Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

The invitation was extended to me to follow along as the Scriptures were read from the platform. I was sitting next to her and our shoulders touched slightly, our legs more so, and I was stricken. As I slipped on my glasses to focus on the passage it occurred to me. Maybe for the first time, maybe for the thousandth I can't tell, but there it was. I realized that my eyes were dimmed, somewhat, but her love for me blazed. It still blazed. I sought a love like this my whole life. As I looked, pondered, pretended, fretted I never could be certain I would ever find it. I wasn't even sure that it could be found. For me. As we continued our journey together after the promises that we made before God I saw the shadows of what I thought I found silently retreat from the light of her pursuit and promise.  As my glasses scraped my temples hooking themselves over my ears my eyes grew wide. The love that He has for me was incarnate in her. It has soft flesh shaped by hard bone. It is t...

There are a thousand thoughts in my head and even more emotions as I deal with the death of my Grandma. I can't possibly articulate them all or even slow down enough to get them all down on "paper". When I write, I process (as the scrawl on my sermon notes can attest) and, as a result, it is so hard to just get it all out. Some of the thoughts that I have written about death in the past year or two come flooding back and I want to frame them more personally in the light of the peaceful death of my Grandma. I want to go to a cabin somewhere and just write until my fingers ache and until I don't have to cry anymore.  But these days, this Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday will be filled to the brim with activity after activity that won't let me do that. I can't punch out and meditate on what just happened. I can't sit down in a creaky, straight-backed chair and pound on the keyboard as the thoughts pass through. There is no time for thinking. No...

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. Psalm 116:15 Forceful ageing Help me I'm fading Heaven's waiting It's time to move on  - Prayer for the Dying, Seal My Grandma died yesterday. A mom, grandma, great grandma was transported into the wide-open arms of a God who, I dare say, was excited to see her. He couldn't wait to hold her and show Himself to her. The One she served and loved must have been filled with so much joy as she sat amazed gazing into His eyes. "See?" I can hear Him say, "See? You knew it was all true and you will spend an eternity here. This is My Rest. Enter it through my Son Whom you loved." Her work here is done. Her sometimes twisted journey deep into the heart of God is complete for her faith has been swallowed by her sight and her hope is now certain. Only love remains and she can now do perfectly what she sought to do so imperfectly yet so beautifully her entire life: love the Love of her life. ...

And so it was.  The Summer before their Senior year burst onto them as they sought to make it a memorable one together. The pool party was packed with the Juniors looking forward to their last trip through the halls of the school as the sun beat down. Most were swimming while a few exposed their less tanned undersides to the darkening rays. The music blared from the boomboxes coordinated to 92.5 WMJQ much to many's dismay. However, the two of them were lost in the moment as everyone who wanted to lined up on the springboard that jutted into the in-ground pool. I might as well jump...go ahead and jump...forget it an jump... And with each mention of the word jump a body would be flung into the air trying to avoid the last one that hit the water. It was all rather chaotic and the unbridled laughter and excitement made more than a few sides and stomachs ache from taking in the scene. They knew that these days would end soon enough, but it seemed so far into the future ...

“I can’t bring myself to think that Trump will be in charge. In the simplest terms, what brings us together is good, and what separates us is bad.” Brad Pitt on the prospects of a Donald Trump Presidency Believe it or not, this is not a post on who you should vote for this year come November. I read this quote and thought to myself that Mr. Pitt can't literally mean this. As someone who is a Christ-follower, I cannot endorse this definition of "good" and I think that, if he gave this a little more thought, he would not continue to offer this either. Now there is a lot about Christ that is unifying (reconciling) and the heart of the Gospel is the unity that we have re-found through Christ with God himself. This unity was lost in the Garden way back in Genesis 3 so much so that I was, at one time, an enemy of God. Christ brought me near to God through the work he finished on the cross and in his resurrection from the dead. He died for my sins so that I would not have...

The family reunion was much more tolerable with her there as they strode the creek bed seemingly oblivious to the approaching clouds. They talked and planned that warm Spring day wondering what the Summer would bring them as they prepared for their Senior year. There were still tests to take and the Spring concert loomed large with the solos that the two of them had to prepare for. Their burdens seemed halved by the support they were to each other and the full weekends that they could spend together doing homework and going out alone and with their friends. They were an item in the school for sure. Not overly popular and not normally shunned they seemed to have found their place even if they rather didn't care what others thought. They could chalk the negative comments, more often than they should perhaps, up to jealousy or outright envy.  Thankfully they weren't more than a few hundred yards from the main pavilion when it happened.  A cloudburst of warm rain tumbled from...

I was watching a video the other day of a thinker that, once you got past his mannerisms, talked about the moment that God the Father turned away from God the Son. Now that is a profound mystery and I don't ever expect to understand it all (even in heaven). It reiterated to me how unique Christianity is among the belief systems of the world in that it is the only one which has the humiliation of its God as a central tenant. There is not a more loving God than the one revealed to us in the religion of Christ. Then I got to thinking about the claims of deity that Christ made in the New Testament. Clearly the fact that the Messiah would be God in the flesh was foretold by the prophets in the Old Testament, but Christ came right out and said it in the Gospels. Now there had been people claiming to be God far earlier than Christ and there have been people since that have done that. But there is a difference I see in those people when compared to him. Christ's claims to deity wer...