Damaged, by Plumb

I said, “But the air is thick
And fogs are veiling the sun;”
He answered, “Yet souls are sick,
And souls in the dark undone.”

I said, “I shall miss the light,
And friends will miss me, they say;”
He answered me, “Choose to-night
if I am to miss you, or they.”

I pleaded for time to be given;
He said, “Is it hard to decide?
It will not seem hard in heaven
To have followed the steps of your Guide.”

I cast one look at the fields,
Then set my face to the town;
He said:  “My child, do you yield?
Will you leave the flowers for the crown?”

Then into His hand went mine,
And into my heart came He,
And I walk in a light divine
The path I had feared to see.

George MacDonald

And the day is an open blank page and you are the only one with the crayons

And there are no lines to avoid

And no pretenses to keep up

And no more fear of fighting

Or failing

Who will deliver you from loneliness?

Unless you have several REAL alter ego’s, split personalities, or still kicking invisible childhood friends…..you are still all you got
And you are still free
So you’re free now, from the lung-crushing pressure of keeping up

Keeping it down

Smoking, drinking, spinning it all around

Like a youtube visual of your spoiled child-self burning down the house

Pulling out the stops

Stop this stop that

Do this do that

And self-doubt crouches outside the door

You take another one, out and over and you don’t look back

Who will deliver you from your body?

From the nature of your natural self?

Self-condemnation, self-abuse, self-denial

You are still both spirit and flesh
And you are still free
Free to win,

Free to lose,

Free to love

Free to fear

Free to be truth

Even in a world of lies
Are any of us totally free?

Define CHAIN,

Look again

Freedom is not a trade-off

This burden for that…..

This life/love/sacrifice

For another dream, another hope, another self-made top hat…..

Freedom is when something falls away that once held us down

Freedom is when we stop hurting ourselves

Freedom is when we admit we are afraid while we are thanking God for another chance to be unafraid.  Sophie aka Michelle

and HE said, “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?” and the believers say, AMEN

WHO and WHAT and WHY is what helps us WALK IN PEACE.  HIS PEACE, not as the world offers. 

I found a writing today in Bases of World Order, a book of notes from a summerseminar led by Dr. Ernest Trice Thompson, of Union Theological Seminary,Richmond, Virginia.  Copyright 1945.  The seminar at Montreat Leadership School was in 1944.   A study was  set forth to “consider the Church’s responsibility and opportunity for the promotion and maintenance of a just and durable peace and for laying the foundations of a Christian world order.” (Foreword, Bases of World Order). 

There are too many editors to mention at this point so let the point be made here:  there were about 80 ministers, directors of religious education, professional educators, and accredited instructors secured to take part in this study.  They were all of high esteem, respected in their fields, and what they shared in their study I believe to be as relevant TODAY just as it was yesterday.  Bases of World Order takes a look at Spiritual, Political, Economic, and Social factors as being essential for world order.

Often when I flip thru the worn-out yellow pages I think, “WOW….can there ever be anything new under the sun?”  WHEN will we listen?  How will we learn?  How can a christian do his part in being ‘his brothers keeper’? 

The following is a rather lengthy excerpt from page 59 to page 68.
“III Specific Problems
A.  Relationship of Economic Security to Peace.
1.  Economic distress and conflict work against spiritual unity and peace.  Economic security is essential to man.  When he is not sure where his next meal will come from, whether his children will be properly housed or have an education, he cannot live his full life as a child of God.  The inconsistencies of living in a world where God has provided adequately for all His children, yet where there is acute poverty, make a spiritual conflict in man.  There can be no spiritual unity within a man or a group of men when the will of God for man is thus neglected.  The conflict in the economic world between the laboror and the employer is not conducive to peace, but rather is a training camp for war between individuals and nations.

2. …………..Poverty in the midst of plenty or the fear of povery has been and will continue to be an elemental motive for war…..Secretary Hull has said, ‘When goods cannot pass frontiers, armies will.’

3.  Extravagant living contributes to social unrest.  ‘The building of a good and peaceful world involves the building of national and local communities on the basis of justice, freedom, and co-operation’ (Delaware Conference)….Those who live in a so-called Christian democracy hope to see a new economic order which is just and equitable come through voluntary co-operation within the framework of democracy.  If this is to come about, there must be a willingness to sacrifice extravagant living by a few in order that the general standard of living of all may be raised.

4.  The economic welfare of all peoples must be provided for…including all other minority groups….No one group can live apart, indifferent to other groups. ‘The economic prosperity of one nation bears a direct and not an inverse ratio to that of others’ (from Delaware Conference Report)

5.  Is there need for governmental direction or control of production and consumption after the war?
….there is no new land that people may claim, which is the chief reason why the purely free-enterprise economy must be modified by some form of government control.  Government must be a ‘governor,’ using its constitutional powers to help keep the economic life stabel.

B. Present Economic Order in the United Stated
1.  The value of the profit system.
The profit system is designed to meet the exonomic needs of the world.  If by profit system we mean a return to the producer or distributor that is commensurate with the labor and time expended, the system is legitimate……….If we mean a return far in excess of a fair remuneration, if the sole motive of the producer or distributor is this excessive return without regard to the well-being of either worker or consumer, the system is selfish and is not legitimate.  It must be said that the system lends itself to selfish exploitations.  Can it be Christianized?  Or is another system required?

2.  The failures and inadequacies of the profit system.
…..no system is wholly adequate which places disproportionate value on the commodity produced, at the expense of the human value of those who produce it. 

When a few people derive large profits and at the same time a large majority of others, equally concerned so far as time and skill and effort are concerned, fail to receive from their labor an adequate livelihood, an adjustment to more reasonable proportions is indicated…….any system which throws millions of people out of work periodically cannot be accepted as adequate in an age in which it is recognized that it is no longer right for people to starve…….The acquisitive spirit fostered by the economic system tends to a wastage of natural resources…..destruction of the natural gifts given by God, and drives men to herd in cities…..Private enterprise encourages the money-making motive rather than the service motive.  …………the Malvern Manifesto, Section 11, states that “property is necessary to fullness of personal life; all citizens should be enabled to hold such property as contributes to more independence and spiritual freedom without impairing that of others.”…..Defects of the profit system with its resultant chaos have led certain countries in recent years to adopt an alternative way of production, which is based on complete management and control of all economic life by government.  With this has come a system of compulsion which deprives the individual of freedoms, economic, intellectual, and spiritual, necessary to human dignity…….the Delaware Conference said  ‘we do not believe that we are limited to a choice between these two evils.  If this seems the only choice it is largely because the churches have failed generally to inculcate Christian motivation.  Willingness to strive and to produce and to render services should not be dependent either wholly upon profit motivation or wholly upon compulsion.  We urge upon the churches that they have the great opportunity and responsibility to make possible a generally acceptable solution by bringing people to a different and more Christian motivation.

Any economic program which allows the quest for private gain to disregard human welfare, which regiments human beings and denies them freedom of collective bargaining, thus reducing labor to a mere commodity; any program which results in mass employment or dire poverty in mine or factory or farm; any program which fails to conserve natural resources and results in soil deterioration and erosion and along with it human erosion and deterioration of rural life in home and school and church, is manifestly wrong.  Against such evils the Church should arouse the conscience of mankind in every nation.  The Church must demand economic arrangements measured by human welfare as revealed by secure employment, decent homes and living conditions, opportunity for youth, freedom of occupation and of cultural activities, recognition of the rights of labor, and security in illness and old age.  To secure these arrangements it must appeal to the Christian motive of human service as paramount to personal or governmental coercion.’ (end Delaware conference quote)
…..it was given to the American people to determine by struggle and experiment whether government by the people could be established and maintained on earth….It must now be demonstrated that human freedom is compatible with economic security…..only if our domestic order is born again with fresh vision and determination to meet the needs of men can America fulfill her new mission and bring hope and encouragement to a broken world.”"”"” END QUOTE Bases of World Order.

Hello broken wind  what is it to live in the eyes of the maker?  Does it mean that even now I can talk with you?  I am uneasy.  I am at unrest.  Should there be a storm it would only clean the rubble, and make the path cleaner…..but it doesn’t, and the journey goes on…………and on………………and here I am at zero.   Ground zzzzzzzero…….after all this time.  And at the top of the stairs I wait for a sign………………..that doesn’t come.    It’s perhaps  time to go  Home.  I once asked for freedom……..and now, at it’s door, I question ……… and ponder…..and pick apart.  The doubt like a bad dream here, ever present, ever near, unlike, oh saviour of my life the  hope.  I am a homeless child, a waif, and a vagabond.  Blind, and out of hope.  Father, I have tried everything.  I have worked, cried, prayed, set still.  I am alone.   I am void……and festering…… And this is not liberty.  I am in more bondage than ever…..and so what is love?? Here on earth?  and I can’t come home…..because I cant sleep….and dreams are for those who can’t handle being awake…Father, I am at a crossroad.  I didn’t sign up for this.  And I am weary.  Where is home?  There is no port in this storm.  And there are tears, and sadness, and a longing for a promise that seems so far in a distance, so long gone, so unforgotten.   And so I look for you, and imagine that you are here……

Genesis 2:9  And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food: the tree of life also in the middle of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:15-17 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.  And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:  But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it:  for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Jeremiah 21:8  And unto this people thou shalt say, Thus saith the Lord; Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death.

Matthew 6:25-34  Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.  Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?  Behold the fowls of the air:  for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavely Father feedeth them.  Are ye not much better than they?  ……………v. 31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?  (for after all these things do the Gentiles seek;) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.  But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his rightesousness; and all these things shall be added unto you, Take therefore no thought for the morrow;  for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. 

“Since Baptists believe that every individual must be free to worship as he pleases, and that every individual is responsible to God for his own choices, they also believe in the absolute separation of church and state.  A state-controlled religion cannot leave individuals free to worship as they choose.” 

“Dr.M. Theron Rankin says:  ‘Separation of church and state must be upheld if we are to continue to have a free state, a free church, and free individuals.’

And Dr.  W.F. Powell states:  “ The doctrine of religious liberty is America’s greatest contribution to the science of government.  With their blood Baptists helped to buy religious liberty in American.  The question of the separation of church and state was settled by Christ nineteen hundred years ago.”