Moments

  My neighbor and friend was gone. The funeral was going to be a somber event.  He would be missed.  His lifeless body would lie in a beautiful casket amid a cascade of beautiful flowers in the front of the church, but he would not be there.  The flowers would be taken away to shrivel, die, and be thrown in away.  The beautiful casket would be buried deep in the ground.  Then as the flowers that fade, his life, the memories he left with us all would fade and eventually become indistinct.  As time passes and those who can remember will be forgotten in their graves themselves.    So what's the point of it all?    These were some of the thoughts running around in my head as I walked up the street to the church and the funeral.  Being a Christian, I felt somewhat ashamed that I entertained this kind of hopelessness at this time, but I did.  I am only human myself and like the Bible says, "now ...

Not sure why this Easter Season is so much more vivid this year. I have thought about the night before when He had the Last Supper and was betrayed; when those who had followed Him forsook Him and fled, and one closest to Him denied he ever knew Him. This morning I thought of His trial, his beatings, the agony of the crucifixion and I could not stop thinking of that crown of thorns on His Head. He suffered; He died; He was laid in a tomb. "For God so loved the world-----" John 3:16.   I just felt led.  There was an old fence post just lying in one corner of my pasture on a little knoll.   I took the old barbed wire and some long nails from the post then took an axe and split it: one of the split sections was shorted to make the crossbar.    The cross was bound together with the nails and the barbed wire and I put the cross in the hole I had dug, then tamped it in.  There.  The old rugged cross. Yes, there it was: ...

Here it is in February and I am still in a state of indecision.  Do I continue with this Ironman training effort.  Yesterday, my soul seemed so laden and I was so sure the answer was quit and do something more productive; something of better use of my passion and learning and God given abilities.  Why keep hammering away trying to just get by at something I have no talent at all for? Why stay brain dead from the fatigue of the training anymore?  Haven't I done years of that?  Is that some hide-out scheme with ready made excuses for lack of performance in other areas of life?  It seems lately that I have no passion for it anymore; the quest seems like a de-fizzed coke.   And I keep praying for a sign; begging God for an answer.  And I wonder:  haven't I been given one?   Still, everyday I get up and put off doing what I don't have the passion for anymore.  And, the loss of passion and th...