Reason Being

I write because God gave me the words. I sing and play because God gave me the song. I dance because God granted me whimsy. I am not brilliant. I try. I am not flawless. I try. I am and I do because of God. It is just that simple. He is the reason for everything.

The Good Change

I love surprises. I love change. Not all changes or surprises are good once you have reached the age of 40. Often it involves the sickness of a friend or death of a relative or mentor in the faith. Sometimes it involve new life with grandchildren and then it is lovely (even if you only rarely get to see them). Life is full of surprises and changes because God created life. Everything He creates has motion. Even atoms never sit still. If you sit outside quietly you won’t have quiet for long, birds are communicating and flying, bugs are hopping and flying around, often making noises as they do so, leaves and limbs make noise and move in the wind which comes and goes, thunder may rumble, clouds change right before your eyes. Nothing is perfectly still. Even the earth is spinning at an alarming rate all the time as we rotate through space in orbit around the sun. Change is in our DNA. It is a part of us. You may want things to never change at a given point in life when things are particularly wonderful or serene, but the moment fades and the reality of change recurs. And my mind was drawn to the amazing and wonderful realization that some day soon we will all go through an enormous game changing but very very good change when we arrive in Heaven. There will be this amazing change when Jesus comes back to Earth and changes every single thing. From that point on (assuming you are saved) we will be forever good for no evil will exist again at all. I cannot even imagine that, can you? No more pain, no more tears, in constant companionship with the God of the universe and all the saints! It is an incredible thought! So I not only love that good change coming, but I base my hope on it.

Stronger than Steel

When men and women are free, their imaginations are stronger than steel. When they are repressed, distracted, limited, controlled, their freedom and hope suffers and that cycles to a slow death of the imagination. Marketing appears to think outside of the box, but its evil is that they push you to think their way so is as much of a prison as the rest of the list above. So what do we do about that? We limit our ability to be repressed and distracted and controlled and manipulated by limiting their access to our minds and protecting our country from tyranny of any kind. We demand the politicians we are paying exorbitant salaries to do what is best for us and not themselves or other politicians. We limit our use of technology for our purposes and not their manipulations. We support our amazing military and veterans. We stop killing our unborn babies. We get back firmly to the moral code of conduct that has been ripped from us subtly over years and reinstall it in our schools and public buildings. We all get back to regular Bible study, prayer and fasting and do what is right. We support our greatest allies, Israel. This is, I believe, the only way we will successfully reverse any of this garbage we are dealing with in America now. We can be stronger than steal again. We can restore this country to its former glory. It is still the best place in the world, but we must improve and protect her. Many wish us harm. Harm will come if we do not do the above things and thus do not have the Lord on our side. We need God on our side to heal our country. We must pray to this end.

Between the Lines

My favorite part of any story is what people left out or didn’t say. What intrigues me most is an author skilled enough to not say the tactical points which allows your mind to work at filling in the blanks, sets your imagination into action and draws you into the book. In life, we get snippets of a conversation, pieces of the puzzle and we often need to discover what is hidden between the lines. To do this, a wise person will, I believe, not just charge in with preconceived assumptions but seek counsel and guidance from the One who knows every answer. Sometimes we allow ourselves to be offended by things in between the lines we have filled in ourselves with our imaginations. Often, reality ends up being quite different and we were upset over a phantom we created. We cast the light ourselves onto a self-contrived shadow puppet and are angered by the reflection. Seems ridiculous but happens all the time. We need God’s wisdom and conversations with Him before we rush to judgments at what isn’t there. With God’s help, we can integrate the fruits of the Spirit into our psyche and then seek clarification from God and the source,if possible. The other facet is a deep appreciation of my closest friends who can read between the lines in my life and help take me to the heart of the matter. I believe God puts some friends together to encourage one another, a perfect fit to Reade each other between the lines. 🙂