Freedom

Have you ever noticed how sin compounds itself? Giving yourself over to one "little" sin often causes a complete sinful change in attitude. Sin, as it is so often described, is a cancer. It arises in the heart, infects the mind, and eventually spreads to the soul. It is crippling, destroying all that is good. Love, selflessness, sacrifice, charity, godliness are overrun by the desire for self, the sin of pride. We believe we can do it without God; in essence, we become our own god and worship ourselves as supreme. Our flesh becomes master and we readily submit to its every whim. And it all begins with one's desire to be God, to make our own decisions independent of Him, to decide what is best four ourselves, to be independent. There is no independence from God, but there is freedom, complete freedom in Him. It is in the desire to gain freedom that the great deceiver plants his greatest lie. He tells us that we can only enjoy independence apart from God. So we eat the forbidden fruit and give ourselves over to broken cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13). In our search for freedom and independence, we become slaves to the very things Satan told us would give the pleasure of freedom. We have become so chained to money, pleasure, sex, comfort, success, and idealism that we are dying in bonds. God, in His divine pleasure, has delivered us from bondage. In Christ, the Creator offers a way to make our way out of slaver back to true freedom. This freedom is obtained through submission. It is the realization that the god of our pride cannot satisfy, in fact those things can only be satisfied in the one true God of the universe. God, through Christ, takes our shackles upon Himself anbd breaks them for us. However, it is only through our willing heart felt submission to the God who created us that we are made free. Allowing God to guide our lives allows us to enjoy the good things He has created because we first enjoy Him.

Gravity

Restlessness pervades my limbs;
They yearn for movement
Yet are restricted everyday.
What does each extremity seek?
Made for poetry but subjected to prose,
My body aches for a purpose,
A purpose that cannot be realized.
Legs are burdened by weight
But desire to run.
Arms designed to be raised in praise
Are pulled heavily toward the ground.
Can the weight be lifted?
Will my limbs know freedom?
Is a purpose to be recognized?
Or must I wait? Can I wait?

Heart of Stone

Heart of stone and frozen mind;
I hear no good and speak all evil.
I desire greater but cannot find
Something that melts my heart in other people.

The Prince Speaks

“Many are the secrets that I know;
Of life and death and beginning and end.
In fullness of time these things will show,
When by innocent death, all will mend.

The field of battle is grim and gray.
The enemy we face will not easily fall,
But with you I’ll stand on this day of days,
Until the death bell tolls and the emperor calls.”

Silver Glass & White Shores

Have you ever fallen half-asleep on a warm, spring day? The sun streams through the windows and its beams gently caress your face as you begin to drift into another state of consciousness, another world. In that half-dream, half-reality, you dream of wonderful things: green fields, vibrant flowers, knights and ladies, wizards and witches, beautiful castles, tall forests, and, you dream of love. When you awake, your sole desire is to return to that world. You have entered the land of dreams, the land where what you feel becomes what you see and touch—where imagination becomes reality.

God Knows Best

Have you ever felt that dark feeling when you are alone? Something falls to the pit of your stomach, turns around, sits stoically and weighs you down. And you are alone, simply alone. No matter how many people may occupy your surroundings, you are alone; alone as the desert ascetic. People hold no interest, sadly they simply fill time. It is only too easy to despair. When this feeling is prevalent, hope seems to whither, to fade. And you cry out in pain and confusion. You say that this cannot be life. This cannot be what I was made for. This cannot be my purpose. I was not made to live a life only filled with loneliness. I was not made to be alone.

It seems the questions so often go unanswered. The loneliness becomes indefinite. Where is the salve for the rawness of the soul? Is there a cure? Where is it? How often are we told there is? To easily an answer is offered. It is a hard answer to grasp, to believe. Often it is not a solution that gives us what we desire. And we hate it. We hate every fiber of the solution because we still feel empty. But we know it is true. Every other way has failed. And so we endure knowing that the emptiness is a trial through which we must persevere. Our perseverance will make us worthy of the trial; we become men and women of character. In our character, we find hope in the giver.

A Page Is Turned

A page is turned by the wind to a boy in curly grin
With a world to conquer at the age of ten
But as history unfolds and the storybook is told
He finds salvation but not at the hands of man

And the God of second chance
Picked him up and He let him dance
Through a world that is not kind
And all this time, preparing him, the one
To hold him up when he comes undone
Beneath the storm, beneath the sun
And now a man, here you stand
Your day has come

A page is turned in this world to reveal a little girl
With a heart that's bigger, as it is unfurled
By the language in her soul, that's teaching her to grow
With a careful cover of love that will not fail

And the God of second chance
Picked her up and He let her dance
Through a world that isn't kind
And all this time, preparing her the one
To hold her up when she comes undone
Beneath the storm, beneath the sun
And grown up tall, here you are
Your day has come

Beneath the air of autumn, she took him by his hand
And warm within the ardor, she took his heart instead
And high upon the mountain, he asked her for her hand
Just for her hand

A page is turned in this life, he's making her his wife
And there is no secret to the source of this much life
When the grace that falls like rain is washing them again
Just a chance to somehow rise above this land

Where the God of second chance
Will pick them up and he'll let them dance
Through a world that is not kind
And all this time, they're sharing with the one
That holds them up when they come undone
Beneath the storm, beneath the sun
And once again, here you stand
And once again, here you stand
Your day has come

- Bebo Norman

To Truly Live We Must First Die

Have you ever noticed that the spiritual world is simply a series of contradictions? To live one must first die. Following Christ leads to freedom and responsibility. To break the bonds of our slavery to sin, we must become slaves to Christ. The list could go on for quite sometime. My immediate reaction is to say that God is a loon. Yet anyone can read the statements of our Lord and see that He is quite sane, perhaps the most lucid being of all. So then why the contradictions? Perhaps, and I merely speculate, but perhaps God operates on a plane of existence in which we cannot understand true logic. God, in all wisdom and knowledge, must not see biblical "contradictions" as contradictions at all. In fact, with perfect understanding we would see the logic as well.

Ode to Wordsworth

Where does the soft spring breeze go?
Where will it end?
As it crosses hill and vale, mountain and plain.
Do you know from whence it came?

Where does the meadowlark fly?
Which skies does it caress with its wings?
Who hears its beautiful song,
And recognizes from whence it came?

Where does the cold mountain stream run?
Where do its murmurings alight,
As it twinkles and bubbles through the dense forest
Running swiftly from whence it came.

Where do the poets words flow?
For whom do they cry?
Their words rhyme in time as they rise and fall.
And one knows from whence it came.

The Scholars

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

They'll cough in the ink to the world's end;
Wear out the carpet with their shoes
Earning respect; have no strange friend;
If they have sinned nobody knows:
Lord, what would they say
Should their Catullus walk that way!

William Butler Yeats

Who will sing for the brokenhearted?

Who will sing for the brokenhearted?
Who will bear their pain?
Who could love this decaying race?
Who could become one of them?
Not I, not I, for I am brokenhearted.
Not I, not I, for I am dying.
Then Who? Who is this Man?