You Will Know Them By Their Fruits

May grace and peace be yours in abundance
through knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

His divine power has bestowed on us
everything that makes for life and devotion,
through the knowledge of him
who called us by his own glory and power.
Through these, he has bestowed on us
the precious and very great promises,
so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature,
after escaping from the corruption that is in the world
because of evil desire. For this very reason,
make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue,
virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control,
self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion,
devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.
- 2 Peter 1:2-7

The above passage was from a reading at Daily Mass earlier this month. It is a passage that has remained with me throughout the days since. And today, among many others, I have been feeling movements of the heart and the grace that is indistinguishably of the Lord. I haven't remained faithful in my love to Him these days. I have filled my head with doubts, with failures of my heart and failures of my mind. The greatest danger is the lacking of trust in Him and in His plan for each of us.

The most debilitating failure of all is that lack of trust. Once the trust is gone in a relationship, how can either of those involved be able to find common ground with the other? The relationship enters the period of a storm, a raging storm. It enters turmoil that cannot be escaped from natural means, from temporal means. For forgiveness is not a temporal way of life. To forgive is to "lose" something that one once possessed, a claim against another. And so line up the claimants, one might say. Yet, in forgiveness there is salvation. In forgiveness there is trust. In trust there is faith. In faith there is hope. In hope there is love. And in love there is God. And with God, nothing is impossible. No power or principality, no height or depth can come between us and God, between us and His love.

So what will come of our actions in this life? What are our fruits, if you will, of what we sow now in our thoughts and in our deeds? How do we treat the others in our lives and think not only of our concerns but the other in our midst? As Jesus had said:

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing,
but underneath are ravenous wolves.
By their fruits you will know them.
Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
Just so, every good tree bears good fruit,
and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit,
nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down
and thrown into the fire.

So by their fruits you will know them."
- Matthew 7:15-20

If we are to remain in Him, through the storms and through the troubles, then we must love. If we have not love then we are nothing. We are merely a clashing cymbal or a resounding gong. It means nothing if we gain all the things of the world but do not have love. It is in this love that the good fruits are found. I read recently in a discernment book a particularly charming quote from St. Thomas More, whom I could go on for hours, and it simply states a very succinct axiom which reads: "In the end it is not a matter of reason, it is a matter of love."

In all actions patience and love are required. We cannot fulfill through actions with which we are not first filled with. So love could not—and still cannot—be simply reasoned into existence. It requires faith to come into existence. It must come into existence in the form of Man to redeem what was lost in the actions of our free will, to redeem what Man truly is supposed to be—an image of the Divine.

And so there is but one thing to do then and that is love. May you find trust and peace in what the Lord has given you this day.

Peace be with you.

A Prayer at Eventide

Lord, I come to You,
My whole self trembling.
Tell me of my wrongs.

Lord, I see You now,
Passing before my broken soul.
Show me Your way of peace.

Lord, I feel Your presence,
Burning into the depths of my soul.
Give me grace through Your counsel.

Lord, I know Your love,
Overflowing in my heart.
Turn my mourning into Your joy.

See my devotion, O Lord,
To the Call You have given me.
Give me peace through Your love.

Feel my yearning, O Lord,
To know You even more.
Show me the paths to Your wisdom.

Come to me, O Lord,
To guide me in my sleeping and my waking.
Tell me of Your will.

Give me peace in tonight's tranquil rest
And resolve each day to love all of You
With a heart so greatly blessed.

Love Made Renewed

Going and going...
What's going on?
What's new?

Falling and falling...
Where are we going to land?
Why are we so few?

Thinking and thinking...
What's going to come next?
How are we to get through?

It's through faith, hope, and love...
And through His Son, the Christ—love made renewed.

Eyes for Tomorrow

Summer days drive on
Day by day passes
How so are you missed...

The words of a poet
Scribbled down
Have no resting place...

They float from pen
Up currents away
Drifting with the clouds...

Beauty seen
Is now gone
Love given
Is now missing...

Eloquence is hollow
When words of joy
Turn to sorrow
And eyes of sadness
Turn to a brighter tomorrow.

A Millennial's Take: Old Media vs. New Media

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'

In a world where the old dinosaurs of media are trying to put a cap on new creation of new ways to distribute to the masses, we have a new group of us out there not accepting the status quo of the world.

We cross ideological divides. We ignore our differences of thought, accept our differences of background, and celebrate our common similarities as they exist.

We do not take "no" for an answer. We take it as a challenge to do better, to strive to improve not only our place but also the world around us. We don't accept the answers of the old vanguard at face value. We question thoughtfully and fully what is presented to us with an eye of discretion. We do not want to be lectured to on what direction to take. We want to be talk to—like human beings.

We are disappointed in the old way of doing things but don't think they should be completely ignored like was done by other recent generations that came before us whose complete rebellion was the answer but was hardly the solution to the generational problem.

We are constantly yearning to find the answer to the Human Condition. We are striving to bring peace to a world torn by strife that is consumed in "us-against-them" rhetoric. We are constantly dreaming not of impossible dreams but of ones grounded in reality and bits of fantasy all the same.

We are the 9-11 Generation. We are the Columbine Generation. We are the Internet Generation. We are the generation of the Virginia Tech tragedy. We are the Echo Boom Generation. We are the Millennial Generation. We are a generation that defies labels and wishes to transform what might be a tragedy or loss and turn it into something greater.

We are a generation born into a world where terrorism and our fight against it is all we have ever known our adult lives. The Cold War is but a distant dream and a harder one to juxtapose against the present day's wars. We are the generation of disappearing borders.

And yet the Old Way wishes to continue putting up the borders against creative change and against innovation in media, in technology, and even in the way we think and live. The Old Way wishes to hold back the winds of change, the winds of new creativity never before seen on such a scale. Why? Why must they try to stop the inevitable? The eventual?

Because they are dinosaurs of understanding in a new world of connectivity, of continuous mixing and mashing. They cannot see beyond the old paradigm of locked creativity where things were static and not dynamic. They have limited their reach of understanding like every aging generation before and like every generation in the ages to come.

What we all must realize as Americans and as free people of the world is that we must find new ways, inventive ways to bridge the new with the old, to bridge the traditional with the cutting edge, or we as a civilization as a whole will cease to exist.

We are the Millennials, and we are ready for change.

This Gift

This gift is one I wish to give back every chance I can...
One I wish to be in every breath I take...
In every step I take...
In every ounce of my soul...
In every instance I take a stand.

Giving back what was not mine to begin with...
Giving back what is only a fleeting moment...
A moment of inspiration, of drive, of love.

If only every moment were like that moment of creation...
If only every moment were as luminous as the time of creation...
Then the world would truly be on fire...
Then the world would be afire in love.

Terra Firma

I shall have to categorize this posting as one of the more negative ones lately. I am deep into the end of a semester, and I am craving to get away. Away from the pressures I have put on myself, the failures I have set up for myself, and for the sadness I've caused.

There is a great deal assumed in how I approach life. It's not that I must have the answers. I feel like I must always be making progress towards whatever the goal may be. If I am distracted whether it is boredom or exhaustion or a mix of both, it presents a particularly difficult problem. I must have some solid ground to work off of to make my way down the road. I have a need for some terra firma.

General satisfaction, or what some might call happiness, is not so much about the amount but the quality of life. I'm not entirely dissatisfied but I feel like I am accomplishing less with more time. I see my failures and I cringe. I continue to get the same hands. I'm treading water.

What do you do when you start treading water? Do you stop? Or do you change your approach? Of course you don't stop. You can't stop...else you'll sink to the bottom of the lake. You've got to adjust and make changes.

As a kid, we'd have at home what was generally called a "junk drawer." Everything that either didn't have a place or was frequently used went into that drawer. Eventually that drawer would be too full of literal junk and it would need to be reorganized until it could be remotely functional. It seemed like everything this semester went into that junk drawer for me. Relationships. Classes. Projects. Work Plans. Future plans. Current plans. Yesterday's lunch. Tomorrow's future.

Why can't I shake this funk? Why do I feel so ineffective? So useless? Yes, a flattering self-portrait, one to garner many admirers... No. I can't shake this funk because I have put everything into that single drawer. There's no organization—at best it's cluttered organization.

Why is it so cluttered? Old baggage. Old expectations. Debts, dreams, and distractions. Why? That's what I am asking myself now. Why? Why isn't the future clear?

Well, the future is no murkier than the past. The past has the tendency to crystallize the best... Ever heard of The Judd's country song Grandpa, Tell Me 'Bout the Good Old Days?

Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days
Sometimes it feels like this world's gone crazy
And Grandpa, take me back to yesterday
When the line between right and wrong
Didn't seem so hazy

Did lovers really fall in love to stay
And stand beside each other, come what may?
Was a promise really something people kept
Not just something they would say?
Did families really bow their heads to pray
Did daddies really never go away?
Oh, Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days

Grandpa, everything is changing fast
We call it progress, but I just don't know
And Grandpa, let's wander back into the past
And paint me the picture of long ago

Did lovers really fall in love to stay
And stand beside each other, come what may?
Was a promise really something people kept
Not just something they would say?
Did families really bow their heads to pray
Did daddies really never go away?
Oh, Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days
Oh, Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days

I have a tendency to not allow for the positive outlook for the future. It ends up being that I look to the past either as better or that the future isn't good enough or that I haven't done enough to justify the past or warrant my future. Odd, I suppose, but it's me. Like I said before, I need to feel like I've made progress. Or else, this might show that I have a great lack of patience with myself, if only at times.

And sad to say, after five years, I feel as though little if any progress has been made on my behalf. I just see a larger stack of papers in a never-ending game of shifting bureaucracy that's my life at present.

I am surrounded by friends. But I don't feel their touch as much any more. Any progress made in this area is lost to the feeling of being alone to myself in a crowded room. This is not because I don't have a lack of important things to discuss or a fervent desire to care for the other in my midst, rather it is because I am completely incompetent to order this task promptly and thus proceed with patience. I push myself back in circles. I am now back to where I started five years ago, no more and no less.

And what do I have to show for it as of late? An Aggie Ring, yes. But not the satisfaction that I am going into a future I am pleased with. How could something so good go so horribly wrong? Poor management? Poor willpower? Poor desire? I don't think it's any of these three. Maybe it's a combination but not just any one of these three.

How can I focus on my personal matters if I can't first solve my academic/financial ones? It's the basic order of needs that comes to rear its ugly head. Shelter and food are first, all other needs follow behind.

I think the "easiest" decision **on paper** for me right now would be to get my degree and go to the seminary. Financially this makes sense for what I'm looking at. Spiritually it is okay. Academically it would be fine...I love to learn things I am actually interested in... But there is a chink in my armor of surety here, too. It's almost as if God has decided to put an anti-hubris device in the models coming off the assembly line when I was born. There's always another fault that comes forth to break the assuredness of any situation.

However, that is not what I want. I will not be a priest. There, I've said it. I won't go as far as cannot, just as Thomas (of Doubting Thomas fame) could not himself say, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." I just as well might make the same demand now for my own personal belief in His plans in my case.

I am not emotionally fit to be a priest. I know there is something deep within me, that's been there for the longest of times, where I feel the underlying need—no, compulsion—to give my all to another—my attention, my wealth, my understanding, my compassion, my love. You probably don't know what it is like to have this well inside only to be made, in essence, to learn in exercises of patience that God—and therefore love—requires it.

Yes, both priest and husband require such a self-giving sacrifice, but it is in the latter that I see myself most clearly, even if I don't see my future as clearly as I once did. It is in the latter I see requiring the greatest patience and, for me, the greatest love. For if one freely chooses God who has loved him since the beginning, is it not merely a return of the favor? However, is it not greater that one chooses to love someone who has not loved him first? Is this not a mirror image of God's love of each of His creation? And so I must emulate the One who has loved me first, bringing what love I have been given to another. For we do not know love until we are first loved. And it is in knowing His love for me that I shall have to not only return the favor but bring that love to others as well.

And so this compulsion requires that what wells inside of me be nurtured and tended to even though the garden remains fallow and untouched. That the brambles be trimmed back, even if the guest does not arrive as planned or even if she makes plans and then promptly runs away never to return again, for a garden elsewhere, one more distant and greener than can possibly be cultivated in the taxed soil of the garden's surroundings.

Why should you care about all of this of all of this timid psychobabble? I don't have an answer for that. But what was once private now is public, and even so, I am beginning to feel some peace and satisfaction on this stasis I am experiencing right now. I am simply saddened I have gotten myself into a cynical wheel of sorrow.

Dreams rarely come true, especially when one cannot keep those dreams—and wishes of happiness—straightened out for longer than five minutes. After those five minutes the world comes crashing back down, saying to me: "you stupid boy." If only I would learn and be at peace more often. If only, but there is still hope ahead. If there is anything at all, there is still hope, hope for solid ground.

I Must Do...

It is in a moving peace and a moving joy that I am called to action this day. I am a man who is not happy to leave good enough alone. I am at heart a doer. I don't necessarily want the answer I have to be the right one, but every day I feel I must move closer to that understanding.

I must accomplish progress in the plans set before me so that I might not become discouraged. In short, I must have hope.

But if I have not the faith in my heart that the hope of a new day is to come, then how am I to live? I must live with love. I must show, as Pope Benedict said in conference with U.S. Catholic educators Thursday in Washington, D.C., "intellectual charity" not only to my own work but that of my peers and my professors. It is needed in everything I do to make it an act of charity, an act of love. In all things love and prayer must pervade. That is the mark of a holy life.

Let us be moved each day to find peace and joy in pursuing intellectual charity in all its glorious forms.

Out of Chaos Comes Order

Some fellow peers and I had a discussion on whether there was such a thing as ordered chaos. I was firmly against such a notion simply because all I could see before me was chaos and no order to things lately. Slowly in the week since the discussion, I am finding the opposite to be true both in the physical and in the spiritual sense. Even though all has come from a chaos, it has been ordered in such a way even from the start by a hand so slight, a hand so delicate that the intricacies of what might look to be chaos but is truly order beneath it all.

I don't have another moral essay today as was the case this past weekend, but I am starting to notice that even in the most chaotic of times order—and therefore peace—can be found if only we rest our restless hearts and listen to the Word of God in the midst of our lives.

The Embrace

These are just a few words from a writing session in the Commons from a couple of weeks ago... So much is left to be done and there's so little time to do it within. If I don't have peace, how can I give it? I'm still working on that one.

The Embrace

Quiet, silent
The winds of the Heart
Do blow...

With kindness
The words of the Heart
Do flow...

With patience
The will of the Heart
Is known...

With great care
The love of the Heart
Is sown...

All grace,
All mercy
From this Sacred Heart
Does flow.

How fair,
So very fair
Is this Heart,
One so eternally blest.

How saving,
So very saving,
In troubling times
Is this Heart of Mercy.

Glory and honor,
Worship and adoration,
Is due this Heart,
This Heart of Mercy.

Worthy of praise,
Endless praise,
Is due this Heart,
This Heart of Mercy.

Set me afire,
Heart of Mercy,
This very day...
Afire in love.

Grace me with a love
Blind to this world,
To give to this world,
No matter its Fall.

Grant me,
Sacred Heart Most Holy,
A calming peace to serve,
To serve you completely.

Give me peace
To accept this world,
To live in this world
But not for this world.

Give me courage
To love still more
Even after we part
From this sacred embrace.

Shower me in grace
To love this day
And every day from now;
Give to me this embrace.

An Abandonment to God's Will

If there has been anything with resonance for me within the past week it has been this phrase buried within a weekday homily. The context of its placement to Scripture matters not as Scripture is wholly based on the concept and therefore would require me to quote the whole of it in order to grasp what is before me in the present.

The resonance is, in addition to this, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth, where in the first chapter he declares quite skillfully that man's innate desire is to know not so much his innocuous beginnings but what future is to become of him. So much so is this the case that man wishes to tear asunder the curtain to see the realization of his salvation. We are so much in search of the Prophet within our lives that we can often times lose sight of much else.

It is in contemplation and discussion that we see Jesus the Prophet come to bear His Truth. It is not an easy Truth to accept nor is it a popular one. The road is tough simply because of the fact that much of the time we don't realize we aren't on it and that we should be. We would much rather go through torment than apply our gifts of life because that road would appear to be the easier one.

I would suppose quite the opposite. I would say that we should take the more difficult of paths before us, the one that appears to be the harder of the two, not because the road would be the path of least resistance but because in that path of privation and uncertainty not only do we find ourselves and the meaning of ourselves but so too God and the meaning of God Himself—in some of the most ironic of ways.

We may laugh and we may cry on this path of privation for as it says in Proverbs, "Even in laughter the heart may be sad, and the end of joy may be sorrow" (Proverbs 14:13). However, it is in both sorrow and joy that we find our place amongst everything of Creation.

More often than not with the more answers that one receives, the more questions arise in one's heart. This has certainly rung true for me. I know not the route of this path of privation, but I do know that through a certain amount of abandonment of the extraneous excesses of worrying in life to God and His will while making willful choices in line with His teachings, I can find peace within Him and within His Divine Plans. These are not plans for fame or plans for fortune. No, desires of such things of lust ought to be left for the pettier of our kind. What we ought to seek for is the love of our fellow man.

Empathy is an oft-shunned quality amongst the most masculine of the world. They are somehow above or supposed to be above showing an honest and forthright concern not only for himself but for the Other in his midst. Man, in the modern sense, is meant to wall himself in a fortress impenetrable, on a fort atop a hill that cannot be breached by emotion. Ah, but when the walls of this mighty fortress are breached and the hillsides scaled, what a disappointing loss for this kind of man within!

It is the man who places himself like a city on a river without defenses, who freely trades with others on this body of water that is scoffed, derided, and laughed at in our society. He is the "weaker" of the two men. He is more open to attack and therefore defeat at the hands of his foe. And so goes the reasoning of our day.

But I ask of you this: which of these men are truer to his own self? Which is truer to his innate being? Who bears the face of Christ more?

I declare it to be the latter of the two. It is the man whose defenses are not walled up, who freely trades amongst the others upon the body of water and thus leaves himself open to attack.

All is not what it seems. Is the more defended one the man who spends all his resources of life to defend himself inside his inner keep and ready himself for a siege war that will last him his existence until he takes his last warm breath and expires from this earth? Or could it be the man who appears to be the weaker of the two who has a treasury not of bullets and bombs or machines and mortars but has instead a treasury of priceless gems and golden implements to ward off the despair of the looming attack?

It is the Pearl of Great Price that resides at the heart of the man of the second kind. He will not be overcome with defeat or slaughter. It is he who will rise above any challenge at hand.

And yet men of our day are cut down, are demoralized in the struggle, and lose faith in their way to greatness, to peace, and to salvation. We are the ones fed insecurity and concern of what the world thinks of our actions, our beliefs, and our very real and personal love for the Other in our lives. Somehow we must show the man of the first kind to the outside world but be the one of the second to only a select few confidants, a short list expected never to grow very large. How realistic is this even for the most "typical" masculine men of the current day's sense and all its varied sensibilities? None whatsoever.

We should reject this unrealistic and destructive demand upon our manhood. We should reject the demoralizing vices and temptations of lust and greed that pollute not only the judgment of our minds but the love of our hearts. We should reject the chains of sin to which we have bound ourselves in taking what appeared to be the easier road at the onset. How else are we to become the true men we are to be? How else can we be better examples of a fully sacrificial love to the Other in our lives? How else are we to be Christ to the Other in our midst?

There is no other way but to give in abandonment our selfish desires to God's will in order to fully transform what was once the broken man found in the archetype of Adam and thus be transfigured into a more Christ-like—and therefore more holy—example in a world beset with problems and very few men of good worth ready to solve these problems. It is in this transformation and transfiguration that we become those men of good worth to truly be the providers that we have been called to be and ought to be in a world torn asunder in strife.

Words of Kindness

Your words of kindness
Shower my heart with great joy.

Your smile of sincerity
Strengthens me with much peace.

Your eyes of compassion
Draw me even closer to you.

Your soft loving touch
Gives my heart warmth so great.

Inspiration you have given,
An inspiration to carry on.

At the start,
My breath was taken away;
Your beauty entered in.

But your words,
Those very sweet words,
Have been greater yet...
Planted in my heart which sings.

You compel me
To be a better man,
A better man than I am...

To grow more...
To give more...
To see more...
To be more.

So glad is my heart
That you are there
To so greatly brighten
Even the darkest of days.

Grace Is a River

Joy cannot be sustained by just willing it. Joy is being with others and changing others. Grace is a key component of joy...if one is not filled with grace how can joy enter into one's life?

Today has been a rather exhausting day of deadlines piling up, of expectations being blown away, and of an aching desire for the semester to go away and at the same time the wish it would be longer.

It seems I have no answers today, just questions, just pains. I have tried many ways to shake the questions, the doubts in my mind. I have come so far, but it seems not far enough. I am trying to assuage the doubts, the stress. I am finding new paths to relieving my stress as the old ones are dying away.

I am starting to focus more on the smaller things, especially on campus. They're everywhere now that it's spring, especially while walking around. I've noticed the sweeter smell of bushes I've yet to notice before. With the help of a friend, I narrowed it down to be Japanese Pittosporum, which has a sweet smell that reminds me of the gardenias from home.

I was entirely worn out this afternoon, so I went to the Commons after my last class because I had a hunch that someone would be playing the piano in the lobby. Sure enough there was a fellow playing and so I dozed...and dozed. The chords of music continued to float, to dance in my mind. I cannot play, but the music calms me even when I am the tensest. It also helps me in my writing moods, to bring together something so effervescent as words on one's breath. I then recalled the poem I wrote a few days before, which I have posted below.

I knew of a few things that could have made the moment better and that could have made the moment perfect. I hoped for it, but it didn't come. The only thing that came was the thought: not today. So I left to go home and for dinner. But I was stopped again, this time in the park between Langford and the O&M building behind the Administration Building. The sun caught my eyes like it does in the evenings. It was flooding the park in a most pleasing orange.

I took another nap on one of the benches, letting the orange sunlight flood my eyes as I looked up to the oak trees' branches overhead. All I heard were the birds' chirps and the quiet, cool feeling of the breeze. The breeze felt like it was an invisible blanket of comfort, like God was tucking me in for rest. I had finally relaxed. I had finally smiled for the day.

I felt compelled enough to go to the Bonfire Memorial for the first time this semester. I hadn't been there since my photography trip the Saturday morning before the A&M-Kansas football game last fall. I couldn't help but imagine that I was one of those fallen. That it was my name on the bronze plaque. I felt that would be easier than what is going on now. But their words gave me some peace, some perseverance to go on.

I don't want to leave this community, but I know I must eventually. I am being drawn to stay, to look closer at the small things, to breathe in the sweet smells, to go further, to go deeper in reflection and in love. I may be without much visible joy right now, but it is on shining the light underneath it all that my joy resides and shimmers. It may be buried, but it is not gone.

Joy is not about excluding the sorrows of life but accepting them and THEN rising above them. Joy is never to be a stagnant feeling...I just wish I wasn't so stagnant right now. My ship isn't moving on this listless sea. Maybe tomorrow will be a day where the winds take up my sails and move me forward to joy. Until then rest is my closest friend.

Peace is found not so much in happiness, but in an acceptance of what was, what is, and what will be. I am slowly finding that peace again.

Sweet Symphony

Raise, O Angelic Choruses,
Your voices in the heavens.
Show your boundless beauty
In voices ceaselessly raised
To the God of Endless Glory,
For through Him we are saved.

O God of Divine Mercy,
Give us voices worthy,
Worthy to sing You praise.
Give us the chords of love,
Chords in which to praise
The love You plant within us every day.

Strengthen our chords of love
Until we reunite in the Clouds above,
Where all sorrow is wiped away.
Lengthen our chords of love
So we may not only love our friends
But even our enemies to the very end.

Combine our chords of love
So that we may do Your will
On earth as it is in Heaven.
Bring together all our chords
So that they may be pleasing,
Pleasing in every way, O Lord.

Grant us Your mercy, O Lord,
In this world and the next,
Creating a sweet symphony so very blest.

Be a Light: Change the World

It is an amazing testimony to God's giving grace when a certain type of person just falls into one's life. When, all of a sudden, you find yourself presented a gift not of material form but of spiritual form, such that there is no physicality to the gift but it is wholly between two separate and distinct spirits.

God's love and glory does operate in mysterious and distinct ways, but it is Him through it all. These are not premonitions I speak of but actual distinct movements within one's life.

I have felt the movements; I have seen the fingerprints of His hands. I know not where this Force is pulling me, but I know of its quiet presence, even in the most innocuous of items in one's existence.

Just as a diamond has many facets to it, where the Light is reflected uniquely through each facet, so is it in this universe of ours.

The simple reality is that even with the smallest change to this universe an indelible change is made to what once existed. This is why I laugh so at the Back to the Future movie trilogy. Even with the smallest of changes, say a chance encounter never intended to occur or a subsequent rekindling of the connection, can ultimately and drastically change the way this universe is reflected. Notwithstanding are some micro-changes that do not trickle down in future realities, but in the end each of us is drastically effected in our lives by even the smallest of choices.

Do I go for coffee today? Do I make a weekend trip? These questions may seem trivial, but out of the infinite number of choices of possible actions, you've chosen this one—to read these words I have composed. Why?

Only God knows all things and only God can foresee all things. What this does to your future consciousness is unknown to me. All I know for certain is that we must be thankful for what we have in the present and in very small ways, make the necessary steps in one's own life to bring God's will out to bear and through this bear the fruit of His Word and His Spirit.

I am thankful for this gift of His Spirit, this gift that isn't rationed but given freely to us by God for us in word, deed and thought by so many who act according to His will. We cannot do big things. We can only do little things in Christ and—through those actions—change the world.

Be a light to the world and you will leave a mark, not your own but Christ's—a mark that is imperishable, a seed planted that will not die but will give life. It is through this that you will bear the fruit that will remain.

Praise be to God for true friends, for as it is written in Proverbs 18:24: "Some friends bring ruin to us, but a true friend is more loyal than a brother." True friends should be always treasured, for they are worth more than all the riches of the world and all the time to discover them. It is worth it all.

As Jesus said:

"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another." - John 15:11-17

In closing:

May the God of peace himself make you perfectly holy and may you entirely, spirit, soul, and body, be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The one who calls you is faithful, and he will also accomplish it. Brothers, pray for us, too. - 1 Thessalonians 5:23-25

Peace be with you, my friends.

The Quenchless Light

A solitary flame,
Beauty, love the same,
Flickers in the night.

Its strength remains
Even while its wick wanes
And colors dance so bright.

Amid deepening darkness
The flame of yellow grows,
And flickers of light dance
To a silent score of might.

The light cuts the darkness
With an indomitable spirit;
The light conquerors the darkness
With a spirit that gives sight.

Quenchless is this flame...
Darkness has no chance
To win this eternal fight.

Forever burning bright...
Forever giving life...
Forever the quenchless light.