Forged By Faith

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 ...

Psalm 73:5 NIV What is pain? Is it the inner intensity met at the intersection of illness and injury? Is it found within the physical feelings of physical beatings? Is it seen inside the twisting of insides due to having eaten something rotten or witnessed something the same? Is it heard within the horrors of a hope gone to waste? Is it having to wait to see if that hope might dare again show its face? Is it the fear we feel when faced with something of which we’ve long been afraid? Is it the struggle that’s made inside facing down our fears and finding out all the reasons why we were always right to have feared this something that’s left us physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually struggling? What is struggle? We’ve been inside this proverbial bubble for a few days now as we’re trying to plumb the depths of this seeming discrepancy we all continue to see inside what is a life in which it often seems as if one side wins and one side won’t and yet those who do are those who don’t ...

Psalm 73:4 NIV What is struggle? Is it something disclosed in discomfort? Is it disease undisguised? Is it the lack of health known to us as having wealth and knowing nothing but happiness? Is it misery made in more moments than those in which we meet it not? Is it not having the ability, the opportunity, the affluence to afford something we want, something that someone else could afford and many have bought? Is it pain proven in mental delusion designed inside all manner of inner distress never seen, or so we try, upon the surface? Is it seen inside a lack of success in regard to whatever it is that success is to us? What is success? That’s what we spent yesterday trying to discuss. And indeed, it seems that in many ways, if not most, struggle forces us to go in that direction that success doesn’t know. For it feels as if struggle is something seen by eyes that haven’t the life that’s therefore free from the misery that it seems that all struggle means. And sure, to struggle is a bund...