Forged By Faith

Luke 6:25 NIV A barren beautiful A river with nowhere to go. It’s a desert that doesn’t want an oasis. It’s an iceberg frozen in place, unwilling to bend to the want of the waves around it. It’s a wasteland what wishes to be nothing else, hopes to become nothing more. Not here. Not now. Not even soon, it doesn’t matter anyhow. No, for upon the fringes of the found there exists this sleepy town in which all are welcomed in to what has always been an inn in which there’s both no room and yet plenty then of hope to spare. For whatever is had here is what will be left here when we too have left here. A promise given us not in order to grieve us but rather to see us unto that place where hope is, the very home of such companions as curiosity and the courage to chase it until we’ve run out of ways in which to waste it, run out of things upon which to waste it. Yes, He calls us into the desert, toward the rugged mountains which move and shake as we climb them quaking as we go. Yes, He calls u...

James 4:9 NIV The Wonderful World of Woe It’s, as far as we might ever know, the only house of humility and thus the very home of hope. Alas it’s the last place that people know to go as this world says it knows that should we venture near we’ll only stand to lose everything dear. And indeed, in this they’re true, finally close to right as within this house of humility we shall lose our lives. But there seems but one slight discrepancy that I believe should be discussed and that is that as much as woe helps us know what it is to lose out on the life we’d all rather love, it’s all that can help us learn of a love sent unto us from up above unto where we’re all called to go. But through the wonderful world of woe. For woe explains the narrow in what are ways that no other things ever possibly can. Woe helps us learn to let go what we have within our hand and question all that we’ve in our hearts. It asks we ask those questions that, having likely long known the answers to, we’ve instead ...

Ecclesiastes 3:18 NIV Wonderfully unwonderful It’s a sight there to be seen inside of both every mirror and too everyone who looks into one trying to see whatever might be the reflection they may want to see. But indeed, so often the image we seem to see is but this photo of who we think we be, the person we’ve tried to become, the better we may actually believe we are. And yet because we so often lie to the mirror whilst expecting it to then somehow tell us the truth in return so too then must we fail to learn what the truth really is about everything a mirror might show. All because to learn we are slow, so slow in fact that everything bad that ever happens in life is only there to help us see something we’d never agree to see otherwise. For it seems as though our eyes have gotten so used to these rose-colored glasses that we’ve given up on stopping to smell the roses and instead we use our noses as something of flags flung from our face pointed straight upward amidst our days of ref...

Colossians 3:4 NIV gives up the glory Or at least the common pursuit there toward as is pursued here by all in what’s long remained basically the same place and in somehow the same things. For within this place such things as riches and fame and even being well thought of have long been the goals for which all have gone. All of us have chased after such prizes as power and popularity and prosperity. These are the very things that this world tells us daily we should want as, to most still, they’re things that most think we need. But only because they’ve too been told that they do. What if we don’t? I don’t know, it might be another one of those altogether inevitable processes in life that we all experience as we get older and, though in my mind I’m still 20-something, it kind of hit me last night that I’m now closer to 50 than I am 20. Hit me when a friend asked me if I was going to our high school reunion. Realized that it’s the 20-year reunion. Been out of school (at least the last pa...

Philippians 1:22 NIV tries toward retirement And that even though we’re most days both tired and torn inside what is a world that’s trying to tear itself apart more and more everyday. Anymore it seems that so much of all we see is but a sea boiling in doubt and disbelief, a general refusal to relinquish our assumptions choosing rather to stand upon such presumptions as our pride and its preferences still meaning something. And they do. This is what makes this road so hard and that’s too why it so often feels so much longer than forever contends it really is. It’s because we are living in a place in which pride and pretense and preference and opinion do count for something. In fact, to most they’re all that mean anything. Meaning then that unto most they are everything. Yet thankfully there exists not one common mindset shared amongst our humanity. Now that’s definitely not to say that any of the others are in any way common as the road remains wide and densely travelled which leads unt...