Forged By Faith

Ecclesiastes 7:4 NIV The hope of loss It’s quite clearly something we’ve lost as within this world the goal’s to gain. It’s to avoid trial, struggle, strain. In fact we seem a people ashamed whenever we endure hardship or pain, many of us going so far as to hide such socially-assumed weakness so as to leave unbothered those who should be our brothers, our sisters, our mothers, our friends. We don’t want to worry them with whatever it is that we’re going through that’s left us feeling as if we’re going under. No, we want for everyone to remain always lost within this wonder that is lust for a life in which exists this lie that everything is always fine. Only that it isn’t, is it? Truly, when’s the last day in which we’ve lived in which then everything was perfect? Those days simply don’t exist my friends! We want them to, and it’s understandable why. We want this life to unfold in such a way that it proves endlessly able and always willing to hold all for which we hope. Problem is that ...

Ecclesiastes 1:17 NIV The search continues… For such is what a search is meant to do. We all undertake any search in which we search for whatever it is that we thus apparently feel the need to search with the often hope-filled expectation of finding whatever it is that we’ve determined is worth looking for. Nobody, or I guess I should say I assume that nobody, ever agrees to do much if anything of anything without their having a strong reason or excuse, or I suppose even alibi, already firmly in place and well established beforehand in regard to why they’re going to do whatever it is that they’re planning to and, too, the overall outcome for whatever this undertaking will hopefully become. And, well, when the undertaking is a journey taken from the madness of man toward the wisdom of God, you’d think we’d understand that a lot is going to happen, going to change, going to probably confuse and thus ask we lose what are our preconceived notions about whatever it is that we think that any...

Ecclesiastes 1:16 NIV The emptiness of everything This world manages to offer each of us so very much that the sum of it all seems daily overwhelming. For we start this journey as but children who’ve still their ability to believe in those things which exist outside of what age tells us are possible. And as we grow in a world filled with so much to know, so much to see, so much have and hold and hope to be we don’t feel that ability to believe in more slip away. Why? Because it’s replaced by a way of life in which we don’t need it as, again, there’s here so much around us that doesn’t ask that we believe in it. It’s all just there. We can see it. We can feel it. We can hear it and hold it and hopefully even come to have it. And this idea that we can have rather than continuing having to hope becomes to us as we get old the wiser pursuit. After all, why endure the wonder and worry of what is every belief when you can settle far easier for all that you can see? (Wonder because all belief...

Proverbs 9:10 NIV What is wisdom? Is it some destination defined by facts we’ve deduced thanks to the lessons which arrived us at the decisions that’ve often become the destination? Is it rather the journey we take through those lessons that perhaps we’ve not yet learned which asks that we never so endeavor to so determine that we’ve ever arrived at our destination? Is it what we know, facts and figures always found in our trying to figure it out? Is it found and felt in finding we can’t? Is it something we can even find at all? Is it something better felt and that only by faith as we insist it held always in that place that we’re not so that we’ve always something for which to strive while we’re alive inside this life? Is it knowledge? Is it understanding? Among the greatest of all life’s tragedies is found this reality that seems to show that many here seem to know what wisdom is, and that it’s always somehow right where they are living as who they are defined by what they do. Is tha...