Jack Pelham

What does God wish
You would learn today?

What dream might he have
For your betterment
That you could actually achieve?

And how might it bless you both
If you were to achieve it?

It’s the rare soul
Who will let someone else
Inside his heart
To rearrange the furniture—
And rarer still, the one
Who knows where it should go.

I helped him get his shackles off,
But as it turned out,
He put them back on—
Preferring the routines of slavery
To the uncertainties of self-determination.

I’m convinced that God wants us to improve ourselves. He has set our lives in this beautiful/ugly world, where we may acquire knowledge and skill of many kinds, and where we have daily opportunities to invest ourselves in good and in evil. I do not think he has put us here to squander our time, but to make something from it all, as good stewards of self.

He is sinister who trades in false hope,
And yet, the world beats a path to his door.
Just watch them.
They cannot get enough of his catnip.

I have seen them walk right around true hope—
The wisdom of the ages—
To get to the false.
They call evil good and good evil,
Intoxicated with the promise of ease,
And mindless that there’ll be Hell to pay later.

Woe to us!
So vulnerable still to this original scheme—
Barely able to manage our minds
And still unwilling to learn the lesson
Of this world.

We could learn to do better,
But there’s always the hope
That we don’t have to.

How blessed are those few
Who have dared to listen.

So many stop far short
Of what Jesus had in mind.

They are not listening.

Why the drive to “grow this city?”

Is it because it makes us better people? Does it make us more honest or honorable or loving?

No. It’s because it creates a bigger market in which to make money. And while money is a necessity, it is surely not the proper priority in life. Yet it ranks far too high. And so goes the drive to “grow this city”, while you’ll probably never hear of any initiative aimed at growing our character.

It’s the rare human who decides
That he is unwilling both to
Believe or to assert
Anything that is untrue.

Some never really learn to love Truth.
They keep their guard up
For fear that Truth
Might tell them things
They are still unwilling to hear.

Even though Truth has saved them
A million times,
They still will not trust her in
All matters.

Even when that woman tells the truth,
She’s lying somehow.

It is her raison d’être for now—
Until her bluff is called and
She becomes the roommate of Satan
In that eternal fire,
The existence of which she is not now
Willing to admit.