"Gold.................................."

“It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing – they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them, I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter, and all the mad intensities that made me and unmade me.” – Stephen Fry, borrowed from “Whiskey River”

The author of the above quote is an English writer/comedian, described as being “ninety percent gay, ten percent other”. If such analysis plays any role in my discourse here, it is only meant to suggest that we, as a society, hold some guilt in its creation. We who, ourselves, are so involved with our own insecurities, all of us trying to make some sense out of our own existence, all too often fail to minister to those around us. In managing to “straddle the stream”, ourselves, we abandon, reject, and ridicule the weakest among us for their inability to blend in with the crowd. People hurt people. Christ “in” me ought to change that, at least somewhat. Conversion doesn’t turn us into “Super Saint”. We still have to deal with our own warts, wrinkles, and wobble down the road; but if Calvary’s reconnection is more than just head knowledge, if indeed we now possess an inner well out of which his resurrection is made manifest in our walk, our stagger should bear evidence of Him in more ways than one. That grace given us, if not allowed to stagnate through infrequent visits to the pool, should not influence more than change in our own identity, but overflow into the lives of those around us. His compassion, His wisdom, His healing, operating through us, ought to be witness of our claim to know Him. The Holy Ghost, as someone preached to me long ago, convicts, but doesn’t condemn. The world doesn’t need our theology. It needs Christ; and perhaps the best place to start is in our own back yard. What’s in your wallet? I’ve always hated that commercial…….