"Beauty is fleeting."
"All good things must come to an end."
"If it sounds too good to be true, it is."
Sage words for a lost and dying world. But everytime we find these maxims to be true, everytime their point is driven home in our lives, a little piece of our heart dies.
We ask ourselves, "What's the point, then?"
Our heart hardens through an instinctual desire to protect itself. Even those of us with faith... quaver.
We believe true enough that the wages of sin is death, but why must it be so? Why is this the world that we live in? Why must these platitudes mock us?
Truly, all but the most hardened of us really only want the life we were created for, the life that we dream about, the life that we have tasted in crumb-sized morsels, the life of a fairy tale come true... happily ever after.
One day.
Hope
American Fast
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So, let's talk about Christian fasting.
Last week I had to prep to teach Isaiah 58, which basically says "Ya'll are
fasting to get me to hear you. Why don...
3 years ago
4 comments:
Makes you kinda wish you could go and shake Adam. "What were you thinking, man?!"
Your words reminded me of the ending in "The Last Battle" when C.S. Lewis was trying to describe events equaling a 'happy ever after'. I don't think we as humans can quite grasp it all. Our thoughts move along the finite world when you're talking about infinite.
Still, the thought of a happy ever after, the HOPE that is in us, is what gets many of us through the day. At least it does for me. I can put the winter colds, the cramped living space, the drudgery of parts of my life, the disappointments that seem to arrive all too often-- I can take all that and put it into perspective when I try to glimpse the infinite.
I know, I know. Too much philosophising on too little sleep. I'll step down, now.
Wanda
Amen, Ken.
This place is like ice cream with vinegar mixed in. You can imagine what it should taste like, but in reality it is just offensive.
Interesting, Scot.
I agree that heaven is not going to be nuzzling in Abraham's bosom. I don't believe God made a mega-massive universe just so that we can barely figure out this one little globe of sand.
That given, I see the discussion differently.
I think Adam was given the tricycle, but he broke it. We still try to ride it, but we keep falling off and busting our noggins. I am not so much looking forward to getting something new that I have never seen before. I am looking forward to what I have been given working right, finally.
My heart loves now. It just fails at all the wrong moments. I want my heart fixed.
C.S. Lewis also wrote that the only way to experience joy is through pain.
Lewis concluded that only through pain, suffering, anguish, stife, and remorse can true joy, contentment, and happines be realized.
I am certain of God's promises and my faith was not bought with the lure of streets of gold, yet I yearn for a 'happily ever after'. I must conclude that there is purpose in suffering, but I must take issue with Lewis' conclusion.
Pain was not God's design, but man's. Man brought it on by his free-will, and it is both man and God that suffers from its consequence. We are promised through God's fidelity, a life of everlasting bliss, yet many of us sell our birthright for a cup of porridge.
It is because of this that Lewis has it all backwards. Coldness is only defined by the absense of heat. In the bible it says that light cannot dwell with darkness. It is light that defines darkness.
I am thankful that I will not 'get what I deserve', but I am more thankful that God's promises extend beyond our Realm Of Possibility.
-Doug
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