The Root of My Merriment

Love came down at Christmas.
and caught us unawares.

Our only hope descended
unbidden, unrecognized,
And largely unwelcome.

The Arrival escaped
the notice of most,
as they obsessively
searched
for something else
entirely:

that great and mighty force
to make right
all that was wrong
in the world.

But love came anyway:

that great and mighty force
to make right
all that was wrong
in ourselves.

Our own brokenness
was hidden from our eyes,
A victim of
self-imposed
delusions
Of grandeur.

Love itself,
broken and poured out,
Showed us that

the problem
isn't 'out there',
but 'in here',
within the confines
of my own
inward-tilting heart.

The surgeon cuts through
the sinewey walls
of fiercely self-protective will,
and opens the tangled mess
Of lifeless flesh
that holds
the
Secret
Fear
of being laid bare.
Found out.
Utterly
exposed.

With gentle precision
He exposes and excises
The clinging regrets
of a sin-scarred past,
The half-healed wounds
of a thousand hurts,
And the dull,
aching emptiness
whose voice is
Not found
in human speech.

There he begins his work,

breathing life into

what was once

Deluded, dead

And

Doomed for destruction.

The healing hands implant
A heart of flesh,
And

I am new.

The divine surgeon
Is my Christ...

My Christmas.

Tragedy at Newtown - Ravi Zacharias

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Ravi Zacharias

The tragedy that shook Newtown, Connecticut, and indeed the entire nation, defies analysis. What must have gone on in the mind of this young man for him to walk into a school of little children and wreak such devastating carnage numbs the soul. At the same time this was happening, I was under the surgeon’s blade for minor surgery. When I left the recovery room and returned home, among the first pieces of news on my phone was the news of this mass killing. Something within me hoped that I was still not clear-headed, but I knew deep inside that I was reading an unfolding story of horror and tragedy.  What does one say? What is even appropriate without violating somebody’s sacred space and their right to scream in protest?

I am a father and a grandfather. I simply cannot fathom the unbearable weight within a parent’s or grandparent’s heart at such a personal loss. It has often been said that the loss of a child is the heaviest loss to bear. I have no doubt that those parents and grandparents must wonder if this is real or simply a terrifying nightmare. My heart and my prayers are for them and, indeed, for the family of the assassin. How his father will navigate through this will be a lifelong journey.

When a mass-killer like this ends by taking his own life, there is an even deeper sense of loss. Everyone wants to know, “Why?” Not that the answer would soften the blow but it would at least give some clue, some release to speak, to hear, to try to work through. But all we are left with is twenty-eight funerals and lifelong grief. To all of those who have suffered such loss, may the Lord carry you in His strength and bear you in your grief. You will be in our thoughts and prayers.

My own attempt at saying something here is feeble but carries a hope that somebody listening will make this world a better place. My heart goes back to Angola Prison in Baton Rouge where I met such people whose savagery took them to that destination. It was interesting to see a Bible in every cell and to hear many talk of how it had become their only means of life and hope. Someone with me said, “If we had more Bibles in our schools maybe we would need less of them here.” To the skeptic and the despiser of belief in God, I know what they will respond. I am quite convinced that the one who argues against this ends up playing God and is ultimately unable to defend any absolutes. Hate is the opposite of love and while one breathes death, the other breathes life. That is what we need to be addressing here. The seeds of hate sooner or later bear fruit in murder and destruction. Killers are not born in a moment. Deep beneath brews thinking and the animus that in a moment is uncorked. We are living in a society that nurtures hate on many sides with the result that lawlessness triumphs.

Even in ideal settings, killing can take place. Murder began in the first family when a brother could not stand the success of his sibling. The entire history of the Middle East–five millennia–is a tale of two brothers. Centuries of killing has not settled the score. Maybe in Adam Lanza’s case we will find a deep psychological reason behind what he did. But that does not diminish the reality that there lurks many a killer whose moment will come and the nation will be brought to tears again. We can almost be certain of that. Yes, we can discuss all the symptomatic issues—security, gun control, early detection signs, and so on. These are all worthy of discussion. But it’s always easier to deal with the symptoms rather than with the cause.

I wish to share what I think we must address or we head down the slope to a precipitous edge of brutality. The fiscal cliff is tame by comparison to the moral devastation ahead if we do not recognize the malady for what it is. Hate is the precursor to murder. Jesus made that very clear. Playing God is the dangerous second step where we feel we are the ultimate judge of all things and that we have the right to level the score.

Here, I would like to address our political leaders and media elite: You may personally have the moral strength to restrict your ideas to mere words but many who listen to you do not. To take the most sacred privilege of democracy and transform it into the language of aggression plays right into the hands of hate-mongers. This is not the language of a civil society or of wise leadership. It is not the ethos of a culture of co-existence. It is not the verbal coinage with which we can spend our way into the future. Our political rhetoric is fraught with division, hate, blame, and verbal murder. Our young are listening. Remember that what you win them with is what you win them to.

As for the entertainment world, what does one even say at a time like this? Calling for gun control and then entertaining the masses with bloodshed is only shifting the locus from law to entertainment. Do our entertainers ever pause to ask what debased values emerge from their stories? The death of decency is audible and visible in what passes as movie entertainment and political speech. This is the same culture that wishes to take away Nativity scenes and Christmas carols from our children. God is evicted from our culture and then He is blamed for our carnages. America is lost on the high seas of time, without chart or compass. The storms that await us will sink this nation beyond recognition if we do not awaken to the rapid repudiation of the values that shaped this nation. The handwriting is on the wall. Freedom is not just destroyed by its retraction. It is destroyed even more painfully by its abuse.

There is one more thing. It is so obvious but is seldom ever addressed. All these recent mass murders have been done by men. Many of them young men, yes, even mere boys.  Jonesboro, Columbine, Virginia Tech, now Newtown. Is there something within our culture that doesn’t know how to raise strength with dignity and respect? Is this how boys are meant to be? From bloodletting in hockey games while thousands cheer to savagery in school shootings while thousands weep, we must ask ourselves what has gone wrong with us men? Where are the role models in the home? Is knocking somebody down the only test left for strength? Is there no demonstration now of kindness, gentleness, courtesy, and respect for our fellow human beings? One young man on death row in Angola Prison told me that he started his carnage as a teenager. Now in his thirties with the end of the road in sight, he reached his hand out to me and asked me to pray with him. Life was lost at the altar of power and strength.

The Bible only speaks of one remedy for this: the transformation of the heart by making Christ the center. Those who mock the simplicity of the remedy have made evil more complex and unexplainable. Every heart has the potential for murder. Every heart needs a redeemer. That is the message of Christmas. The world took that child and crucified Him. But by his triumph over death He brings life to our dead souls and begins the transformation within. Unto us a child is born and He shall save us from our sins.

Before the first murder was committed, the Lord said to Cain, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” To gain mastery over sin there is only one way.  Just as Victoria Soto put herself in the way so that the children in her class might live, Jesus Christ put himself in the way that we all might live. That is the beginning of the cure for us as individuals and as a nation. All the laws in the world will never change the heart. Only God is big enough for that.

Source: http://www.rzim.org/

What's a Cross Got to Do with a Manger?

"Today marks the beginning of Advent, when Christians the world over begin to prepare our hearts to celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ, who came - not to bring peace on earth, but to BE peace on earth to those who know Him. May you know Him this Christmas ♥"

Life in the "Kingdom of Whatever" - Witherspoon Institute 11/12

'via Blog this'

Men Don't Mother - The Witherspoon Institute

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/10/6710/

The Moral Case for Free Markets

http://www.tothesource.org?10_3_2012/10_3_2012.htm

Who's in the White House? Most of us Never Knew...Until Now

http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama#.UFtgw41lTiE

Recommended reading for all citizens.

Salvo Magazine - A Buried Grief by Marcia Segelstein

Excellent article.  If you have had an abortion, participated in a loved one's decision to abort, or been impacted by someone's abortion decision, please read this.  It may change your life.
Salvo Magazine - A Buried Grief by Marcia Segelstein

How Religious Liberty Protects All of Us

http://www.tothesource.org?6_27_2012/6_27_2012.htm

Prayer as a spiritual discipline seems to have fallen on hard times, as it were. At least that seems to be the view from my own life more often than I'd care to admit. Last week some friends were pondering the significance of the intercession of Christ on behalf of the believer. We recalled that from time to time believers like to quote 'The prayer of a righteous man availeth much' (James 5), but if this is true (and it is), then what can we say about the prayer of Christ Himself, who ever lives to intercede for us (Hebrews 7)? Someone shared a quote from RC Sproul which I can't seem to find at the moment, but it went something like, "If the prayers of a righteous man availeth much, what on EARTH can the prayers of Christ Himself avail?"... 

God became man not only to show me how it's done, but to do for me what I am incapable of doing ON MY OWN.    

We were made to be held, and to pray through our brokenness with the knowledge that we are helpless, is to be held in the arms of God Himself.    

Thoughts on Grace

God's grace is the preeminent element empowering the life of a believer, yet I often take its power, and indeed its very presence in my life, for granted.  Such inability to comprehend the obvious often hinders me from the real work of this life, which is, ultimately, preparation for the next.  God's grace as it moves in us and through us is doing more than effecting our sanctification; it is fitting us for a future glory that is  incomprehensibly greater than anything we are capable of imagining in the present.  It is no wonder that we'll need new bodies in which to house this glory that awaits us.    

I have discovered that my mind wanders from this grace that has wrapped itself around my soul precisely because it is otherworldly, and, to my shame - foreign.   Foreign because I am often too well and too firmly established in this world to live in the mindful awareness that God is purposing to do His work in and through this decaying vessel that I currently call home.  

I pray for a grace that runs through me like electricity, so that when the cares of this world  get in the way, when patience is tested and strength is depleted, I may instantly recognize the real foreigner, and seek the renewing power of His mighty grace.  

The older I get, the more sure I am that prayer is not just a necessary part of the Christian life, but prayer is the essence of the Christian life.  It is a means by which God in His providence interconnects our own life with His.  It is the magic wardrobe through which we are invited to touch another realm, and while we enter now through the instrument of our imagination and the exercise of our faith, it is as solid and real as the chair on which I now sit, except more so.  It is a realm to which we are called by name; a kingdom that will remain when all else fades into oblivion and the temporal gives way to the eternal.  

Through prayer I profess my understanding of God as He is revealed in His Word, and He in turn diffuses His truth into the far reaches of my heart. Prayer is an unadorned room, into which I can bring the stresses of my daily life, my failures and my fears, my sorrows and my tears, and lay them all at Jesus' feet.  There is no greater unburdening for the soul than to pour out its cares into the faithful arms of the Friend of man.  Prayer itself is an instrument of God's grace.

I have learned  that while my comprehension of it remains among the 'mysteries to be revealed', grace is not the static, steadying force in my life that I have previously understood it to be.  It is electric and dynamic and powerful, as it must be to capacitate human beings to accomplish God's work on earth.    

I pray that God would enlarge my understanding of His Amazing Grace, such that I may be animated by its very presence in my life, as I endeavor to step ever further into the wardrobe.  

Holy Week Reflection - Caravaggio's 'The Taking of Christ'

My meditation on Daylight Savings Time:

NEW YEAR'S REVOLUTION

a poem for January 1st

Goals unmet.

Failures achieved.

Regrets aplenty.

Sounds like another year has passed...

Were I the girl I once knew,

I might wallow for a spell and nurse the old wounds,

oblivious to, and even strangely comforted by,

their ritually parasitic companionship.

It's the Auld Lang Syne rite of dewy-eyed sentimentality.

A time for the maudlin among us to memorialize our past regrets,

and wistfully pine for a better tomorrow.

But that old girl has gone, along with all her mismatched baggage.

The man with the answer knew it all along...

He was calling me, but for a long time I somehow got him mixed up

with someone else.  Or something else.

Like the perfect seashell that you know is there on the beach -

 but you must be mindful of its utter uniqueness so that you can recognize it

amongst all the ordinary bits and pieces of itself that the sea is always belching up.

I finally understood that the voice was somehow formed to fit me.

Like a murmur knitting itself into a sweater and enveloping you completely.

So of course, I grabbed my luggage and off I went.

...only to realize that the heft of my bags made travel inordinately impractical.

Why did I have so much junk?

Leave it at the curb; just get in the car.

But I couldn't do it; I couldn't just leave it there.

What if someone else found it?  What would they do with it?

Who would fix the broken stuff, wrestle with the questions, return all the borrowed thoughts?

It was hard to climb in with all my junk.  But I pushed and squeezed and slid in.  

For a while I wondered why it seemed so uncomfortable,

like driving to a safari loaded down with scuba diving gear.

It was awkward and bulky and it just didn't feel right.

But I held on tight and just tried to keep my arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Holding on to my stuff.

Much later when it was quiet I asked him about it.

I had to, since I started noticing the other people on the trip.

Most of them weren't dragging a bunch of stuff around.

I had begun to feel self-conscious about my bags, 

 checking to see that all the pieces were there;

making sure nobody touched them or looked at any of them too closely.

The other travelers looked more relaxed. They were certainly covering more ground.

Maybe it was because their arms weren't so tired 

and they never had to worry about lost luggage or that sort of thing.

That's when I found out that I really wasn't supposed to bring all that old stuff with me.

None of it was necessary. Or even helpful.  

Knowing I could now get rid of my luggage, I decided to chuck it all out the window.

Strangely though, I found that I was unable to accomplish this in one motion,

mostly due to the pain of prying certain things out of my hands.

I have always had an inordinate fondness for the familiar...

But I began to dump my junk, sometimes a little bit and sometimes by the bucketful.

It seems that the more I release, the easier moving forward becomes.

Like cutting off the parachute lines once you've landed on the ground.

I'm starting to feel like there's a brand new fissure in the cosmos made just for me to settle into.

It conforms to my real hills and my real valleys, with allowances 

for my question marks and my exclamation points. 

Unlike my old space, that never did fit right, 

this one feels spanking new yet comfortably warm, and not too tight.  

It's

a 

right 

place

for

a

journey

home.