If I were President, I would probably not be a Christian, because the money and compromise that it takes to become president in this country doesn't square with Christian ethics. Fighting for the life of the unborn is a major priority to me. Giving the youngest and silent among us a real chance at getting born has been a long hardfought battle. We are still in the throws of the delivery of that concept in our country. Education has been created around this horrible unsavory concept and much of our lives have been detoured to revolve around the hole in our morals that has grown and grown with each addition to the supposed freedom of a woman to murder her conceived child.
That is my most great burden. I would make a law alleviating the decision and giving the decision to a Christian group of thinkers who would recreate our syllabus of education and our judicial system to be accommodating to the most vulnerable unborn and elderly who are on the chopping block of our society.
Children and the elderly would be a priority and peace making from inside our country.
There would be a waiting list to enter the country that would be contingent on care of our own citizens. those are just 2 of the issues of my concern.
How do you finish the match, when the crowd is against you, the score is against you and it seems all of your best attempts seem to fall flat?
I watched a match last week and I was rooting for the underdog in that match. I could really relate to her. I don’t always root for the underdog. The other young lady was not the most skilled player, but her conditioning was clearly superior, which is why she won. I tuned in in the very beginning of the third set. It had been 2 and a half hours of grueling tennis. I love those kind of matches, although I haven’t three hours to devote to engaging my attentions to one match, unless it is a final of some grand slam. This was a qualifier match for the Open, hardly worth my attention usually. God had some sutures to apply to some open gaping wounds in my soul, that I hadn’t even noticed.
Hallelujah, for his attention to detail. This little girl may never play another match and her ministry to my soul would have been worth the humiliation of her loss. I owe her a debt of gratitude.
My first memory of a long match was a three hour grueling match against a formidable women at Rochdale. For weeks before the match, my father prepped me for a loss. You can’t practice as much as she is practicing, he said. You have school and so you might get a game or two. Minimizing my expectation was my father’s go to coaching style. He was a very young thirty something father of skilled athletic women and he was very proud of that status.
He had learned the power of persuasion from a doting, devoted quintuplet crew. I, perhaps more than they all.
The match came amidst many other responsibilities of freshman year at a new school. A brisk September, Saturday morning tourney match came upon us. My very first new can of balls. The investment of each match. Pop, fizz and that intoxicating freshness and greening of your mind and olfactory nerves is always exhilarating. I will never grow tired of that level of expectation. 40 something years later the sense of anticipation seems to still linger. We didn’t play 3 sets, we played a 9 game single set. It took 3 long hours for us to wrestle and crawl out from under the smoke of our entanglement. I had won. I could hardly believe it. I had beat my most formidable foe. A real woman and I at 14 had triumphed. My muscles and body felt wrung out, but my ambition had received a great and huge boost that would carry me through many battles won and lost over the high school season of play and growth.
Had I lost, perhaps my ambitions would have been more tempered. I can’t imagine that.
The young lady in the match that I saw the other night took me to that inevitability of having lost that match. I felt as though I had lost and several times I did lose, but perhaps if I had lost that match, I might have gone in another direction of life altogether. My father would have been right in his estimation of my skill set and perhaps I would have tried some other expression of life skills, completely. Who can tell?
What are we learning in this world of higher education? Is it against the will of God to use the means at hand to progress and to engage our culture, for our profit and for our usefulness in the world in which we live? Does God want me to engage the world with the grace of God or retreat and hide from fear of the seepage of it’s indelible ink on my soul?
God is greater and can handle me in my engagement with the culture. I believe that there is nowhere that I can go that is apart from his ability to rescue me from others or from myself. Pastor preached against the leaven of sin in the believer’s life. What defiles us, truly keeps us from deeper intimacy with Christ. Asking God to keep us from the ungodliness of our culture is truly a Danielic task. Other cultures seem to take their religion so much more seriously than we do. They have outward adornments and they have feasts and things that everyone has to accommodate and we feel very diminished, because for the most part, Christianity has built our economy around our feasts and life. It doesn’t seem special in comparison.
It is, though and it doesn’t make our religion less special because we have built our lives around it. Christmas, Sundays, Easter, etc., are beautiful and beautifying experiences that draw us into a deeper relationship with the very one who made and sustains the world! Hallelujah! We needn’t make ourselves obnoxious and notorious for not engaging or interacting with the godlessness of the idolatrous around us. Our God is in control, the gods of the nations are the distraction of this world. The idolatry of worldliness is offensive and stinky, but we know that God is greater.
Who do we serve? Why are we learning in an ungodly environment? Can I stand, with all of these temptations and differences rubbing shoulders with me?
I most certainly can! God is greater and he empowers me to do all things for his glory! I can learn and represent Christ even in the midst of an ungodly university around me. I mustn’t get disappointed, when those who represent religion show no mercy for the torrents of sin that attack. They shoot us by ridicule for choosing to represent Christ in an uncomfortable position,ie, sports, and arts and other unusual circumstances. A man in the sports arena, is never assumed to be a heathen, but a woman, no question, she is a heathen. That isn’t true. We love Him because he first loved us and he will love us through this difficulty as well!
Lord, I trust you with my soul! Lord, I trust you with my mind! College is no match for your omnipotence and so I engage the world in which we live, with a victorious and expectant attitude for you to glorify yourself in my experiences. For the Glory of Christ Jesus and for the betterment of his church in our age! Amen
And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.
My Dearest “son of my Vows”,
what a bright and resourceful young man you have become. I feel that I can share more with you now because you have struggled some in this COVID time.I feel so much in common with you, although I am eldest child in my family and you the youngest. So much struggle has made you very sensitive and careful as a communicator and as a peacelover in the family.I love to watch you carefully tread through the minefield of personalities that it is your providence to endure.
This morning, it was the providence of God for me to begin the book of Job.I really think this is my least favorite book in the bible and yet perhaps the most endearing to me.I put on the seatbelts of my mind, every time that I get to this reading.I prayed to God to give me strength in the form of a very deep sigh! and I pressed on.
Lord,this is Christmas season and you know how this book will carry me through seasons of memories that are difficult for me to get up from.Yes I was this impertinent to the Lord, all the while knowing that He can carry me if I fall from this Christmas meditation. “You need this right now”. I felt that His silence and comfort confirmed this and I pressed on. Of course I can choose to wriggle free from this providence and go on to a happier book.A less personal book, etc.
We were in the book of Job as a family in devotions, when Baby Benjamin passed away. It always carries me right back to the last day that I held him in my lap and cradled his tiny head in my hands adoringly.
I considered rushing through the book seeing that it is 42 chapters long I thought perhaps if I read 6 books a day I can get through it in 7 days instead of dragging this all through the Christmas season.I knew in my heart that this wasn’t going to edify my soul to rush through this difficult and blessed expression of God’s heart to me.So I am trudging through it and I intend to drink every lesson from God as He holds my hand and walks me through the many years of Job’s life and the many years of my life where there are questions and lets me see His sovereignty, even here on earth, before I face Him in the true judgment. I trust Him to settle my soul.I will be 59 this year and I trust that God will renew my strength in this reading as He has so many times before.
I ask for your prayers and hope that you will grow to know and love the Lord and see Him working in your life in His wonderful and sometimes scary ways!Love, Mom
You don't run, as I watched you on the courts this past Saturday. You bound from one place to another. It is no wonder you get so tired so fast. You leap in the air, as though you could get from one place to another in one leap.
I hadn't noticed that before about you. I would practice small step running and then go back to the leap. The speed is great and the effort is awesome, but you might need to conserve some of your energy for the long haul. I think that is necessary for you; not just because you get tired, but for a life lesson. Sometimes we must leap into things, but more often it takes more than one step to get from one place to the other.
And he sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and besought him, and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be precious in thy sight.
Jesus met with Elijah in the mountain.Could it be that Jesus was discussing with him the parts of his soul that were engaged when he called fire down from heaven on those troops?Was fear a motivating factor?Were there things that Elijah still could have learned from John the Baptist’s response in impending doom?Jesus was truly the greatest example of not calling down fire from heaven, with all authority under heaven.He went the final mile of the journey with no animosity against the entire earth.Because He could see that He was saving souls and not destroying.
For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
The Earth Our Gift?
God said it was GOOD.
Spending all of it’s resources upon our own lusts, seems to have been our continual race, from the very beginning.
Man’s disobedience, a. Eve wanted a promotion to God.b. Adam wanted to promote her.c.The demotion of the race to below Satan. d. Jesus ready stands to save us.
Now Jesus changes our self centered interests into other centered interests, Namely not destroying the planet, in our tirades like Cain killed his brother.
Cain really thought it was the purpose of God for him to get away with that and built a religion around his covering of his sin, while in actuality Abel’s blood was crying out and every martyr’s blood cries to God. In the self serving religious acceptance of murderous and planet killing piety lives to shake his and her impious fist in the face of the merciful blessings of God’s good gift of the earth and the relationships that we have in it.
No, Eve didn’t receive her promotion to God status that she intended through eating and disobeying as the Serpent had promised.
He proved a liar.
Instead of tracing their steps back to the relationship that was lost, we march through the wilderness of self promotion and consumption, instead of repentance and restoration.
God shows us the way back to Himself.Salvation of our souls and Joy to the world in true piety and commitment to our relationships.Stop killing your brother by dumping those polutants in the water.Stop blaming your wife for your lack of leadership in the grand scheme of your physical footprint upon the earth.These are the ways that we today blow up our parts of the earth.Lets try taking the part of the serpent and tempting ourselves to promote God to His own right place in authority over us.
“While rocks and hills and plains will also repeat the SOUNDING JOY!”
Life, Life cried Christian when leaving the city of destruction. "Pilgrim's Progress"
Proverbs 8:36
But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me lovedeath.
In our day, death is a constant subject of entertainment.
I love that we were able to watch that episode of Sherlock, while you were 16.
That is my favorite age of memory.I am sorry that I haven’t any more children to keep me remembering 16 years old.
I had many responsibilities at 16 and much cumbersome emotional baggage.I knew a lot about Jesus, but not yet did I know Him, whom to know is life eternal.I often asked Him to show Himself to me, but I really didn’t know Him.I prayed a lot, then.I talked about Jesus and taught classes about Jesus and had memorized the documents of Vatican II and I still didn’t know Jesus.
Hell had a great hold on my soul.I meditated on death, as much as on Jesus.Bitterness and sullenness was the continued condition of my life.I couldn’t even find happiness in the greatest victories of my teens.Death seemed always to loom over my mind and emotion.
I think that the imagination of Sherlock entering into a locked room with his arch-nemesis, is one of the best human depictions of Hell, that I can imagine.It is eternal! And yet, he escaped that dark sentence! What should he have done? And yet there was no shock that He had missed an eternal flame, by a hair. Praise is in order, even if you don't know Him. Delay of the sentence, is no real and lasting comfort. To some, it emboldens them. Don't be one of them! The sentence of death is coming to us all, in some form or another, but the sentence of Hell is reserved for some. Don't be one of them!
God owes us Hell, if we don't make our calling and election sure on this earth! Jesus is the remedy!
Hell is the complete darkness and pain, mental and physical that anyone can imagine, and it is worse than that.We must remember that we have enjoyed the mercies of God for a lifetime, without any payment.So if we leave this life, having repudiated that greatness, we deserve every bit of it.That is what makes the pain of that Hell all the more excruciating.You could have taken the hand of the Good God that was right in front of you, your entire life.
But God was merciful and waiting.And God was amazingly gracious and we have been blessed with air and food and raiment and all good things and we despised it.
Our enemy had deceived us to make us think we deserved all of that.And if we believe him, we will be locked with him for eternity with no merciful hand of God to stand between us and his taunts and torments.
God has given the remedy.Jesus paid that price already!We need only trust in Him!Halleluia, for redemption by grace through faith in Jesus’ Name!
Are you sleeping? Tweeting? Searching? Twisting? Listening? Or thinking during the debate?
Morning bells are ringing, as the song goes...
Ding ding ding...that is how our hearing has dulled in recent times... The picture of yesteryears family sitting in front of the radio or TV set and listening intently to points and reasoning seems all but gone to a tweeting and interactive multitaskers who were certain that they were engaged in listening to last nights debate with relish. Seriously?
The stats on who was the most searched and who was the most comments on is telling! The lack of substance and substantive belittling of any real directive approaches seems the order of the day.
The song should go
ARE YOU THINKING BROTHER JOHN?
Perhaps you heard what was said, but impossible dreams are more palatable, than real achievable ambitions. Sooooooo sad!
I had a delightful conversation with a 6 year old about Zombies yesterday. I remember my own fascination with Zombies as a young person. I was a realist as a child, for the most part; but I did have a bit of a time looking into Zombies, when I discovered the Thriller video, a couple of years ago...
I was fascinated, just like my little friend and I was in my mid forties in age. Not anywhere near a child and you would think that I would have outgrown the Zombie stage, but I could really get into what Michael Jackson had captured in our imaginations of Zombies.
I think that there should be a Christian version of a zombie game and I think there should be a way that you could incorporate the way that we do spiritual battle, in a game that would help these children know how to keep from becoming the prey of such real spiritual darkness. I don't think we do enough to prepare our children for the battle for their own souls that they need to fight. We are talking about alot of grown people stuff, all the time and we forget to stoop to the level where the real fight for the future is...
Jesus Changes us personally and culturally, when invited to participate in our processes.
Lion of Judah!
Savior and Ruler of all!
When I look at Tolkien’s observations of our culture and our racial culture, which I call Eurocentric Christianity: it seems he has a maternal sense of the ailments of our time and perspectives. We missed this and that truth in scripture. We emphasize this truth to the complete ambiguity of all the other commands of God. where is the rounding of our infected perspective that will truly help us to progress.
He said we keep reaching lower and lower into the mire of muck to create new concepts in Christendom. We come up with freaks of scientific expressions of humanity that have very little resemblance to humanity in their behaviors. They have a warfare to fight and we if we would keep our souls in tact, must war against those creations of our own hands and wrestle them into compliance to Christ. This is true of the Sons of Ham as much as the Sons of Japheth. But we haven’t studied our pagan tendencies and our Christian consistencies. We seem to think in Ham that if we are children of the slaves our souls are “in Tact” {Young Gifted and Black). We must fight the good fight in our education as well as those for whom the bells toll{tongue in cheek}.
God lends mothers who are devoted and praying a discerning eye and ear and God lends to teachers who are discerning and praying a hand at living our culture and raising our culture to a greater level of conformity to Christ. It is not just about what we do in Church to worship God. It is about our labors whether they are wood, hay or stubble and whether our trust is truly in Christ or is it in our cultural perspective about Christ.
I love the Jonah Movie Veggietales, but I find the imbalance of our perspective expressed. Are all Blacks angels in the belly of the whale, singing our culture to Glory? I don’t think so. I think that God is trying us with one issue of our culture especially. If you cannot spend yourself as people have spent themselves for the sake of slavery on that issue of killing the unborn, perhaps you’ll not get a second chance for your soul or for your culture. IS there always a second chance? God give grace and mercy, but surely He has lines of demarkation that we mustn’t cross. When we stand and defend the killing of the unborns we are standing against Him.
“Those who hate Him love death” Give us Grace Dear Lord, to steer our society from the precipice of death and give us a guidance toward life. Amen
I do hate having my conversation overshadowed by others with my children. It happens everyday. Nobody really listens to mom. So I am usually a fly on the wall as the menfolk pontificate about their considerations. I do love that part of my job.
This morning was no different, there was a topic placed on the table and the gentlemen yacked about it. Ezra said, what kind of fellow would you be, if you were saved as a child, to Enoch. I thought I knew what he was asking. I thought I could have rephrased the question for brevity's sake. They threw that out as unnecessary. The Charles Walker in them all, completely disregarded any invasion of female thought into the conversation and chewed, as if on a bone the question on the table.
I have learned to respect the consideration process of the Walker Family, even though the mother's contribution to the conversation is always completely disregarded as valid to the point. They chew, and banter back and forth with words and thoughts and no real answer, seems to come out of the conversation. Their whole conversation seems to say, "I respect you and your thought process, big brother. I hope you know that!" I love seeing how men tell eachother those kinds of things. I love how little brothers say I love you to their elder brothers, without kissing and hugging them. This was a morning of a verbal hug.
Ezra seemed to be saying I am filling my mind with your character to share where I am able, whether in writing or just as an example in a conversation. My treasure chest is filled with the present and now I am trying to put the pieces together that made you the man that you are. Would you give me a few more details? The details of who my brother is is important to me.
When I read EB White's family remembrances, it gave me a cultural expression of the spiritual battle and how important family is to the spiritual battle in every era. I hope you get to write your story of your family remembrances. It is a wonderful mantle to enjoy.
What a great time we had going out to the computer store. It was very interesting how you found a great youthful thrill in going up that incline in the car on Mooresville Rd. It made me reminisce about my times in the car as a young person and how very rarely it was just mom and dad and me. We had group thrills going up inclines with everybody bouncing around in their seats, minus the seat belts of today. The wonderful thrill of watching my brothers' eyes dilate when we went under the trestle and the bounce when we hit a pothole on the way to Grandma's house or the subway to drop off dad to go to work. I am so grateful that you let us into your excitement and sweet thrills of riding and computer stuff. It is not easy to share those kinds of things with "the parents". I am glad that you do.
I will always remember the miraculous monitor that was at the end of that roller coaster ride to the computer shop. I hope that you will too!
You are back from the far country of NY. Headed into the tunnel of Sophomore year in HS. It is amazing that each of the children that have followed me into that tunnel that I have watched have exhibited the same symptoms. Sophomoric thinking is a tunnel to traverse, but not a destination to inhabit. We must think sophomoricly to get to wisdom. Me, myself and I are the center of sophomoric thinking and they are where we think from. Our own selves is the center of our mind. What does this have to do with me? Where am I going to use this? Why do I have to do this? These are the questions of the sophomore and they must begin your investigation of life. You must investigate life and this must begin with questions, but the importance of categorizing questions into valid and invalid questions is an important quality that some scholastic endeavors might rob from you. I see this often. They say there are no stupid questions and there are no questions that are not worth asking. That is a lie! If you begin with the premise of there is no God, you have every possibility of entering a tunnel of unbelief that you might not live long enough to get back from. That stupid question of is God relevent is not only invalid, it is terminal to your body and to your soul. Don't let them feed you that stupidity. Keep the questions of your sophomorism and categorize them as you go on your quest for knowledge. Stay hungry and don't let people stifle your hunger for the knowledge and the part of the puzzle of Life that God has you on the earth to solve. Don't stay a sophomore! Go into the tunnel take out those diamonds and come out a better man and follow God who has never been a sophomore and is
