Jeez...

Jeez it's been forever since I have been on here. Well, I don't have much to say other than the fact that everything is going great in my life right now. Dad's better, Scott's in the navy, Evan's playing ball, and I'm just chilling. Making my way through the realms of this thing called life.

Conqueror of The Slide...

Sunday night, instead of doing a bible study we acted out skits of bible stories. Some did the prodigal son, Noah and the ark, and a few others that I can't really remember. However, ours was David and Goliath. So Emmy, Lindsey, Kaden, and I acted out a skit of a bully on the playground(they had to be modernized). So of course I got to be Goliath and Kaden appropriately enough, David.

The story obviously stuck with me until Monday morning. Monday morning is Pop in Play at work. For a certain amount of money parents can bring their kids in and play on the inflatables for an hour and a half. For a few weeks now there has been two grandparents bringing their grandson in to play. The boy however wouldn't go down the slide by himself. So week after week the boy and his grandma would go down at the same time. But, Monday, there was about ten minutes left for the play time and I had noticed that the grandma had began to make special efforts to get her grandson to go down by himself. It started of going down side by side. Then with him just holding her finger. Then going down with his eyes open. Then with his hands up. Finally she got him to go down by himself. You should have seen the look on his face. He was no longer scared. He had conquered the slide.

I can't help but relate this to our everyday lives. How many times are we too scared to take the jump? To ask her out. To ask for that raise that you so well deserve. How many times are we too scared to swim out into the open waters. I recall a certain fish touching the "butt" at this analogy. But seriously, how often do you think we go around life scared? Do you think it would help us if we knew that God had us by the hand the whole time? I'd like to think it would.

Made Me Glad...

I will rejoice, for He has made me glad.

Your call, Your touch, Your voice. It sounds so beautiful. So mysteriously wonderful.

My soul, where have you gone. Come back my soul, come back.Come home. To the place where you belong. The potters wheel.

Come, and let Me mold you. Let Me make you pure. I love you son, I love you.

Do you? Do you Father? How so, How can you love so much. I say, teach me this love, form me into the man you want me to be.

I love you. O' how I love you. From every hair on your head, to every mood of your day. I love you. I delight in you, and I adore your life. I made you for that reason. So I can teach you to love as I first loved you.

Why the trials, the pain, the torture of my patience. Why not heaven on earth?

I love you, be strong! For surely you will endure, and surely you will persevere. I made you strong, my son, and strong you must be. At all times, be strong.

Show me Father, light the way so that this Adam may once again walk with you in the garden. But I will not hide. I will be naked of my pain. Naked of my sorrow. For I will rejoice, cause you have made me glad.

Know this. I am with you, always. Be strong. But be careful. He sets traps for you, so that when you think all is well, you will slip up. But come back, come home my son. Return to me always. And always you will live. Go home, always go home.

A Silly Little Thing Called Love...

Go free, go, I say. Run and fly for the world you see is but an illusion. A mystery to my inner desire. My heart knows no such evil. I am free, and free I shall live. Away from me this hurt, away from me this coward body. I am free, and free I shall live. Go and fly, above this madness, away from this thing called pain. I am free. Go and live the life of beauty, the life of Light. Free I shall live. I am going, leaving this body behind, I will leave with none but my soul. O' my soul, how you rejoice in His presence. How you dance in the Light. O' the marvelous light. We shall go, oh, live free my soul, let loose my friend. And oh how we will live. O' to the beauty of the Father. Go free my soul, go free!!

I say goodbye, but only for a little while. Will it be but only a minute before I see your face again? Oh how I hope so, I pray so. Please let it be true. Will I long, will I miss? I know myself not without your hand in mine, walking in the garden of your infinite life and beauty. You make the sun rise and set and over again. But what am I? Your son. Your chosen bride. You chose me before I knew your name. How is that so, moreover, Why? I am your chosen bride, and a wedding we'll have. The ceremony of broken chains and amazing grace. What a glorious day. That I pray. You my Father are forever mine, and I am yours. But I have always been yours. Even when I walked in the valley, in the shadows, death lurking near, you were there.

I am but a child in your mere presence. But how you rejoice in me. Delight. O' to the Light of such a depraved world. O' to the Light of all eternity. Father, mold me, make me better, so that I can be perfect, as you were, so many years ago.

To the majestic,
To the glorious,
To the love of the Groom, to you I say, I am yours. Always, forever and ever.

How Much More Do You Have For Me God???

I talk a lot about Love. The importance of it. I don't know, it has just kind of become something I have become rather passionate about. If you are reading this then I assume that you have heard that my Dad has been in the hospital suffering from anything from a bladder infection to a heart attack. Love has just been something God has been reminding me of lately, and I am just now starting to see his full purpose in telling me this.

My family, well, we have been through a lot. My dad had quadruple bypass surgery when I was in the third grade. That same year there was a hostage situation that took place down the road from my house. That had a rather dramatic effect in my life. I was later diagnosed with depression. Not exactly the thing you want to be while in the third grade, depressed, and I would never wish such a thing on any child. Anyways, things never really got any better. A good time for my family was usually defined by going a month without having anyone in the hospital. Needless to say it rarely happened. Sinus surgeries, knee surgeries, "terminal illness", more surgeries, plenty of stitches and concussions to go around resulted in pushing my family further and further apart.

Where am I going with this is my family has lost the love that families are suppose to have. I know now, as I remind myself of what James wrote, that this is a time to rejoice. It is the testing of my faith and I must persevere. I would like to add to that, hold my family together. The last couple of days it has just been the three boys, me and my two brothers. I have seen countless times how the family comes together in a time of crisis but never realized that we are divided in the peaceful times. Life is tough, I'll give it that. But I'm not going to fold. We must persevere, all of us, anytime we go through crap just remember what James wrote in his first chapter.

Love will set us free, as Brett Dennen says. I know it will.

Pray for my family as we go through this hard time. I just found out some more bad news today, another page in a whole new chapter in this life. Or as John Donne writes.

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume, when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators: some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation; and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

I really like that analogy because it offers hope. I use to think that heaven will be somewhat boring, you know, just "worshiping God" the whole time for the rest of eternity. However now I see that it will be great, a feast, a time to share stories and commune with one another. I can't wait to get there and hear stories from Paul about his missions, to hear Elisha talk about what it was like to be the only person to never die, and to here Davids stories about his run from Saul. Who knows what we are going to hear when we get to heaven, I just can't wait.

Love For The Wolves...

We will wear compassion,
We will wear it on our chests,
and sing with love at our throats
like a child, it's all I know.
-As Cities Burn

A child knows a few things.

They know who they belong to, who are their parents.
They know that they are loved and adored by most who see them.
They know what they like and what they don't like.
They love life and live it.
Among other things these three seem to sum most of it up.

Christ, throughout the New Testament, refers to us by several names. Brides, Sheep, even at times Goats. However the most appealing name he calls us by is Children. We are the children of the Father. Nothing more and nothing less is asked of us but to be His children.

The list above states a lot of what we are called to be like as Christians.
We are to know who we come from and to be proud that we are children of The Most High.
We are to know that we are loved, because he made the ultimate sacrifice for us.
We are to know what is good and what is bad, what we should approve of and what we shouldn't, what we should like and what we should dislike.

More importantly though we are called to love. Everyone, not just our fellow church goers. Not just our friends at school. And not just those who are in our close circle of peers. Everyone. That means the kid in your history class who makes bad jokes about you. The homeless guy sitting on the street. The people in the car in front of you who have to pull over because of car problems. Even those who persecute you. Show them love. I say this not just to you but also to myself.

I often struggle with loving. In fact, at times I would much rather just sit back and be hateful, not care, and to not invest myself. Wouldn't it be so much easier that way? It would. But that is not what we are called to do as children of God.

Luke 10:2-3
These were His instructions to them: "The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send more workers into his fields. Now go and remember that I am sending you out as lambs among wolves.

The truth is that life might be easier doing the things of the world, it may not. I know that me saying this is not anything that you have not heard but it is simple and to the point.

LOVE

That is what we are called to do, among the wolves, love.

Quotes from Enders Game...

-Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

-"There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you."

-"Human beings are free except when humanity needs them."

-"Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive."
"That's a lie."
"No. It's just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war."

-He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn't have known what they meant.

-Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.

-"Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth."

-"Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it."

-"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."