Category: <span>Suffering</span>

Folks refuse surrender. As I achieved a physique and acquired an attitude, a determination attended me; “Tom, never give in.” Post–high school wanderings brought a war; a war with everyone and everything. The main target: any representation of the establishment. Secondary targets? It really didn’t matter, I opposed every truth representing antagonist. Attitude is everything!  I wanted to grow my hair, as all the nonconformists did in my day and this meant moving out as kicked, because long hair didn’t fly in our house. I had learned how to smoke dad’s Pall Malls and developed it into dope smoking. Alcohol fetched comfort. I loved the feelings and freed inhibitions. Music serenaded my nodding and determined my weekend’s prowling, as girls also became a perpetual focus. I was a self-made man, Hardy har har.  Steel mill introduced a Wonderland to us uninitiated. Mill reminded me of a Day-Glo poster; only without…

We find with Jacob’s story his challenge of handling his own value fluctuations —secondly, his forming of deep personal convictions. We find this even more than with the stories of Abraham and Isaac. Another way of saying it is; he was made to stand, in the midst of circumstances and relationships, while these pressed against his inward citadel, gradually forcing a determined-fight mentality in Jacob. He fought the war between belief and unbelief. For healing, Jacob gives us, uncensored, stark reality in living color. We have looked at the fallen nature of man worked in, now we look at the “reversing” plan of God; and it too, chiseled into a soul. Jacob’s adverse challenges arose from a flight of fear. Brother Esau had threatened to kill him, leading to a miserable tenure under uncle Laban. So, he is made to deal with his own insecurity and the deceit of Laban…

 “…and that they were afraid was the essential consequence of the fact that they retrograded from Gods love and had therefore incurred Gods wrath.” Franz Delitzsch Conscience “a knowing together with God” awakens the terriblest. Every gritty body nerve, and every psychic sinew, in denial, dreads the dawning of conscience. It arrives as a wake up call on the level of a freight-train. It whisks us away into a clawing-out mode of life. Flat-out life-loathing attends it. We’re hijacked into bustle’s whims, all of which we vowed, would get consideration when hell freezes over.   But no; we’re head-over-heels right now, hot-footed feet blazing.     “My life slipped way out of sync, my true-blue supporters turned out miserable liars.”  “Woe is me, I am undone, a man of unclean lips.”  “Thou Art the Man.” cried Nathan”   Conscience: confronts the willful infant coddle and screams “get the ‘h’ off your…

           So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, an intolerable waiting, a longing for another place and time, another condition.  Theodore Roelhke    Adolescence lives for experimentation, whether we like It or not. An in-between time, the age in which Abraham lived moves from childhood-identity to a trial and error of proving. Clinging to a hope of landing in a solid way, it seeks a not yet known ideal.  Many Christian thinkers disagree with the term “adolescent;” however most would agree we don’t just jump from childhood to adulthood. How does this relate to soul healing? Let us start with unconditional love. Unconditional love reigns extreme, radical, and stands a direct contrast to the best love man can work up. Let’s not water down what it means. If we give our thoughts to meditating on it, we determine the best effort of love a human can make purposes loving,…

Coal, grease, and broken chain, on this stoker Darkness creates poverty, just as surely as light creates vitality. The big “D” likes to penetrate a life by creating a deep divide away from true life and light, and then providing a “light” of its own origin, a kind of dark-light. With this, darkness pretends true light, to create in a man a deceptive existence. Consequently, with this empty-light filling in, a person may not figure it out; they are not experiencing the true light, but a vacuum instead.  So, what gives? Well, darkness, a false light, keeps a person aloof from the healthy vitamin “d” produced of true light, if we take the natural analogy to start. Secondly, life-killers like mold and fungus grow in this dark, giving us the picture of decay in a soul. See, the darkened soul, slowly dying, has the false impression of being lightened as…