Forged By Faith

Matthew 15:8-9 NIV Merely human Barely human at this point if we were to be honest, which sadly most often we’re not as among our human rules of such vanity as the ego and idols in which we daily bow to worship is found this idea that dishonesty is somehow a better policy as it provides a profit of praise sent back our way from those whom we seek not to offend and thus continue thinking us their friends because we speak the lies that allow them to remain in lives that are but a collection of time that’s dying both slowly and yet still quicker than we could ever imagine. Just slow enough to inspire in us this vast unwillingness to live as if our lives are on the line, lives themselves lived so fast that we think they’re not because we think we’re living life at its best already. Yep, we’ve done arrived at the very pinnacle of all human potential! So indeed, let us gather together upon this last day of yet another year gone by and pat ourselves on the back as we raise our heads high stil...

Acts 28:27 NIV A resilient resistance Such is what allows for the formation of a callous heart otherwise defined as a hardened heart, as is indeed quite the same as the hardened hands which themselves are referred to being as such thanks to the calluses which form upon them. Callus and callous are in basically every way the exact same thing, even down to being all but identical in spelling, in formation, in feeling even. For both are formed due to repeated friction, pressure or irritation which inspires the flesh involved to harden itself so as to in a way protect itself. A protection sought from that which it understands as posing risk of further injury, pain or similar misery. Problem is that the difference is that a callus you can see, you can feel, you can run your fingertips along the inside of a human hand and feel the hardened, slightly bumpy and/or rough patches that have built up into this toughened exterior due to the years of such manual labor as lifting heavy loads or sweep...

Matthew 13:14 NIV Can’t or won’t In truth, such are the only two when it comes to every one of the things in life that we elsewise leave undone, unknown, unwanted, unwon, unrealized, unlegitimized, unobjectified. There is no other option as to why things in this life are to be found as unfinished, and so too then we the same. It will indeed all come down to a simple principle of reality as is found inside the difference between can and can’t and won’t. And the gravity of this reality is that to be measured in eternity. For once there at the cusp of, we’ll each be given as our deeds and efforts deserve. His words, not mine. It’s literally all right there in Romans 2:6 which says, “God ‘will repay each person according to what they have done.’” Which is itself something of a quote taken from the Old Testament in such verses as Psalm 62:12 and Proverbs 24:12 which say, “and with you, Lord, is unfailing love’; and, ‘You reward everyone according to what they have done’”, and, “If you say, ...

John 8:43 NIV Obscurity? Certainly. For this is truly the only way in which one might explain the general lack of an ability which has befallen a people at first created with the ability that has since become of such a widespread inability that even the mere suggestion as to such being the case is deemed grounds enough to levy charges upon whomever might be of the audacity to hint that we might be as unable as our inability has us otherwise convinced we aren’t. And yes, this is a true confusion as it seems one so counterintuitive that there may well be no real means by which to assuage it as it seeks no such pleasure. No, rather this overall common confusion as has fallen upon we the deluded, diluted, it’s one that’s found us both as such but of such a stance as to the otherwise that there’s left nothing now but a loss of life. Because the two paths upon which one might be led, lived, left are of such equal opposition that there is no such blending as this blurring growing in hearts an...

John 1:11 NIV Unwelcome It’s the one feeling that sends everyone reeling into a most solemn of wondering as to why they don’t fit, what they did wrong, how they might change so as to better align with this sought after way of life as is lived by those amongst whom we try to belong. And this is something that all have faced in this place in which we are so surrounded with the sounds of a society amongst whom we walk, with whom we talk, like whom we look and of whom we love. All because we are all so vastly similar that we’ve really no extemporaneous need to treat one another as if strangers but rather as sisters and brothers, family and friend. But no, no sadly such a thing has befallen a fallen man that we know rather to hate first and ask questions later. We walk in this way in which everyone else is guilty of something that therefore validates or justifies our disinterest in their lives, even up to and including still perhaps the potential of their losing their ability to keep living...