Eternally God’s

lillies

…and what would a man profit in gaining the world? Sadly he will realize that material gain is equated to spiritual loss especially when the former is adhered to and covetously held close to one’s heart. It is the loss of life to place focus on the things current. There is wisdom to be found differentiating between contrasting thought. Shallow and deep, infinite and finite.

What purpose is there holding on to grains of sand that only slip through our fingers. The inability for sand to coalesce is likened to our thoughts and our ways. The rigid and hardened fragments of our life with their resistance to bond into a tangible mass, translate into the visible path we walk. This walk is a display of the shallowness and temporal nature of a futile , fragmented, life.  Just as a path is walked in sure straightness by fixing our eyes on a point above the horizon, conversely, looking at our feet as we walk causes meandering steps. Thus is the fallacy and the dilemma of self-sustainability.

As much as the free-thinker believes in the infinite vision of our mind, he is really a blind man who is caged inside himself. With his bitter protest, he becomes more the fool as one man’s clamoring nonsense will certainly drown out the whispers of eternal wisdom. Listen – there is truth in seeking a higher focal point. At the time when you decide this will be your path, listen ever more acutely. For settling on any god is short-sighted to resting on the one true God. Know Him, know about Him, and know why belief in God is rational. For as consciousness and submitting souls meet a welcoming God, a new reverence is born. In this reverence is wisdom and even as there are those who will say we are blind, the blindness is really the inability to understand His spirit upon the believer’s heart. This is our way and it can only be known by a leap. A grace filled leap of faith.

The modern man in his finite idealism based on a contrived reality, cannot see the line that separates absolute thought from relative thought. One  choice we have is to allow our self to listen for His whisper from the span of eternity. Another, is to boorishly shout our foolish opinions creating a cacophonous din as billions of others, with their varying degrees of truth, also shout simultaneously. If nothing else the free-thinker should stop and listen to this for it is rational that opinions, no matter how astute, exude uniquely from each mind of all existence – most with a paltry amount of sense. They just do not coalesce into one basis for existence. They form a mass of invented and wishful hope based really on nothing except stubborn disagreement with the idea there is a God, or a stubborn refusal to seek Him. It is foolish, finite, and shallow thought.

There is a God who loves. He lays way the path to the infinite onto which we must walk upon. Tender and poetic is He. But, also, He is righteous. In His righteousness, it is misconstrued by some, that He is not good. Shallowness must be abandoned to overcome this misconstrued thought. Further and deeper, our self must be abandoned because it is a vessel that holds tools to chip at stone walls rather than move a mountain. View this as literal or figurative, it hardly matters. It is all in infinite perspective that eclipses the limited depth of what we possess without God. Claim the offer He has given. Come to Him and see eternity from within your heart. Therein exists truth in depth. We are eternally God’s.

(c) 2014 rick stassi

But Alas at the Wind, the Fool’s Hopeless Grasp

Paul Scarborough

WHAT GOD HATH PROMISED

God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower strewn pathways all our lives through;
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.
But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labor, light for the way,
Grace for the trials, help from above
Unfailing sympathy, undying love.
God hath not promised we shall not know
Toil and temptation, trouble and woe;
He hath not told us we shall not bear
Many a burden, many a care.
God hath not promised smooth roads and wide,
Swift, easy travel, needing no guide;
Never a mountain rocky and steep
Never a river turbid and deep.

Annie Johnson Flint

For what is our life in God? Do we seek Utopia and perfection? We who are the faithful do not. I believe we first run out of our own strength and before we wither and fall to compost, we reach out to a hope and dream that there is God and He will help us. So, our reaching hand meets His, and we submit to Jesus. We see a magnificent transformation in our lives. With the care and keenness of our acute listening and seeking of a personal relationship with God, we attain the perspective of eternity. We see life through the eyes of God and we begin to see a path to walk on. His provision.

But on this path the flowers strewn may wither and succumb to brambles and thorns. There are periods of darkness with stones on which we stumble. But straight we walk and we are corrected as we endure our distractions with a focused purpose. His Light.

And we do not see what the foolish  hope for. For if we seek happiness, there is correction. If we seek perfection we see perfecting. He provides the refining process and we endure and learn joy. For clouds will cover the sun and noise will distract from the sweet sound of the harps of angels. Yet we persevere. What drives us? A question asked only by those who foolishly grasp at wind. Flailing and wavering in uncertain surety, and ever stubborn that God is for the weak. Happiness should burst forth and sustain says the world. Happiness is but fleeting and joy endures forever. We see because He is wise.

What we know is there is respite for our labors, but our labors are not for our vanity, but for He who places the tasks before us. His calling to us beckons us to greater heights. But still the ungodly grasp at the wind, ever-wringing hands and gnashing teeth. “What happens when I die?” cries the faithless. “My burdens are too much!” We know because He provides us with all we need and we are perfecting, learning to endure, and finding an unconditional love inherent in Jesus. The fool may never see.

So we walk upon the His path and glance to the left or right. Our eyes catch something, there is a fixation, and we fall. We flail and revisit temptation but in our falling our outstretched hand is met by the right hand God. His righteousness pull us from the Slough of Despond. We are in His arms again. Straight again is the narrow path.

We reach the river wide and swift. With His calling we step into the water. It is cold and deep. Yet He beckons still because we are the faithful. We take a step anew and then again. As the water rises to our face, still we persevere. The deep water dries and the mountain ease their slope and we find our self in the Loving, caring arms of our Savior. He carries us through these times. He sees our struggles and picks us up when we fall. But we are ever-focused.  For God has not promised a flower-strewn pathway in happiness and riches. Not in the context of the unfaithful. His riches and prosperity are seen in His mercy, grace, and love. The flowers of a joyful heart. In His provision,  we grasp His hand.

But alas at the wind, the fool’s hopeless grasp.

Rick Stassi

1/13/2011