Start it now!
He is undone
In his argument
But too blind to see it.
He has lost touch with this reality
Even as he pounds away at others—
His affect screaming
That reality matters
And that if they know what’s good for them,
They had all better give heed to it.
And this moment is a tragedy
And a shame for him,
Whether he sees it or not.
And the stopwatch is ticking
As the Universe measures the span
From now until he yields himself
To the obvious.
Let us carefully choose
From among these
Myriad gems of virtue
But a few tokens—
That we might hollow them out
To a mere shell of what they were,
So as to more easily carry them about
Wherever we go,
As a signal to all that
We hold virtue to be
Of the highest importance.
Not all weirdness comes from messed-up church doctrine, but I’m having a hard time thinking of any messed-up church doctrine that doesn’t lead eventually to some sort of weird behavior, however large or small it may be.
There is in many an assumption
That conversion to Christ
Is but a short process,
Involving little more
Than the adoption
Of a new axiom or two,
Such as that Jesus is Lord—
Or in the case of the particularly eager,
Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior!
It is a pernicious mistake
By which the one
Wrongly assumes the blame
For the faults of the other.
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.
Continue readingJesus 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.
