the bald frog and the wig for my profile

oncest upon a time there was a wig with an attitude, a bad attitude, and it wanted more than anything in the world to be called Frank but all anyone would call it was ugly so one day a frog with no hair and a toad for an uncle hopped by and saw the wig crying by the side of the stream whereupon the frog said to the wig "are you crying because you are ugly or because you are not Frank?" to which the wig replied "shut up before i come over there and teach you a lesson" so the frog grabbed the wig who would be Frank by the label and whipped him up into the air which, of course, caused the hair on the wig to rearrange itself and when it landed, on the frog's head, i might add, it shaped itself with a 'WHUUMFPH' into a shiny black pompador which, when they looked together into their reflection in the stream, made the frog and the wig laugh and laugh and laugh

the lightning flashed and then the people danced

Isaiah was a prophet of God. He talks of God's sword, the swift and turning leviathan in the beginning of the 27th chapter. It seems out of context. Here they are, a warning in the air, the blood of the earth will be revealed and God will use a sword named leviathan and then there will be party hearty in the vineyard...oh wait, with his sword he will chase down and slay leviathan.

It's funny sometimes how I misunderstand. I started with the NIV and couldn't figure out why the other versions all seemed to contradict it. Then, with a better translation in hand, the NIV seems to be fine after all. It's just me, as usual.

No frolicking in Isaiah, just dying. Leviathan here seems to represent evil for some reason.

when there is no more

the world is filled with wisdom and sometimes it hits the mark, but just sometimes, and i am filled with the world and my subset of lies and truths is smaller than the total and is pathetic and almost completely worthless, for there is no good in me, no searching for truth, no desire for God, no love for man, but i labor on because quitting was specifically forbidden by my mother and displeasing mother hurts worse than failure and i'm all about avoiding pain i can see

then someone said in words i could understand that i didn't need to labor in darkness and that light was easy to obtain, and by easy they meant i would find it only as a child, with a sense of bankruptcy of ability, with a sense that i am totally incapable and should be for the forseeable future and so i needed someone else to come along and do it for me, not help me, but to do it in my place on my behalf because i cannot and will not and don't want to anyway, and i believed them when they said it and i reached out my hand and said i needed whatever that doing was and would he do it and make it done forever so i could quit hurting myself and hurting those i thought i loved and quit trying so hard and failing

and he did, and the whole world he took from my shoulders, my weak and failing and narrow shoulders, was just the littlest piece once he had it in his hand and showed it to me and i knew i need never worry about burdens again and i was so happy and so relieved and i felt so alive, i had been dead and now i was alive and it felt that way, too, that's how i would have described it, being alive after being dead for so long

and now, i find i've tried to carry that burden again, i've tied it together and hoisted it up and slung it onto my shoulders and now i notice it again and i wonder why i went wrong when he made it all so clear

i am almost a child again, almost ready to tell him to take it away again, but i am a fool and it is not quite yet

Psalm 27

"Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear." v. 3

I imagine him, hunkered down in his palace. Hearing daily the death toll of war, he writes for his comfort. Perhaps he shows those near him his words and they are astounded at his faith.

Here I am, hunkered down in my life an enemy encamped inside of me, reading what he wrote. He commands my heart not to fear. He could not have known that these words would pass down to me as the Word of God upon which I could depend. He could not have known how his words would comfort and spur.

What I wonder as read, is whether his heart feared or if he wrote with the same heavy hope that I read it. A heavy hope that says if I truly believed, how could I fear. A conundrum arises because I do fear, but I also thought I believed.

"Be of good courage, and he will strengthen your heart, all you who hope in the Lord." v. 24

save the starfish

the question is: are we to judge others or not

Jesus says judge not lest ye be judged and paul said judge everything and hold to the good and don't you know we will judge angels and then james said who are you to judge your neighbor and moses said long ago to judge your neighbor fairly

there is a judgement rendered to the unbeliever and the failing believer when the righteous believer comes among them, a guilt that is evoked, and there is some loving response, some amelioration we could provide to them in the moment if we recognize it...but i lack the subtlety or the compassion or the desire and i pray it can be learned from God's example

then there is the worldly view of the church lady, comdemning everything in sight, and rightly so, but wrongly too, it seems...so paul says to us we judge ourselves against ourselves and then we look pretty good but that is the wrong measure and provides us with the benchmark we must hit to judge properly our own behavior

Jesus did say we are to remove the sliver from our brother's eye, and we do it because we love him, right, but that we have a plank in our own and it's not the plank we address here or how to remove it but the fact of once having removed it we are to reach out to those around us and provide them with assistance

if only i loved

how can i say i love God if i insist my brother recognize his sliver before my plank comes out

loving God

psalms express many emotions and as an unemotional due to overemotional man i find i cannot read them very often, i do not understand them, i do not love God like that and i am afraid of anyone who does or can

psalm 63 has verse 3 in it, because loving you is better than life i will praise you

there are holes in my life, to be sure, but God has given me a wonderful woman to counsel me, guide me, criticize my driving, raise my children, feed my belly and to whisper sweet praises in my ear though i have been a beast to her and our kids and passing pedestrians and motorists alike, and i compare my feelings for her (when i stop to appreciate her) and my feelings for God and i used to suspect my feelings for God were just too big to contemplate

perhaps, though, they are too small to contemplate...i do not understand how "better than life" can be true except as emotional love-talk hyperbole, and yet a man i respect is teaching that not only is it literally true, it is obtainable to even the emotional idiot

there are moments when the scales fall and you realize you have been looking at your navel again and the sunrise is so glorious and the world is so big and the love your spouse has for you is so miraculous and undeserved you think you understand God's grace a little better and though you want to kick yourself for your stubborn thick head and your hard, hard heart you also thank God that he was so patient and so gentle when he brought you to this moment so you could praise him

i see light through my lids at the moment and i think to myself of sunrises past that God has shared with me and i am eager, and emotional, to open my eyes to this new vista i am certain lies before me

when the end of the road is in sight

when the end of the road is just ahead but the brook still bubbles and the trees still dance in the wind and the clouds still drift away to the south will we sit a moment with Jesus and thank him for the sweet smelling flowers and the walk we've had with him so far or will we keep pushing on until search and rescue shows up? there are times for each answer, i suppose, but ecclesiastes was always a bit tongue in cheek anyway, wasn't it?

eliminate all the sinful options, my pastor told me, then all the foolish options under consideration, then do whatever you want to do most. he was talking about making good decisions as a believer and i think he's right. sometimes there is a specific word from God and other times there's only the wisdom of living a godly life as shown by good and bad examples and the direct commands from God and the folks who've come before us and taken the time to talk about their adventures...wouldn't now be a good time to sit down and thank Jesus for the walk, to tell him he's just as beautiful as the day we met, and maybe to brush his hair out while he talks about the sunset for a few minutes...

imagine the Lord of the universe, while you brush his hair, talking about his consideration for the purple skies as a rarity in this part of the world instead a daily event so the idea of a "royal purple" didn't pass into the mundane...he is, after all, very thoughtful