"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles." Heb. 12:1-3

When I thought about this it made me think that we need the ancient "cloud of witnesses” but we also desperately need a living cloud surrounding us right now.

God has graced me with men and women in my association that are ablaze with God's Spirit, eager to serve Him, tireless in spreading His love in word and deed. Rescuing those entrapped in the jaws of wickedness and making no small effort to see them released! Wise and steadfast Christians that have endured so much and stood true. 

I'm reminded of oldest son who has faithfully pastored the spiritually hungry, the least, last and lost, the afflicted and tormented, the poor, the refugee and those bound up in Satan's clutches, and doing so for over thirty years! 

My middle son who resisted God's grace for a long season only to have Christ fall on him, and lit an unquenchable fire in his bones; and now he ministers Christ to those in the desperation of substance abuse. 

My youngest son, who walked straight into the darkest lairs of child trafficking, risking his life to snatch innocent children from predators’ hands.

I’ve watched as his son, my grandson, who followed his father's footsteps entering the dangers of war to help rescue the wounded from the front lines of battle midst the chaos and danger. 

And I think of his friend, who trained to be a medic where she too, braved the bombs and bullets to give lifesaving aid to the wounded and maimed, many of which would have surely died without her brave, skilled hands as she attended to the horrors of war; only to be nearly killed by a bomb blast that left her terribly disfigured and had died but for the advocacy of my family. 

These are my living "Clouds of witness" that surround me, as well as many others that have shown the way of courageous faith, setting aside gain and safety to reach others for Christ. People that have lost their lives! Lost their health, and stood unshakeable in life's dangers and griefs, patient, devoted in sickness, affliction and harrowing danger. 

  Iron sharpens iron, faith bequeaths faith, so seek out those who burn to obey the high calling of Christ. Run to them. Join them. Step into that cloud—ancient and living—and become part of the witness yourself. 

Let us throw off every weight.

"Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us". 

 I watched a movie about the loss of a child, and this remark really struck me as two grieving parents talked about their loss --- 

“Will the hole in your heart ever get smaller? 

No, it never does, 

but the person we lost leaves us with so much, 

we grow; 

and with time, the hole becomes proportionally smaller.”

 

 

You will many earnest-hearted Christians cast all their religious passion and spirit, which was meant by God to support them through all their serving and charitable work, into grievous and vain meditation over the meaning of the Bible, of which 

no syllable was ever yet to be understood but through a deed.”

John Ruskin. 

 

 

 

"Words can't accurately convey the anguish that a traumatized person experiences. It has an intensity that defies description. Many traumatized people feel that they live in a personal hell to which no other human could possibly share. 

Here is a condensation of what severely traumatized individuals struggle with: 

I don't know of one thing I don't fear. I fear getting out of bed in the morning. I fear walking out of my house. I have great fears of death...not that I will die someday, but that I am going to die within the next few minutes. I fear anger.. my own and everyone else's, even when anger is not present. I fear rejection and/or abandonment. I fear success and failure. I get pain in my chest, and tingling and numbness in my arms and legs everyday. I almost daily experience cramps ranging from menstrual-type cramps to intense pain. I have headaches, I feel nervous all the time. I have shortness of breath, racing heart, disorientation and panic. I'm always cold, and I have dry-mouth, and trouble swallowing. I have no energy or motivation, and when I do accomplish something, I feel no sense of satisfaction. I feel overwhelmed, confused, lost, helpless and hopeless daily. I have uncontrollable outbursts of rage and depression." 

Waking the Tiger, healing trauma. Peter A. Levine.

In my estimation as a Christian, complex trauma with such extreme symptoms cannot be healed without qualified therapy. Christ will walk through it with us, enlighten, encourage, inspire and soothe the soul in desperation as He promised -Isaiah 41:10

 ‘Do not fear, for I am with you;

Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,

Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’

 

 Jesus used a woman in the "Parable of the Lost Coin" as a metaphor for God.

A female image of God would incite anger from the Pharisees.  

Here's the parable - Luke 15:10 - "Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?" 

God was never depicted as female in Jewish tradition. There is no known precedent in the Hebrew Scriptures or contemporary Jewish literature for portraying God as a woman.  

To compare the Most High to a poor Galilean housewife searching for a coin would have struck many as irreverent at best, blasphemous at worst. Portraying God as a woman sweeping her house subverted both their theological imagery and their social hierarchy. 

Far from being a casual detail, it was a deliberate rhetorical move by Jesus to confront religious pride and reveal that God’s joy over repentant sinners transcends human categories of gender, status, and honor. 

  

 Here is a vivid poem about the struggle of divorce.

"They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling, mourn:
The tree will wither long before it fall;
The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn;
The roof-tree sinks, but moulder on the hall In massy hoariness;
the ruined wall stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone;
The bars survive the captive they enthrall;
The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.
Even as a broken mirror,
which the glass in every fragment multiplies;
and makes a thousand images of one that was,
The same, and still the more, the more it breaks;
And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,
Living in shattered guise,
and still, and cold, and bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
Yet withers on till all without is old,
showing no visible sign,
for such things are untold."
Lord Byron.

In the context of divorce, it's a testament to how the institution may dissolve on paper, but the emotional architecture "stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone," enthralling the captive long after the bars are meant to fall."

"I’m not advocating for divorce, but I am not advocating for prolonging something that needs to be dealt with honestly and bravely.
 
There are many seasons of life that I wish I would have been braver and most of those matters revolved around endings, more so than beginnings.
 
We know how to start, way better than how to end, but both are a part of life.  
 
Just remember to give your children the best YOU they can have, and if that isn’t possible, then do whatever it takes to get there, no matter how dark it may be to let go of the dock.”
Pastor Eric.  

 Deal gently with us, ye who read!

Our largest hope is unfulfilled --

The promise still outruns the deed

The tower, but not the spire, we build.

Our whitest pearl we never find;

Our ripest fruit we never reach;

The flowering moments of the mind

Drop half their petals in our speech.

O. W. Holmes.

The meaning of the poem ---

The poem's core message is the tragedy of human imperfection: we build, seek, and think with great promise, yet never fully realize our potential. Life is a series of near-misses—towers without spires, fruits unpicked, thoughts half-articulated. This reflects a universal melancholy about mortality, the limits of effort, and the chasm between conception and execution. It pleads for gentle judgment, implying that such unfulfillment is not failure but the human condition itself.

 

"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together;            our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues."

Shakespeare.  

 Remote from towns, he ran his godly race,

nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place;

Unskilled he to fawn, or seek for power,
by doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;

far other aims his heart had learned to prize,

More bent to raise the wretched than to rise. 

His home was known to all the vagrant train; 

He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain." 

Oliver Goldsmith. 

 

O thou that dry'st the mourners's tear!

How dark this world would be

If, when deceived and wounded here,

We could not fly to Thee! 

But thou wilt heal the broken heart, 

Which, like the plants that throw

Their fragrance from the wounded part,

Breathes sweetness out of woe. 

Thomas Moore. 

  

I was preaching on Psalm 103 and in verse 2-3 we are exhorted to forget "None of His benefits." Then King David begins to list the benefits of God and it begins with - "He pardons ALL our iniquities."

When preaching at the jail and the mission, it is a rough crowd and I always search for words that help visualize God's word. I ran across this quote and I plan to include it when describing our iniquities.   

"The band of outcasts were wandering from town to town in search of war or pleasure." Ruskin.

I was sent this message by a young woman who was horridly abused as a child; her innocence was violated and her childhood was robbed, and what can be almost worse, no one admitted it, nor did they repent, and everyone knew about it and left her alone without any support. This, of course, left her filled with anger, bitterness and anguish. But she’s always had a mustard seed faith, and as God has lovingly led her through this horror, He now has brought her to the next step, here’s her testimony --    

 "I have been thinking about forgiveness. I saw this post yesterday and it got me thinking some more. There is no reason at all to keep anger in me with people who hurt me. I forgive my mom, I forgive my brothers, my dad, my ex step dad, my grandpa. But most importantly, I forgive myself. I hurt myself in so many ways, I did not deserve that. I have no enemies, no anger is in me anymore. I choose peace and that peace is Jesus! He gives me a peace beyond anything. He gives me an everlasting love that no one can beat. I have a peace that I cannot understand in the moments where I feel lost. But I do know it’s my lord and savior. Jesus is so good. And my sin is so bad, yet, He still loves me as I am, and He meets me where I am always!

"The greatest of all the mysteries of life, and the most terrible, is the corruption of even the sincerest religion, which is not daily founded on rational, effective, humble, and helpful action. Helpful action, observe! For there is just one law, (Mk. 12:30-31) which obeyed, keeps all religions pure, but forgotten, makes them all false. Whenever in any religious faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points in which we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the devils power. 

That is the essence of the Pharisee's prayer - "Lord, I thank you that I am not as other men are."

At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ from other people, but in what we agree with them; and the moment we find we can agree as to anything that should be done, kind or good, then do it." John Ruskin.   

 

The following quote was written during the Victorian era to young women of wealth and privilege. That being said, it has many useful applications for today's girls, and boys. Here is the abridged quote followed by the original. 

"You may see continually girls who have never been taught to do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot keep household accounts, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole life has been passed either in play or in pride: you will find girls like these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them through there daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over the meaning of the Bible, of which no syllable was ever yet to be understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences warped into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws of common serviceable life would have either solved for them in an instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and benevolent peace."

Original - 

"You may see continually girls who have never been taught to do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot keep household accounts, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole life has been passed either in play or in pride: you will find girls like these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them through there daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over the meaning of the Bible, of which no syllable was ever yet to be understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences warped into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws of common serviceable life would have either solved for them in an instant, or kept out of their way. 

Give such a girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace."