Jack Pelham

I’ve been thinking on this,
And here’s the way I see it.
So please listen while I make my case.

Between your thorns and mine,
How could we help but be pricked,
Except by either removing our thorns
Or keeping our distance?

Think on that for a moment.

Jesus said so much into the record
That sits there to this day,
Untapped by Earth’s billions,
And even by those in the very churches
Upon which his name has been affixed.

And let us not fail to notice
That he does not stamp his feet
Or raise his voice
Or hurl lightning at the masses
To make them pay attention.

Rather, as far as his demeanor indicates,
He seems to have delivered the message
Only for those who are willing to listen.
And he seems content to let the rest
Ignore it as they please for now,
Taking no issue with them
For as long as they are
In this present world—
Best I can tell.

And then he will have his say
And the matter will be settled
For each,
One at a time.

It is a torturous question,
Whether someone’s heart
Can become hardened
Beyond the point of no return.

And the question itself serves
To reveal hearts even more.
For some will ask it in fear.
Some will ask it in hope.
And some will ask it seeking
An excuse to write-off the hard-to-love.

It would be so incredibly hard
To keep on ignoring the ever-present lessons
You have yet to learn—
To keep on putting off being sorry for your sins—
And apologizing for how you’ve hurt others—
And righting the wrongs—
And admitting your fault—
And seeing the mistake in it—
And letting it sting you as it should—
And making a plan to learn your way out of the habit—
And letting penitent tears cleanse your soul.

Many make the mistake of assuming
That a good decision is a matter of
Making a right choice at a certain moment in time.

Put God in front of a man,
In his measureless splendor
And in the vastness of his wisdom
With his higher thoughts and ways—

When someone in your life is twisted and abusive,
And you’re constantly being poked by their thorns—
By thorns they could have
And should have
Removed long ago
Because they know better
And should know better—
And they even bear witness to the wrongness
By their own hating of such thorns in others
And their constant complaining about
Being pricked by them themselves—

Welcome to God’s world!

Many complain about difficulty in finding that sometimes-elusive “Christmas Spirit”. And while that may be an expansive topic with lots of puzzling and even controversial tentacles, my aim in this brief article is to point out one possible cause of this that you might not have considered. It’s the onslaught of euphoric Christmas marketing.

Let me explain.

Some people choose to love,
Even though love sometimes hurts.

Go figure!

What must they see in love
To think it worth the pain,
While others run like crazy
To avoid it?

As in the kitchen, it is possible
To make a mess of one’s own life—
And even of the lives of others.

Yet as in the kitchen, it is possible
To clean it up again.

And just imagine what kind of life one can have,
Who is the sort not to mind the work!