God has a Plan,Plan,Plan...

God has a plan. It is absolutely finite and we truly make no decisions... NO...He has allowed me to make mistakes,take chances, get messy ...the cult of the Magic School Bus ?... Miss Frizzel is a prophet ? Not quite. As long as it may or may not be, my life, like yours, is short. As I continue to make decisions, God shows me he's there; not so much in terms of constant approval of my behavior, ( that's a critical error of human nature ) but continuously showing me another way to go down the road. yeah it's the same road. I now see it though as Him presenting His best way, but I don't always take it. Am I then lost ? No, as I dither about, he still says " even when your faith in me is weak, I believe in you " Why ?... Love... God's cement that holds humanity together. In the depths of the loneliest place in the world, someone: a friend, a father, a mother. is showing love undeserved. Yeah? So? And somewhere else someone is suffering an underserved evil fate. The amazing thing is that in the midst of those evil places, love still shows up. I have seen it in the miracle of adult faces that shine with dignity today, despite evils that they have witnessed and experienced as children. Many have asked at the time, where was God ? He was beginning the process of salvaging a life... No, not everyone makes it. People make irreversible decisions and their lives are gone, but God's love is pervasive. For reasons only God understands, he has surrounded me with his love when I saw horrors that weakened me to the marrow. The irony is that the events that stank of destruction and evil pushed me like a giant spring towards the very God I was ignoring and I was never so happy to be embraced by Him... I still revel in that embrace from time to time...

Passions Recovered...

I went through a challenging time this year. Those challenges that make you question who you are and whether you have value have a way of making you recoil and hide emotionally. In the short term that needs to happen, but in the long run that is a mistake . The anger, questioning, and the sense of being misunderstood has to be forged again through the filters of time, hope, and faith in who we truly are . We can alter behaviour, but to change who we are at our best is another mistake. ....In 1812 in the congress of the United States, President Madison and a group called the " War Hawks "
said taking over the Canadian territories would be " a mere matter of marching "... 2 years later after a series of battles where Canadian miltias ( French and English ) and British troops where outnumbered an average of three to one; the United States was territorially smaller when the fighting stopped. A guerilla leader from Ireland, who's unit called the " Bloody Boys" fought for the Canadian cause, said simply about the American agressors; " they don't know who we are " . Whoever you are out there, whatever is happening to you ...that is the point, those who would drain the passion from your soul...don't know you... God knows us, still loves us and smiles at the passion we have when we are at our best, being there for others, in full view of our naysayers... Some pain in all of our lives ( greater in some of you than I have yet known ) sits like a load on your back, but don't let passions that have brought you to this point be extinguished.
For me, I will not...

I Believe in You...


Have you ever prayed for someone and you wanted to do more for them ? You knew on the toughest level of their lives
that they have to do it themselves. It is the way I learn and grow, but I want to do something that stops their pain. yeah , I know, it's called rescuing. Or perhaps it really means, learn to trust God.
When my father was talking to me about the war, he was always quick to point out that there were no atheists in fox holes.
I replied cynically at the time about the swagger of some soldiers or the anger of others. My father just laughed; as a man laughs at a younger man who has it all figured out . He replied that the whoring, 48 hour drunken binges, and fighting came from a tremendous desire to feel alive and even the man who was angry with God in wartime had a relationship with him. I asked him about the things he would say to these desperate young men . He told me that when you live " cheek by jowl " (old school for "close" ) with other men, your words wil be played out in the faith you show in them. I was sure he was wrong. Why show faith in people when they are living in a downward spiral ? Wasn't that advocacy of their lives ? Then my dad looked at me and said, " Mark, sometimes you're an ass, God believes in you when you don't deserve it, That's the very least you can do for other people." I need be reminded of those words ( all of them ) when I am tempted to step in for other people instead of simply showing faith by believing in them...

I Believe in You...


Have you ever prayed for someone and you wanted to do more for them ? You knew on the toughest level of their lives
that they have to do it themselves. It is the way I learn and grow, but I want to do something that stops their pain. yeah , I know, it's called rescuing. Or perhaps it really means, learn to trust God.
When my father was talking to me about the war, he was always quick to point out that there were no atheists in fox holes.
I replied cynically at the time about the swagger of some soldiers or the anger of others. My father just laughed; as a man laughs at a younger man who has it all figured out . He replied that the whoring, 48 hour drunken binges, and fighting came from a tremendous desire to feel alive and even the man who was angry with God in wartime had a relationship with him. I asked him about the things he would say to these desperate young men . He told me that when you live " cheek by jowl " (old school for "close" ) with other men, your words wil be played out in the faith you show in them. I was sure he was wrong. Why show faith in people when they are living in a downward spiral ? Wasn't that advocacy of their lives ? Then my dad looked at me and said, " Mark, sometimes you're an ass, God believes in you when you don't deserve it, That's the very least you can do for other people." I need be reminded of those words ( all of them ) when I am tempted to step in for other people instead of simply showing faith by believing in them.