"Diffusion................"

Life remains life and each new day brings its own existence to explore, its own lesson to learn. One never knows what the next breath will encounter. Nonetheless we breathe, believe, and go forth. It is early here in my neck of the woods, the sun having already conquered this portion of the globe, the neighbor’s pup filling the air with his dislike of being penned up in the back yard. There’s a quietness otherwise, though, a sort of purity as if God has somehow cleansed the area overnight and this morning is a new beginning. On my mind, however, is word from my pastor in Pensacola that a friend there is close to death, cancer’s grip about to take him unless we, the Church, can somehow pray down a miracle. How does one do that? Forty years into this, even with having experienced along the way the absolute truth of His reality, I find myself at a loss in so far as me possessing an ability to influence the Creator with my faith… Yesterday Beth and I watched a Hallmark movie about some young girls in a detention center. One in particular is serving time for having hit a woman, texting while driving and then leaving her to die at the scene of the accident. Turned down once by the Parole Board for not having figured out why she was there, she returns three months later, changed by events, to tell them if punishment is the reason for her being there, eternity would not suffice in as much as nothing could give back what she had taken away from others. What, then, the point?-That she might be enlightened to the truth of it not being “about me”… Her confession yet rings in my mind, its simplicity a good message to take with me to those kids that we visit in ministry. I find the foundation of what it says able to be used in several ways, indeed an anchorage for all of us in following Him. While we surely are Biblically admonished to take all our cares and burdens to Christ, the idea that we somehow are granted our petitions according to how much belief we can muster, to me, greatly smells of vanity, good intentions misplaced. Better, I think, to remember He, alone, can heal, only He is wisdom, all knowing, all merciful. If into His stream I go, and there, before the Cross, commit all that I am, all my concerns and all my questions can be laid to rest……