I Can't Help It II }

     Now that I have your attention; in regards to yesterday's blog "square peg", let me refine what it is that I mean!  It is God who "shaves our corners" and fits us into a place in this world. I had a little fun with yesterday's blog, but let me say in all seriousness, God has purpose for those who have entered in and have left what they had been born into in their natural life.  It is God's will and intent that when we enter into a kingdom of right living and of "his right living" and not ours, we are subject to a change> and must be because without change we are no good to him.  If you want to be set on fire ( not a fire that consumes and turns to ashes that which it touches) but a fire that refines everything and anything that is witnin you that was corruptable then their are steps to take and a "WAY" to do this.
     The Way I am refering to is none other than Christ.  The Way was known as those  believers who believed in something different, they may have been known as a "sect" In Roman times and people were wary of them, but nevertheless, it changed the world.
     John the Baptist led the way for Christ laying a precious stone of Baptism (or "Death and in the grave"  and of repentance.  This was a necessary step to the beginning of Christ's ministry.  A repentance of our way and our sin.  Do not misunderstand our understanding of Sin, as those "things" we do that are considered wrong or not acceptable in a good world, but rather  as an "inescapable Curse" we had levied on us because of disobedience.  If that is a hard fact to swallow in our time then it will  always be a stumbling block to entrance. Your mind will not comprehend this fact but but your Spirit will.
     Your square peg must be whittled down little by little in order to continue in the faith one you have made choice.  And with wisdom and grace you will find that it does indeed have reward for you.
     Not that I have found everything about our current state of the (Church to be  what I thought it would be) but you can trust that the words of Jesus and of those forerunners, the Apostles who labored on in faith that their labor would bear fruit.  And it did a hundred and a thousand fold and into our day.
     The reference to " those people" polarizing, rough and sandpaper like are all those who stand on issues that divide and are abrasive because they hold to one element of truth only and make it their sole cause  and this bumps into another who holds the exact opposite and then instead of harmony their is confusion.
 

  3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.

     
   
   

I Can't Help It!

I think I was born a square peg all along. And I cannot fit into the round hole no matter what I do! (even if I shaved the corners)  Always somewhat a loner, viewing life from a stance that did not include me it seemed!  And now it's even worse! I'm an Octagon.......I kinda fit nowhere!
Why is this, I ask myself?  It's all his fault.........Jesus....
     When I started searching for life's answer to the big {Me}...and all of the why's, why am I here, what do I do?  who am I?  It all started like a giant snowball rolling down hill. I did not really know if I was going to get an answer.
But now I know.  Why you say, are you so smart?  When some of the brightest people who ever lived could not find it. truth, or peace, or contentment or any of the other of life's precious things that make us feel special for a life well lived?
I have yet to figure that all out but I do not think it's Calvinism! Pre-destination? Paul's little topic?  NO
     It's more complex.  If God can relent and change his mind, (and he did over and over again) with his little "stiffnecked people" then I know we all have the posibility to find and enter into a kingdom with seemingly a different set of rules that exist!  and there's the rub.....we are now separate from what we were born into, and if we did not fit then, certainly we do not fit now!
     The more I wanted fellowship with "likeminded" people, the more I was startled to find a rude awakening.  Sandpaper, rough, abrasive, polarizing, people that were anything but co-hesive, all in the name of Chris............insanity?  (What men have done to it!)
     You see the Light of the World revealed all of the imperfections wherever he went and the biggie was our Sin and our state of being compared to his.  And because of this we are oil and water.  We can't mix in the world, we can't mix with our own because of the pettiness that overcomes reason in the Doctrines of men.........So now what?  If you feel sometimes like I do and bounce from place to place like a rubber ball, take heart and pray like the one who always ran to a place of solitude and prayed to the one who made sense!  Have a good day!

   

The Power of God's Kingdom

Disease, Leprosy, healed                                                             The 12 Lepers

Spiritual bondage- broken                                                                        Legion

Blindness, lameness, deafness, healed              The blind man, the lame, the deaf

Intellectual arrogance,                                                     Nicodemus-made wiser                                                                                      Saul, made Paul

The poor, fed                                                                            The multitudes

 The weak, made strong                                                                         Samson

The hopeless, given hope                                             Those under Roman rule

The shamed, redeemed                                                                              Mary

The one appointed for death,                                                           Risen, Jesus

Navigating:

Filled with grace,
I turn and come about
neither starboard, nor port
my compass, magnetic north
With Sirius above, the deep below
I navigate, through life's milky fog
With but one mind, and with invisible company,
I steer toward eternity, and infinite possibility.

Can Angels See In The Dark:

Can Angels see in the dark?
As they glide, their wings cause spark,
Cascading down to Earth so stark
Through life's lament, and human fears
Angels draw so ever near
Triumphing over darkened realm
Ever bearing the one so crowned
Rule and reign forevermore
Waiting for the Son's of Men

Awesome in His Sanctuary

The young and the old the rich and the poor shall behold the awesome spectacle of the Lord.
The lands shall shake, and the heavens unfold with the mysteries of our God.
Fire and rain shall descend on the Earth at the same time, nations will wonder, What is this?
Is this the time, that we have heard about and cast it away as with a dream? Nonsense to the wise, bread to the innocent, and food for the humble.  This is our God, the one we have waited for.

Stop & Think

     If I stopped to think about it, "I must be nuts!"  Everyday I get up and turn to a 2000 year old book made up of books and begin to read....again.  Why?  I wouldn't read the Illiad or the Oddesy over and over again?  Or I even wouldn't even read our own Constitution over and over again ( I don't think I have read it through yet." But I will easily turn to a Book "The Word Of God" or 66 books  written over a period of 1500 years or so maybe more, and read it over and over again and still will be left in a state of wonder.  How can this be? HOW can I trust it?  How can I  begin to interpret a document written in Greek and Hebrew and  German and English and not wonder if it has been corrupted or mistranlated over the many years?  Even the best of scholars will cast a doubt as to certain words or time periods or customs or whatever they find after diligently searching and mind numbing hours of pouring over these ancient documents!  But I believe it it true...and will defend it.  Why?  Because of the one whom it represents.
                                                     God

     In this book, there is a Spirit, a profound sense of truth, if one takes the view and time to really get into it.  Yes there are contradictions in the Gospels of events seemingly different, but that is because of the emphasis each writer is giving to a particular event and of course their memory.  Even if this were grounds to disprove it's accuracy, still the words and recorded lives and events of those who have written it relay a tremendous revelation of the one God all or (most Christians serve).  Take for example the story of when Jesus went to  the other side of the lake and found there a man (Legion) all crazy, naked, and out of his mind driven to terror by demons that tormented him. In one Gospel it is only one man.  In another Gospel it seems as if two men were set free?  Now is this inaccurracy? Or is it just a different [point of view? ]  
     But I know this for certain, even if it was one or two does not make a bit of difference and does not change the fact that the Lord intervened in "someone's" life and healed them.
       And what about Pentecost?  Did the Spirit get poured out as Jesus said?  Did the world change at that moment?  And for the next passing centuries were Christians in effect made or converted from something they had not been before?  I think so.  So This is why I can read and re-read  letters written and attested to by many that there is a certain solidness to this book.  It's many authors found a base of truth and they began to reveal it in the only way they could, "Written Word"  Now who is the "Word?"  Didn't John refer to Jesus and the Word?  Among us? The Word made flesh...........and so we have a "Will" a Testament to the one who it is all about written down to peruse any time we want to until the time it will be done away with and what then?

On The Edge:but not in

Livin on the edge of the truth
i'm removed / from the one
in my mind/ i see that i'm not blind
though my eyes / can't find
never having once / tasted the precious fruit
now// i'm gone
 it's too late
 my fate
i'm just a song / played again and again
throughout eternity / i'm so blind
it's not even / kind
now where's my mind?
my body's afloat
some kind of moat
darkness around/ everybody bound
no one to relieve/ too late to believe