Forged By Faith

Jude 1:11 NIV The sins of our fathers As kids we’re said to have brains that are like sponges, soaking always those things we see and hear and feel and find. And it’s this plasticity that allows our minds to grow into the various curiosities and assurances and confusions that we eventually develop into as adults. It opens us up to the measuring of all the stuff that we see and hear and feel and find and the trying to determine what to repeat in our own lives. And this ability was given us with what was surely intended the understanding that those from whom we’d learn would, as the Bible suggests, start us off in the way we should go. But no. No, rather be it as children who are still violently susceptible to the suggestions given them or even as grown adult women and men we’re all at the mercy of a world always in a hurry to repeat only those things that we see others do, all of us are rather began each day unto the lost way of a world with no love for God remaining. Yet while this ten...

Luke 11:50 NIV An implied implication It’s something of a mystery in need of interpretation, a guess I guess, a recommendation surmised from a surprise situation. It’s a sudden change enforced or inflicted upon something that demands that all someones who were involved in said situation embrace this shift to the demands and destination. An implication is something implied, suggested, hinted at but not made entirely obvious so as to leave at least a little work to be finished by those to whom it’s given. The Gospel is not that kind of situation. Granted, of whom the Gospel is given and toward whom it is then intended to be received, much of the lead up was left and learned within parables shared by He about whom the Gospel is written, spoken, shared however it might have been shared or will be shared in however many days we’ve still to come before the Day’s done came and we’ve all flown away to wherever our forever might be. But still, all such riddles aside, there is nothing that the t...

Matthew 23:34 NIV The difference Thanks to what I know a mind which thinks entirely too often about entirely too much I’ll readily agree that it’s perhaps a distance so small that it may in truth not be there at all. And indeed, I do find lately that my mind’s so cloudy that I often feel as if I’m just coming up with the most random of stuff in my still trying to find something worth saying. And maybe this will come out as so many of these do anymore and leave the point, the purpose of it all lying beaten and broken upon the floor a mind flooded with entirely too many thoughts of which to ever make sense. But still, as of this morning at least, I do find that I do feel that there is a difference to be found between a life well lived and a life lived well. And in fact I think it’s such the difference that it designs both danger and disaster but so too delight and devotion. Which pair you find depending entirely upon whichever side of the line you may happen to find your mind, your life ...

Acts 7:52 NIV Nothing ever changes Rather there’s this ever-generalized stagnancy to our society that’s been inviting us all to continue along within the same direction that those who’ve gone before us have always gone. And now sure, we paint it up all nice and pretty to help pretend it isn’t there. We hide it behind all of our constant technological progressions and hierarchy-based algorithms. We mask it with team logos and ignore it as we focus on various other fandoms and friendships. But the cold hard reality is that among humanity there is no novelty. There is nothing new to anything we do. Maybe even somehow less to everything we are. And to be honest, which has never really been a part of our preference for repeating the past’s penchant for hypocrisy and dishonesty and deception, we like it this way. We really don’t mind things being always the same. In truth it makes everything from figuring out how to live amongst a lost and losing society and hopefully have some fun and make ...

2 Chronicles 36:16 NIV They shot the messenger Although by ‘shot’ I mean stoned, crucified, beheaded, fed to lions, sawed in half, beat to death, stabbed, hung, burned, crucified some more, one or two perhaps even upside down and did probably all sorts of other really horrible things unto these men and women to whom God had given the words of warning aimed at inspiring His people to turn off their path toward the impending (still) destruction that they’d all earned thanks to their all having learned to love this life in this land rather than the love of the hand that is Him who came down from Heaven to save we heathen. And by ‘they’ I mean we. Because, well, all of us have hated this message. All of us still hate being told we’re wrong. All of us despise the suggestion that we should probably begin doing something differently because of it and too that if we don’t then things probably won’t go very well. Why? Because things are going well. Life here does make sense. Most things do work...