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Getting Closer to God- Praise God, Amen and Amen

  It is often the case where I don't feel close to God.  Yeah, big admission, isn't it? People might see me as holy, holy yet here it is:  I struggle too.  I'm human. Sometimes my attention in prayer or meditation upon His word and His will for my life, just won't stay in focus..  My heart and mind drifts off to my list of "things to do" or something else much less important than communion with God.  My mind drifts off into my world, not His. This was my plight some time back when I found a prayer spot out in the woods and settled down in the quiet to try to find God.  I prayed.  Nothing. I prayed more, still nothing.  I prayed more, harder and not even close. I sat back in my chair there in the quiet, still and hot woods felt the frustration of not being able to take attention off myself and reach God. For long moments I just sat there sweating in the stillness with no agenda.  It might have been the "no agenda" that began to break the ...
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Perhaps

  I can’t say I quite understand it. Interest in almost anything is lacking.   Writing is not doing well. Originality and spontaneity are missed, and I really don’t care about talking to other people like I once did.   The order of the day seems to be just to contemplate.   But, I feel really close to God,   and my life seems to be one long prayer or conversation with Him.   So it can’t be all bad, I suppose. It's a different me.   Cancer, medications, limitations, and life being relegated to mostly medical issues have forged a different me.   With an unknown and/or limited future, it seems harder to get excited about anything, and perhaps I am more prepared than ever to go on to the next world.   There is less of the world and so much quiet time.   I wonder why and what exactly happened.    I wonder too if I have become so internally focused that my interest in other people and worldly issues has waned.   Can I be s...
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Remembrance

We will be forgotten.  The things we accomplished will in large part be forgotten.  When the sands of time blow over us, all we considered important can be buried with us.  Who will remember and who will care?  But God has made a way for remembrance.  He knows we can forget so easily.  By our very nature, we are prone to forget.  If it were not so, God would not have left us instructions in remembrance by which we may shape the future from the lessons and accomplishments of the past.   What are our holidays but acts of remembrance?   And, in the Bible, there are numerous calls to remembrance.  For instance, the Passover, remembering how the death angel passed over the houses of the Hebrews, and they were freed from bondage. Another instance is the memorial of stones the Hebrews made after crossing the Jordan, and Jacob's stone at Bethel, after the ladder dream. Jacob set up a stone pillar and poured oil it as a memorial of God'...
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The Feeling of Alive Coming Awake Under the Light

  Today, I was tired and for the most part stayed in a somewhat darkened house.  Numerous things were tried to make me feel better, to be more motivated, less lethargic, more hopeful, and less apathetic.  Foods and sleeping didn't seem to do much but consume time and bloat me. I am going outside.  The sun is shining, and it is still and hot. Hope lights up. I start moving.  I am splitting wood, breathing harder.   There is a feeling of  alive coming awake within me.  This is supposed to be my post-treatment bad crash day and it had been until I started moving and coming awake under the sun.   Life can be like the crash day, dark, lethargic, with fallen hopes.  But the Son is the Light, the Light of the world, and when we walk with Him, we will not walk in darkness but under the Light of the Lord.  To find the true Light, we must go outside of ourselves, outside of the darkness our limited vision that our small world has cr...
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It Wasn't Me But God

  DOWN THE RIVER WITHOUT A LIGHT   This is a piece I wrote many, many years ago, immediately after the experience described within this passage.      I tried to stay down the river tonight, but the mosquitoes ran me off.   All I had for a light was a flashlight with fast-fading batteries.   They faded completely.   I had to come about seven or eight uninhabited miles over a low river, full of snags, sandbars, and rock piles.   Surprisingly, I navigated the river blindly without hitting one log, rock, or sandbar.   Feeling my way up the river in the blackness, I had to trust to luck; no, not really luck.   Somewhere, something guided me.   I was surprised when huge logs would go brushing by, missing the boat by only a few feet.   Time and time again, I narrowly missed something I could not see.    Quite a scary thrill it is, coming up the river without a light, trusting only to faith.   Then again, wh...
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God Has Got This

  I was getting my cancer treatment when this neat-looking lady sat down in the chair beside me to get her own treatment.  She wasn't hard to talk to.  She sort of beamed hope from her smile and her demeanor.   We chatted about normal things, but soon the conversation came to our issues at hand- cancer.  Softly and plainly, she told me she had terminal lung cancer.  She didn't wince or fret in telling me the details, and she finished with a genuine smile that told me that, for her, God has got this. The conversation deepened as we talked of heaven and the peace of God in our lives.  She seemed healthy enough at the moment, but she seemed almost ready to go there.  She was an inspiration with her soft and gentle tone and the peaceful smile when she talked of heaven and when God would make all things new.  She didn't complain and say "why me," nor did she seem to have many regrets.  She smiled often and genuinely. She made my day. Pra...
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The Freedom to Be Yourself

  So, you want the freedom to hate religion, the freedom from religion?  OK.     But will you give the same freedom to those who have it, who practice it?  Oftentimes,   Christian freedom brought persecution for their faith. Is this because oftentimes they didn't live up to the faith they professed? Or was it because people of faith made them uncomfortable?  And then there is one faith persecuting another faith of a different doctrine.  All who believe will fail at living out their faith.  It goes with the territory of trying to be something better and higher than we were to God and the true exercise of our faith.   So it is worse to fail at trying than succeed at doing nothing? So if you fail by not trying to be anything, there is no shame or condemnation, but why persecute?  Why not just let the people of faith, any faith, just be happy with their own delusions as long as there is no injury to others? ...
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