absorbed

"suffering either gives me to myself or it destroys me.

if you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people."

Colossians 3: the message

" don't shuffle around, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things in front of you ... "

absorbed. If only I could say those words weren't for me. Truthfully, I am absorbed. I am absorbed in offenses. I am absorbed in anger and "it's not fair" thoughts.

"your old life is dead ... and that means killing off everything connected with that way of death ... "

Never would I have thought I came from a way of death. Truthfully, we all do in one way or another. The evil genius has set us each on self-destruct mode. Oh the joy of realization and insight and the revealing of the path to life. But this pathway is steep, narrow, windy, bumpy, somewhat undiscovered. The hardest way. The best way.

" dress in what God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline; be even tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive & forgive completely; and put on love. "

Truthfully, this used to be my favorite verse. Until I had to start living it in detailed ways, with specific people. I don't want to forgive. I don't want to be compassionate to those who've hurt me. I don't want to love them as freely as I've been loved.

news: I'm dying.

other news: it's a sorrowful process.

other, other news: there's hope for many good things to be born.

from Mr. Oswald (it's been a while)

" Perseverance means more than endurance-- more than simply holding on til the end. A saint's life in the hands of God is like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, but our Lord continues to stretch and strain, and every once in a while the saint says, "I can't take any more." Yet God goes on stretching until His purpose is in sight, and then He lets the arrow fly.

Entrust yourself to God's hands. Proclaim as Job did, "though he slay me, yet I will trust him."

There are areas in our lives where that faith has not yet worked in us-- places still untouched by the life of God. There were none of those places in Jesus' life. And there are to be none in ours.

If we will take this view, life will become one great romance-- a glorious opening of seeing wonderful things all the time. "