the goal’s to gain. It’s to avoid trial, struggle, strain. In fact we seem a people ashamed whenever we endure hardship or pain, many of us going so far as to hide such socially-assumed weakness so as to leave unbothered those who should be our brothers, our sisters, our mothers, our friends. We don’t want to worry them with whatever it is that we’re going through that’s left us feeling as if we’re going under. No, we want for everyone to remain always lost within this wonder that is lust for a life in which exists this lie that everything is always fine. Only that it isn’t, is it? Truly, when’s the last day in which we’ve lived in which then everything was perfect? Those days simply don’t exist my friends! We want them to, and it’s understandable why. We want this life to unfold in such a way that it proves endlessly able and always willing to hold all for which we hope. Problem is that ...

Ecclesiastes 7:3 KJV The best for last For such is simply where ‘tis best saved all so that better might be known along the way. Because that is the true purpose of this path both in but through this place. It’s one we take upon which we feel what are all these things that cause our brains to endure this strain of trying to make this life make sense. And indeed, it is this, this journey called life as is so often met with strife and stress and the sum of the mess we’ve made and will make that makes us hopefully better people for having learned however we can to have lowered ourselves to the seeing of the value, the sheer worth of what is this gift. Because, well, what is this gift? What is this life? What is this ride? Why’ve we this time in this place at this point? Yes, what’s the point of all this? Why does life bring both sorrow and joy? Why must there be both happiness and misery? Why can’t we all just enjoy endless enjoyment? Because what would anything mean if we knew it all the...

Ecclesiastes 1:18 NIV The depression in progression Perhaps it’s something that only those who fail to progress properly are promised to find as they feel their mind both grow and slow as they come to know what is the more they’ll only come to wish they didn’t. And indeed, I believe that all of us have experienced that feeling, that reeling in which we’re standing there seeing something that we’ve just recently learned more about only become something we’re unsure about because of what we’ve learned about it. Wishing that we didn’t know now what we hadn’t known before. And it’s an altogether odd experience to experience, this realization that you’ve learned something that you both wish you didn’t have to know but also know you can’t unknow. Because that there is no way to unsee something, to unfeel some way, to take back the prior ignorance you had, it leaves you with a burden you can’t escape. It doesn’t go away. That’s why God asked them to stay away from that tree. It’s because know...

Ecclesiastes 1:17 NIV The search continues… For such is what a search is meant to do. We all undertake any search in which we search for whatever it is that we thus apparently feel the need to search with the often hope-filled expectation of finding whatever it is that we’ve determined is worth looking for. Nobody, or I guess I should say I assume that nobody, ever agrees to do much if anything of anything without their having a strong reason or excuse, or I suppose even alibi, already firmly in place and well established beforehand in regard to why they’re going to do whatever it is that they’re planning to and, too, the overall outcome for whatever this undertaking will hopefully become. And, well, when the undertaking is a journey taken from the madness of man toward the wisdom of God, you’d think we’d understand that a lot is going to happen, going to change, going to probably confuse and thus ask we lose what are our preconceived notions about whatever it is that we think that any...