Without Christ in our lives, we are like once beautiful stars which are no longer part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of time and a world which doesn’t care.
Without Christ in our lives it’s as if we are repeatedly slapped down by the violence of circumstance, and there, left bleeding in a sad lonely place, we are trying desperately to get a little recognition to validate us in hopes someone will hear ….it’s like trying to catch the tail of a comet.
Without Christ in our lives, we are left as only an image with no reflection, no longer a light, glimmering like a beacon of hope in the dark, but only a weightless inkling, a faint shadow, lost in lightless gloom.
We need a cornerstone in our lives, without which we are part of a crooked building whose walls tip, sag, and lean, out of plumb and out of level from it’s beginning, destined to collapse under the weight of it’s own wrongness. We need right definitions for words like prosperity and peace, by which only come from the standard of the Cornerstone, the Keystone, and the Champion, Jesus Christ, the Lord God from whom all blessings flow.
We can all think a lot of thoughts and walk a lot of paths and pavements between sun up and sun down. There’s a whole lotta thinking going on. For many of us who remember the God-moments of our lives, in those moments, memory, once again, becomes reality, and for those of us who have come home and rejoined the stars in the sky, our resolve to continue our relentless pursuit of Jesus can instantly be as clear as stars on a warm summer night.
Without Christ, life is built on the fading and passing away. God invented the idea of a corner and the nail. Had He not created the concept of a corner, all lines would just run into the distance, unswerving; had He not created the idea of a nail, our hopes and dreams would find no purchase to grip and remain. On Calvary’s hill, the blood of Jesus ran into every corner of the cross, and with each nail in His limbs, our salvation was made possible. The corners were small but they gave us something to brace against, and the nails, the littles that held much, paved the road for us to come home.
God, in His wisdom and kindness, saw that mankind needed the idea of a corner to brace against, and that of a nail, the little which holds much….His being our cornerstone means those who are the fallen sparks can come home and be part of the sky again, we can stop and breath and smell and listen again, all in the presence of the Lord who makes all things new as spoken of in Rev21:5. The cornerstone says to write His words down because they are trustworthy and true…. and to “write them down” doesn’t mean we jot them out on a scrap of paper to come back at some imaginary time in the future and ponder them….it means to “think on these things”, study what is trustworthy and true to understand and get the words of our Keystone and Champion down in our heart and head.
Upon becoming part of the sky again, our feet are settled on stone, squared by the standard, made plumb and level by One who is higher than ourselves, we stand no longer on shifting sands of wishful thinking, no longer swept away by some distant, laughing ghost of a fading dream without God.”

c

Be kind to yourself…..the Lord not only calls us to be kind to our neighbor, but also to ourselves. Think about it: if you had a friend who spoke to you the same way you speak to yourself, how long would you allow that person to be your friend? So many of us are very unkind to ourselves…..we condemn ourselves in the mirror with demeaning names which no one hears but us. God doesn’t talk to you that way, so, why do you? Maybe some of us have an attitude that says, “if i were God, i wouldn’t like me either”….but that’s not what the Lord does….He is kind and His kindness changes us.

Jesus is the completion of redemption, and the balance of reconciliation, He has been speaking to you before you knew it was Him speaking to you. He is the One who gives us images to familiarize us with Himself. He is God who whispers us to sleep when we are restless, then rustles His God-fingers against the earth until it rains love in our lives, making wet parched hearts to sing again, even in the moments when we would have preferred to stop living.

i got a phrase of this from somewhere, don’t know where, i just jotted down the rhyming rhythm on a slip of paper.

Even in all our mundane ways, we shall know God. His whispers invite us in closer to Him, hearing with greater exactness, to not be satisfied sitting at a distance from Him….He whispers, words low to the ground which are our resolution to key decisions, little words which nudge our rescue from dark nights of the soul, promptings which inspire us to grow up…..they echo down the long hall between the shadow of conflict and peace, uncovering and healing our disgraces which are felt but rarely expressed.

Both “joy” and “happy” have a fire in them. Happy is a blessedness in our head, meaning it is a subjective word. Happy has to do with intent and posture, and depends on external circumstances.
“Joy” also has a flame, but it’s a word of internal life and grace, divine breath, and light. It is an internal blessedness which rises from our insides. Nehemiah 8:10, “…joy of the Lord”.

When arrogance and pride step in the room, it’s like saying someone armed and willing to draw blood is in our company. Withing the main Hebrew word for pride is that it comes to the table weaponized and willing to get gain by struggle. Pride says, “Play fair!”, God says, “Don’t play fair, do more than fair.”

10.22.2015. To be aged and elderly, from God’s perspective, paints a picture of someone who is nearing their vanishing point. “Old” as a Hebrew verb, denotes a state or condition. The word for “old age”, in the scripture of first mention being Gen21:2, referrs to Sarah. Into God’s description of “old age” is built time and a crown, honor and faithfulness. The letters of the word imply, as a man or woman of God in our “old age”, time and quality become evident upon us as we are approaching our final form…the truth of God is concealed in our heart, which is why i say that the idea of getting old, literally means “one approaching their vanishing point”…..As we age our “waters are closed up” so to speak, our joints don’t work like they used to, our eyes and ears aren’t as sharp, our endurance to run with the big dogs has faded, and neither do we recover as quickly as we used to. Our prospects of marriage and having more children come to a close. But God has given those of us who are elderly a value as wise advisers, which is truly an invaluable resource in today’s economy which seems to employ such little wisdom. If wisdom is better than gold, then our Godly seniors are truly in their golden years.