Rivers and Lights

Revelations 21: 5-6
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.

Apathy is an enemy to the soul

It saps the spirit and life out of one's existent until all there is left is a hollow shell.
It prevents any action or inspiration from hope because it is too afraid of being disappointed.
It doesn't try because it doesn't believe that there is a chance.
Fear of failure.
If there is a light at the end of the tunnel, even how faint of a glimmer, it can never be reached unless it is sought out.
The only way you can fail, is to stop trying.
My Grandma held onto hope, in fact she held it up high like a torch.
She had hope that God had better days in store.
And he did. And does.
She hoped through the gloom and heartache. And let God's light shine in her life.

"The secret to happiness is to not expect too much"

Is this true?

Well certainly expecting perfection is a recipe for disappointment. And expecting the world to run in such a way that you get everything you want and desire is also unrealistic.
People are both predictable and unpredictable.
You cannot depend on people to surprise you how you want or when you want.

Expecting a relationship to be perfect with no mess, or trials, or malfunctions is unrealistic and unhealthy even.

However it is also harmful to have too low of expectations. Because without a standard of some sort you are opening up yourself to being trod on, trampled, kicked aside and left at the side of the road.

Expectations are a filter. Let in the good, remove the bad.

Another way to think of it is swimming in a river. Its unrealistic and will wear you out if you swim directly against the current.
But, if you simply let yourself be carried along to wherever the current takes you, you'll end up being dashed against the rocks.
Instead you have to adopt compromise.
Swimming sideways, partly against the current, and partly with. Swimming with a purpose towards the shore, towards you goals, hopes and dreams, but using the current to aid you instead of going directly against it.
And this is the difference between being either unrealistically hopeful or dare I say, unrealistically UN-hopeful.

Reasons to hope exist all around us, but too often we are disappointed because we look for hope in the wrong places.

God put hope in our hearts for a reason. Not so that we could be disappointed by the brokenness of this world. But so that we can know that the world is in fact broken. That this is not how it is supposed to be.

And most importantly, that God has better things in store for us than what we know see.
The world is broken. But that doesn't mean it can't be fixed. That's why God sent a Savior. That's why he sent Jesus.
That's why the sun still shines. That's why he put this fire in my heart to write.
Because I see that all is not as it can be. That God's got better things in store.
And there will be a day when it is restored.
So keep that light flaring in your window.

Because in God, we shall never hope in vain.

Love takes strength, stamina and sacrifice.

We are never complete, until we let God remake us.

We can never know who we are.

Until we know him who made us.

So,

Grit your teeth and un-clench your fist

till your palm is open and ready

to be placed inside of HIS.

Hear Me Now

Hear Me Now
Hear Me Then
hear the things
I've never been

See Me Now
See Me Then
see the things
I've never said

What do I say?
What do I mean?
Are they ever really the same thing?

How rare to find words filled with meaning
with blinding blissful truth
How common to find words filled with silence
with absolutely nothing at all

Please,
Tell Me Now
Tell Me Then
tell the things
You've never been

Please,
Show Me Now
Show Me Then
Show the things
You've never said

Pithy

Pithy..

(of language or style) concise and forcefully expressive.

synonyms:

succinct, terse, concise, compact, short (and sweet), brief, condensed,to the point, epigrammatic, crisp, thumbnail;

To the point.
Clear, forceful.

May your apologies be pithy and your explanations even pithier.

Your friend doesn't want to hear an "explanation" aka justification of your actions.
They want to know, that you listened to them.
That if you could do it again you would do it differently.
That you understand you hurt them, broke their trust, and can't just glue your relationship back together.

That you understand it will take time and patience and perseverance to rebuild what was broken between you.
And as always,

                            this is easier said than done.

But nothing worthwhile comes easy eh?

Winter

I'm a writer, who hasn't written in a long while.

I feel the rust grinding in my gears as I write now. But the longer I go the more my thoughts collide and swirl and collect inside me.

I have to sweep them out of me sometimes lest they suffocate me with their magnitude.

They need somewhere to go.

A song.

A poem.

A book.

A deep conversation with a friend.

But sometimes although there are many people willing to talk.

Maybe even willing to just listen.

BUT

there is nobody who needs to talk.

As you do.

Who hungers to talk and talk of ideas and dreams, and the future and past. And the connections it makes and hash it out till there is nothing left to speak of. 

They are either not ready,

or already done hashing it all out. But nobody is in the same place.

And it feels quite lonely.

So I write.

Because we can meet in different places, at different times and discuss and think together and say what needs to be said unconstrained by time or distance. 

Swept Away....Plugging Away...To Where?

I always thought that adventures seemed very easy for most characters. In many stories, the main character is swept up in chain of events which he/she has no control over and little choice of action except to choose either option A or B.
What is difficult is pushing oneself  into the unknown without any catastrophic life altering events to help you do it.
But then drastic times call for drastic measures.
Sometimes the drastic times are upon us but we can't see how drastic they are. We are lulled into a false sense of security, a slow starvation of the soul. With no changes or adventures to push and pull us, to help us grow we become stagnant and stale and slowly lose that joy that God is continually calling us towards.
We are each of us on a quest.
A quest to find why God made us who we are, and what He wants us to do.
A quest to become more like Jesus every day.
To lose ourselves more and more everyday by laying down our will at his feet and following him.
And in doing so, finding more and more of the pieces of ourselves that God truly created us to be.
Who am I?
That is our quest.

Faith is a Window

Faith is a window.
When you look out a window you see what is outside of your house. You can't touch it, you can just look through the window and know that no matter how long you stay inside your house there is a whole other world outside your house as real as what you see inside.
So when you have faith its like a window. You can look through  the window out on to the real world....it gives you a glimpse outside of our earthly perspective to see what God has waiting outside for us. So fill your life with windows...windows of faiths so that you can see what you don't yet have but nevertheless hope for and know to be true.

"Now Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."