Despair & Light In New Mexico

From my journal. I hope this encourages you as it indeed encourages me.


Eagle Nest, NM

Dec. 28, 2013

I'm sitting on the upper deck in the frigid morning air watching the Wheeler Peak range glow as the sun, still unseen behind the lesser peaks over my left shoulder, casts its warmth on its rise.

I am thinking of despair and hopelessness and being buried by our broken and faithless world. And these thoughts, as you may guess, hinder me from enjoying the splendor of my freezing fingers and funky coffee on the {sic} New Mexico morning.

And so I'm beginning to learn that I have a choice.

I can choose to succumb to hopeless distraction, colorless woes; or I can choose faith. Yes, faith is God-given but Jesus all the time admonishes & convicts his disciples to "have faith", one time castigating them as "Ye of little faith." So clearly we are the active agent in utilizing (or not) our faith within us. We are not passive socks full of a faith only useful when God decides to use us - in His wild, magnificent plan He's put the keys in our hand and said "trust in me" and now "drive."

So I must choose to drive and choose to trust the verse that tells me God has planned good works for me to walk in. I am to rely on my faith in the truth of this grand fact and walk in confidence and without worry in whatever places He has for me to go.

OR I can choose fear & anxiety, letting the darkness of the world bind me in inactive passivity and ultimately in selfish angst, sinful indulgence; "Well, it's all shit, may as well get mine and pray for change." THAT is certainly not how Jesus meant for His bride to live.

His people are more than conquerors, vibrant world-changers, patient as rocks and steadfast as the mountains. We are to abound in grace and overflow in unselfishness, to befriend outcast and poor, widow and orphan. Meek in spirit, humble in nature, strong in faith and joyful in living. We laugh as we trudge, we suffer with whom suffering has come and rejoice at what is good.

But above all we have chosen to live in light of this: Jesus Christ is the hope of the world and in His resurrection we find life to the full and seek for as many as can to know Him and His life also. To place my faith HERE, I have chosen; to live out my fleeting, human shuffling-of-a-life with this as the leitmotif through it all, learning to let it color my every breath and my every doing, for my joy and for God's glory.