Forged By Faith

Matthew 25:35 NIV Give to receive And that unto the least of these. And why? Well, because contrary to common confusion the point of this life was never about what we had or what we hope to have. It was never about how we feel or what we then expect to happen or not so as to ensure that we end up feeling however we want. It wasn’t to look out for number one or to even consider ourselves second. No, the point of this life, especially one lived within this faith, it was for our to find ways to trade places with those who are in last place in this place in which all of life is a race that nearly everyone else is running backwards. All because nearly all of us are down here every day trying our best to make sure our lives are always the same. Indeed, we’re all trained to endure struggle, suffering, shame so long as it means that we’re somehow better for it. And don’t get me wrong, there is a certain manner that such is in truth a very good, a very helpful, a very healthy thing to do. And I...

2 Corinthians 9:9 ESV Reflections They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery unto those who are being imitated as it shows forth a willingness found within another to replicate, as best they can, something that said other has seen or heard or elsewise learned in regard to something they who are being imitated has done or become. It’s something of a round of applause offered via word or deed as is said or done because someone saw or heard someone else say or do something that they thought was good, right, true, worthy then of being reproduced. It’s an agreement unto the worth, the beauty, the simplicity, success or necessity of something that someone has already said or done. But unto those who see such things that they agree to try to redo, imitation has to be the easiest of all things to do. For all it requires is but a bit of study as to what’s been done, how it was done, how we might then redo, resay whatever was said or has been done so that we too can do what we fee...

Romans 5:18 NIV One act One choice. One chance. One change. One breath. One belief. One moment spent seeking not relief from whatever life has been allowed to have become but rather one asking only to experience the gravity of the monstrosity so as to, finally, hopefully do something about it that can affect it, effect it, impact it, move it, make it into something different. Indeed, what if we shared no longer in Adam’s one act chosen in a moment of disinterest or disregard, defiance either way, but rather in Christ’s audacity to trust one act with undoing all that had been done within the fall we’ve all found ever since that first sin? I dare say we cannot possibly begin to even start imagining what all might be different. Much less then how we might all be better. For alas, rather than living our lives as if the gravity of life might be made within a single moment, a lone choice we make, instead we make it up as we go along so that we never need feel bad or shallow or the sorrow of ...

1 Peter 2:21 NIV Not to lead but to learn Such is among the earliest and yet most certainly far from easiest of all lessons left of life. For all of us have become lost within this lie in which we think of life in terms of being only our own to lead. And indeed, we are the only ones who can live these lives that we’ve been given to keep on living. But friends, so too must we become the only ones who endure the loss of the life we’ve lived to lead and likely led ourselves to lose already more than just a time or two. No, one of the gravest realizations as to our every life’s experience is the waking up one day to finally see fully all the many mistakes we’d made in thinking their doing was right. But as we talked about yesterday, it’s this realization that sometimes takes an entire life. And this is where this journey of faith proves quite precarious because it finds for us the approach unto that realization long before many here ever will, if they even will ever at all. And it’s this g...

John 14:6 NIV The Exception For when the exception to the rule is the same as He who won the rule over both death and thus too life, then the truth is that we’re either living right within His eyes, and thus have welcomed Him into our lives, and are thus living in light of the love that laid down His for us to do so, or we’re not. Because the simple fact is that if Christ truly is the Way, the Truth, the Life, then well, the only obvious way to live life is in truth. And thus the humility met within our honesty is the only right direction to go. At least if we want to live, that is. And we should, because, well, life is good. Living is nice. Being alive a gift that we've both been given and thus one we never should have given away to what has become the many reasons for the death we owe as chosen in what has long been our taking exception to the very suggestion as to the rule of another. Rather we’ve long sought to see only ourselves upon the throne that is our heart. And we’ve now...