The question of ownership

        I am just on a shelf stolen like the rest

        I am waiting whether polished or dirt

        The world would have its unholy Trinity

        Shackle me to pleasure or pain

        I would be driven or tossed by the sea

        A gentile at heart and working to be free

        There is no mind over matter

         Pain is real and incomprehensible

         I seek the shirt and the tie and the spoken word

          Truth brought down to me from heaven as a child

         That men in older days may die in grace and peace

         And Sacrifice that made America free

        I want or shall not want and the question is plain

        You are a slave whether you like it or not

        Ask it… ask it… Who owns thee?  Who owns thee?

        Whether a lowly carpenter or the ruler of the free (ha ha) world

        There is someone who polishes you off on the shelf

         Whether in jail or in Margarita Ville

         Your own display so where your shackles well

         They say death is the debt that all men pay

         As the cars on the way to Reedy Fork have their headlights on

        They stop short before the place to live and tears and flowers owe

       Deep in the earth and above if your wise

       A cross above the creature owned and despised

We live among prophets

While the cobbler mused there past his pain

A begger drinks by the driving rain

He called him in from the stoney street

And gave him shoes for his bruised feet

The begger went there came a chrone

Her face with wrinkles of sorrow sown

A bundle of faggots bound her back

And she was spent with the wreck and wreck

He gave her his low and steadied her load

And she took her way on the weary road

Then to his door came a little child

Lost and afraid in the world so wild

In the big dark world catching him up

He gave him the milk in the waiting cup

And led him home to his mothers arms

Out of the reach of worlds alarms

The day went down in the crimson west

And with it the hope of the blessed yes

Jesus said he was going to come

And Conrad sighed as the world turned grey

Why is it Lord that your feet delay!?

Did you forget that this is the day!!?

Then saw in the silence a voice he heard

Lift up your heart for I kept my word

Three times I came to your friendly door

Three times my shadow was on your floor

I was the beggar with bruised feet

I was the woman you gave to eat and

And I was the child on the homeless street.

 

 

The Shoekeeper

 by

Edwin Markum

The War

Look God, I have never spoken to you

But now I want to say, how do you do?

You see God they told me you didn’t exist

And like a fool I believed all of  this

Last night from a shell whole, I saw your sky

and I figured right then they had told me a lie

had I taken the time to see the things you made

I’d know they were not calling a spade a spade

I wonder God if you’d shake my hand,

Somehow I feel that you would understand

Strange, I had to come to this hellish place

Before I had time to see your face

Well, I guess there is’nt much more to say

But I am sure glad God, I met you today

I guess the zero hour will soon be here

But I am not afraid since I know you are here.

The signal ,well,  God  I’ll have to go

I love you lots, this I want you to know

Looks like this will be a horrible fight

Who knows I may come to your house tonight

Though I wasn’t friendly with you before

I wonder God if you’d wait at the door

Look, I am crying, me!! shedding tears

I wish I’d known you these many years

Well, I have to go now, God Goodbye

Strange, since I met you I am not afraid to die.

 

Poem found on a boy killed in Vietnam at age 19

Season of prayer

I heard  a poem that expresses my heart about great men of old. George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Spurgeon, Martin Luther, Marting Luther King Jr…. the list is undending of men that stood up as men of God.  It seems lately everyone i looked up to in my youth has died. I pray that our spiritual leaders would uphold the word of God during this tumultuous time in our history. Join with me in prayer “day of National Prayer” beginning May 1. It just seems like we need it to me. We need someone to stand in the gap for believers and for our country.

 

GIve me a man of God, one man, whose faith is master of his mind

and I will right 10,000 wrongs and bless the name of all mankind

Give me a man of God, one man, whose toungue is touched with heavens fire,

and I will flame the darkest hearts with high resolve and pure desire,

Give me a man of God, one man, a mighty prophet of the Lord,

and i will give you peace on earth bought with prayer and not a sword,

Give me a man of God, one man, true to the vision he sees,

and I will build your broken shrines and bring the nations to it’s knees.

                          -author unknown

 

 

Service

We’re building in God’s conditioned grace

A lighthouse in the heart of this city for our Lord

God bless the church on the Avenue that hears the cities cry

The church that sows the seed of the word

as the masses of men go by

The church that makes, midst the cities roar,

A place for an alter of prayer

With a heart for the rich and a heart for the poor

and rejoices in their burdens to share!!!

The church that’s true to the call of Christ

Who wept o’re the cities need

and has sent his disciples to labor for Him

where the forces of evil breed.

The church that gives

And the church that lives

As seen by the Master’s eye.

God bless the church on the Avenue

That answers the cities cry.

 

                                    The Patio

                                                5925 Summit Ave.

   

O precious cross

O glorious crown

O resurrection day!!!

At my Funeral

04-track-4.m4a I used to watch a show called “Crossfire” all the time when I was in college. I used to love both sides of political issues going head to head. I studied the great speech writers at school and was enthralled with my colleges’s debate team. I admired those who could defend a point eloquently and with great weight and force. I know now there are all kinds of opinions and debates going on with the presidential elections and my admiration for men who can be political is still there.  It’s kind of funny that I would go to a school (Liberty) whose former president was the leader of the moral majority and study speech and journalism and come out of it so adverse to “the political”. Something happened to me though this past month that just blessed me and it had to do with my favorite debater W F Buckley. William F Buckley must have died recently because one of the shows I sometimes watch when I get home at midnight is called “Charlie Rose”. It’s another show that is basically conversations with politicians, writers and people of renown. William F Buckley had been on that show many times and they were showing excerpts of his conversations with Charlie Rose the host chronichled over the past 20 years. This man frequeneted this show. For some reason,  I have always admired William F Buckley for his mind. I don’t really know what William F Buckley stood for but i admire his capabilities as a debator.He was the best debater I had ever seen bar none. But the thing that stood out to me was the answer he had about life and death. Charlie Rose always gets these people of renown to talk of thier faith. Throughout the years in each of the conversations the topic would get around to life and William F Buckley would say something very poetic but tragic. He said he was tired. He was tired of life. Wait a minute. This man was known for the thrills of life as well as his advanced position in the academic world and his great wealth. He would jump out of planes and ski and scale mountains and sail across the globe. Then he would have a best seller and go on cross fire and totally pummel the person he was debating. He was an intellectual giant and the editor and starter of a legacy in the magazine he started singlehandedly. He was journalist ,politician, poet and very humorous and served the country as a  catalyst of social change. But when Charlie Rose would ask him about life he would  say over and over again “I am ready to leave this planet because I am tired of the rigors of life.” He seemed to be saying that while he was living life he wasn’t living life at all. I think of the Patio and the idea of coming alive. I think of my Four Seasons blog and I think of the leaves that change in fall. I want to be like a fall leaf. I want to grow old in the seasons of life and somehow not be in the place where I want to leave. I don’t want to be afraid to leave but I want to be alive to life. The next thing that happened to me that blessed me this months was that there was a book called “who moved my cheese” that I read about management and how sometimes your supervisor and business changes what you need to  go after to get the promotion or the raise. I read it about 5 years ago but someone reminded me of it this month. The thing that blessed me is that I realized that God never moves the cheese. It is always there and has been there before the beginning of time. It is out on my Patio. It is in the leaf that while dieing changes into something beautiful and when it burns puts off a great smell that reminds you that life is worth livingListen to this song   

The next prayer-….inspection due

Hey everybody ….we sold the house!!! YEA God is to be given all the credit in our lives during these insane days. Mason just had his tonsils removed. Brooke had her 8th birthday party at jump and fun. My father in law helped us by coming down and doing our  taxes. Work has been busier than ever. Jen is juggling her work and doing homework with the kids and we have been scrambling to stay on top of the occassional call from the realtor informing us that someone would be coming inside our home in 15 minutes to look at it. This has been a blur so far in 08 but Jesus is so good. I have no idea why He is so good.  I see his blessings and He is still tweaking my theology (this will never end into eternity)  but i know that He bought all these blessings with something even more precious than a house or kids or jobs  —His own blood. I don’t know why but recently i have been singing the old song “Jesus, keep me near the cross”.  I know it’s weird to like this to some because its an oldy but the words are so powerful and soothing to me. It just says keep me near, as if Jesus is drawing me close to Him and pulling me into Him into His wounded side.  There is nothing so busy and so hectic and literally insane than day to day stuff but the cross is in the end all we have. I am just so wonderfully grateful that He has made it possible for us to move and i want to thank everyone for the prayers. Without them we would be lost. We have needed it so desperately and you came through during the wonders of God having His way with us. So Mason is doing better. The house is sold. Brooke is one year older and had a great birthday and in God’s mercy we are both enjoying our work. All is not well though. The more i see God bless us the more i realize that He is real and that people without the cross of Christ miss out on so much.  Thanks again and remember the Crimson Tide. Though the waves crash in and at times the wind blows and all the ruffness and even water in the lungs …the Tide always wins and thats the only thing that will win in the end.

The messenger

A coworker told me the story of a book and movie(with Kevin Costner) called “The Postman” I don’t know if you saw this or not but the story inspired my blogging. The movie goes that the whole United States is wiped out by a bomb and there is a shattered infrastructure of just rag tag towns and cities of people just trying to survive. There is no mail and no computers and everything is just wasted. Kevin Costner, somehow finds himself outside the cities and he is hungry and needs some food. He finds an old bombed out mail truck and takes a dead mailmans uniform off him and puts it on and starts gathering the old mail in the truck. He goes into the city and announces in a loud voice “I am a United States Post office mailman official an official representative of the United States!!! At first no-one listens but then he starts yelling out names of people and they perk up and then they start comeing to him to get their mail. He then goes to the next city. After a while he starts believing himself to be an official of the U.S. He starts to think he really is an official of the United States. He starts sending little children from town to town with mail and they are saying he is the Post Office General. He single handedly begins the mail again and people start communicating again and people are connected. As usual Chaos  is still there though,  and as always they try to kill the little children carrying the mail.  I say this not because we need protection but I think we can regain what God wants and somehow make what is not as though it should be by believing we have the message and we are officially sent by Heaven.  Lord please protect your little ones. Please let us be the Postmen and proclaiming what we know to be TRUE.  Forgive my spelling not enough time to check good day

Descend upon my Heart

Spirit of God, descend upon my heart, wean it from earth; thro’  all it’s pulses move;

Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art, And make me love Thee as I ought to love!!

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, No sudden rending of the veil of clay, No angel visitant, no op’ning skies; But take the dimness of my soul away!!!

Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh; Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear. To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh; Teach me the patieince of unceasing prayer.

Teach me to love Thee as Thine angels love, One holy passion filling all my frame; The kindling of the heav’n descended Dove, My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame.

-George Croly  1780-1860

God’s math for 2008

I spent hours in front of the mirror when I was 15 convincing myself that I looked good. I don’t know if someone else was telling me that I looked ugly or what but I would take my tennis racket, turn on my favorite rock song and act like I was a rock star in front of the mirror. I would literally spend hours convincing myself that I looked good. I would come out of there with such a positive self image and charisma and I walked around as If I were a star or something. I was extremely prideful and extremely good looking in a very very late 70’s early 80’s kind of way. I am not completely sure why I did this but I think I know some of the reasons. One of the reasons was that I loved music. I was introduced to KISS at an extremely early age and was told by my cousin that they stood for Knights in Satan’s Service. I was immediately drawn to what was not a very good influence in my life. At the very least,  KISS was not trying to hide whose side they were on and the music matched my pulse at that age. The second reason I think that I did this was I wanted to look good and see myself looking good and actually become what I was imagining in the mirror. I did a half way decent job of doing this. Regretably (no blessings from it) I became a young studly little KISS and pretty much tried in my own way to party as much as a preachers kid in a southern town could get away with, without getting arrested. So why am I over self disclosing?  I just wanted to reflect (pardon the pun) on God’s mathmatics for 2008 for me. This year I have traded in my tennis racket and my mirror for Jesus plus an old archaic book called the gospel. This Gospel likens itself to a mirror. But every time I walk away from this mirror I realize how bad I look. I need salvation this year!!!!  When I decided to follow Jesus I came back to the Bible and turned 180 degrees away from the party Spirit and began a journey looking into this mirror called the Word. As I have studied it now for 20 years the journey has brought me to a place where I can see the real me though dimly. I see in the mirror a man now who is in desperate need of change. Sure I am a believer. I believe that Jesus died on the cross, buried, rose on the third day and saved me from my sins. I believe that when I die I will enter into a Kingdom where joy and light reign. But as I enter my 40^th year of life, i look in the word and realize I desire the ability to know and do the Word.  God’s math this year for me is “knowing His word plus doing His word equals blessings. I am seeking these blessings in 2008.

 

“Therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls, …For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides (ACT) by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.”   James 1:21-25