Meaningful Words (5/1/07)

As I have been thinking through these changes in my life and my vices and virtues, these poems have been returning to my mind:

There is a White
There is a white for this black of ours.
It will show itself in its hour,
But we who hold it in our hearts,
No ray of dark can penetrate our parts.

But what of this light?
What use is it, if it cannot shine bright!
Too often we turn away its source.
We take out our swords,
Made by the hand of Satan,
And slash it into oblivion.

But this light cannot die.
It cannot be swept away.
There are those who have claimed it
And the light lives on in them.

The light has a place in all of our hearts.
Every single one must play its part.
Through them this world will change.
Through them it will exchange
Its darkness for the EVERLASTING LIGHT!


The Inner War
I woke up this morning and there you were in my face
The mirror your eyes, my soul your home
My worst enemy, my best friend
Everything I used to be, everything I might be again

Come back into the dark you whisper
But I’m yearning and fighting for the light
It’s so much easier and more comfortable there

Yet I know here is where I must remain

Hide yourself, it’s so much safer
No, I must be true to the world
I cannot don the mask of security
Cannot fake the act of sincerity
When everything I do and say is just a lie

Truth is more powerful than lie
And more powerful still when backed up by life
I know the life I should live
And I pray one day
It will be the life I do live

Thank you for joining me once again as I share my life and ministry with you in the fashion. I pray God spoke to you through this sharing of His work in and through me. As Paul said to his church in Ephesus, “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14-19).

Sharing My Life (5/1/07): Virtues and Vices

For some reason I have found myself thinking a lot about vices and virtues this month. Traditionally there are 7 virtues (Humility, Generosity, Chastity, Meekness, Temperance, Love, and Fortitude) and 7 vices (Pride, Greed, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth) and each pair can be compared. Pride is self-confidence taken to the extreme and Humility is confidence in new selves as reveled through Christ. Greed is our love of money run amok, while generosity is seeing money for what it really is, a means to an end and nothing more. Lust is our natural sexual desire taken to the extreme and Chastity is containing that same sexual desire within healthy boundaries until it can be fully expressed healthily in context of marriage. Anger is really our desire to control life lashing out uncontrolled, while Meekness is realizing that God is really the One in control after all and acting as such. Gluttony letting our desire to consume control our lives and bodies, and Temperance is learning to control that desire and others. Envy desires what others have while Love sees them for whom they really are. Sloth is doing nothing believing it all to futile anyway and Fortitude is seeing what needs to be done and doing it, knowing that God will help us do what we cannot. Each vice can be seen as a perversion of the good things God created in each of us, while each virtue is learning to express that good thing in healthy ways. In that light, one can almost see evil as merely the perversion of good, yet that might make one discount evil. While I do believe that evil is good perverted, that perverted good is still very potent. A jagged blade can still cut through flesh and bone and a poison can still weaken a person even when neutralized. In our daily lives, I think, we take strides each day either in the way of virtue or the way of vice. The question is do we let our desires control us through vice or gain control over them through virtue and Christ at work in us.

Life Update (5/1/07): Some Things Change . . .

In some ways my life has changed a bit over the past month or so. Then, in some ways, it’s still the same. About a month or so ago, my parents offered to finance me going into chaplaincy full-time. I took them up on that offer and quitting my PCA job. That enables me to do some volunteer chaplaincy work at St. Joseph’s in their Chemical Dependency Dept. while continuing to work for St. John’s, thus broadening my chaplaincy experience. At the same time I also resubmitted my papers to the BGC’s Ministerial Guidance Committee and got the go ahead to proceed to my church’s Ordination Council. So, my pastors are now reading through my papers and will soon meet with the Church Board and then convene the Ordination Council. If I get through that whole process, then the actual service will probably be sometime this Fall, I think. So, these days my life is still pretty busy, it’s just busy with different things.