Forged By Faith

Psalm 77:19 NIV “Were not seen.” Seems to be that much of faith is held within the unseen, considered alongside the unknown, captured, enraptured within the uncertain, defined by the all but undefinable. It’s as if there are demands implicitly set against our senses as such things as sight and sound and even a conscience’s considerations are all so limited that when looked to or relied up in regard to faith, they all collectively find themselves all but unreliable at best, utterly restraining at worst. For His path has always led where we see no reason to be, have no way to assume, cannot possibly understand or otherwise figure out. No, His path is one against the grain of the already known. Do we follow or shall we fail? Sadly failure has been a far closer friend than faith throughout our lives. We’ve each found more reason to resist the intrigue of the impossible than we ever have the courage to chance the uncertain. I reckon that such stagnancy is simply to be expected from souls as...

Matthew 21:5 NIV Lowly Such is the term used some 500+ years prior by the prophet Zechariah to describe, define this King he mentioned in this quote found in Matthew. Lowly. Plain. Simple. Common. Ordinary. Obscure. Ignoble, which is to say humble rather than someone claiming to be of high origin or social status. No, humble, the entire antithesis to our hypocrisy. It’s as if He truly did come to lead the way we’d never known, the way we’d otherwise never go, into a mindset with which we still seem to struggle, into a tomb from which we still seek to run. Our King comes to us, gently upon this beast of burden so as to bear our burden and bury our beast. For that is why He came. It’s why He came in the manner and mannerisms in which we read of Him. Not to pomp and parade as if royalty returning from some victory. Not to the roar of crowds eager to catch a glimpse of this almost god-like political powerhouse. Not to the tune of triumphant procession progressing proudly home away from bei...

Romans 6:5 NIV The promise of the Gospel is resurrection unto new life from the wasted ways in which we’ve lived wrapped within the death of sin. But it seems that the confusion brought about by our selfish delusion, dilution, is that we’ve never come to terms with the death which must precede new life. It’s like we love the outcome but still seem utterly unhappy with the required input. Which is an oddity in all honesty. Because how can a new life come if the old’s never gone? How might Christ begin us again if we’re still walking the tired and torn we’ve already traveled? How might we share in His everlasting if we’ll not shed this imminently ending? Indeed, I fear our fear of fatality is inspiring inside only a feeble futility in terms of faith and our following faithfully into the forfeit our Father has asked of us. Because we don’t want to lose. Not anything. Not ever. No, to us who’ve long believed life here the only life there is as it’s the only life we’ve known, we know only t...

Galatians 2:20 NIV Seems to shortsightedness that faith demands a rather vicious sort of loss of self, the kind of sacrificial surrender that our pride simply cannot abide. And yet what if we could just allow ourselves to see beyond the loss of it all? What might we see if we had the audacity to imagine what gain might be worth such a cost? Might we begin to understand what He’s so obviously always understood? That we’ve a worth within us that’s so priceless that it is indeed worth dying for us to find, to feel, to see, to be? Yes, what if we had the courage to see what He calls us to be, where He calls us to be? Alas so often we can’t or won’t or don’t for some reason, and we’ve truly a plethora from which to pick. We in fact seek out every day every way in which we can hopefully avoid hassle, hardship, heartbreak and hatred. We’ve become a people so accustomed to the pinball’s path of bouncing through life, living always swerving side-to-side seeking this mythical path of least resis...

Romans 8:37 NIV All these things. What things? All things. Social condemnation. Public humiliation. Personal consternation. Worldly distraction by all this desecration and decimation we see being designed by and demanded of this widespread and spreading declaration of the contemplation of execration and detestation of all who decline the invitation to life their lives so vastly lost as most inside the shared consideration of the proclamation that God isn’t there, doesn’t care, will not judge nor condemn any and all who deny Him. Yes, we live in a world convinced God is dead or simply never existed, and the ramifications of such blatant idiocy are igniting inside the vast majority an utter hatred of all who they feel feeble enough to actually abide by hearts that have the audacity to believe in such betterment as this victory into which we were born. For it’s such victory that all have since forgotten, hence the sin that sells with such value to a person that we’ve all sold away even ou...

1 John 5:4 NIV That victory over life’s plethora of pains is sought by all, but that such victory isn’t within our own ability is what’s so seldom seen. No, we’ve come to lean entirely too headlong upon our own intelligence, invention, intuition for us to understand that such a grand gain as life itself cannot be the product of our person. And as much as we were not able to have begotten ourselves, nor is it within ourselves to secure such a victory as this idealized life lived without misery. But as we see spread across the sea of humanity as anymore defined by our inhumanity, we’ve no lack of expectation toward otherwise. For it’s through blinded eyes that we insist to see this best life that’s nothing but a figment of our imagination’s blending within our meager perspective as limited by our preferences as if opinions are able to define life itself into the perfection of peace we pursue from within ourselves only deeper into ourselves. Indeed, such is precisely why peace and its pro...