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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| Reformation Day. |
Four Hundred and ninety one years ago, Martin Luther famously posted his ninety-five thesis. Thanks to the (relatively new) printing press, it sparked a reformation of religion that began to unchain the gospel from shackles formed over centuries of slow, but increasing compromise. By the time the reformation came, Christianity had long since stopped resembling the faith of scripture - for it had long since stopped teaching the faith of scripture.
Praise God today, and every day for His word through which the reformation came.
Update: I still think this is funny. |
posted by Daniel @
9:14 AM
2 comment(s)
 
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| It has begun... |
As some of you are aware, I am instructing my two older children in biblical Greek. We are in the third year now, and we do this about seven in the morning before breakfast. As it turns out, both of them were sick yesterday (feverish), and so, because they were up already, I decided to do our Greek lessons in the evening to allow them to sleep in today. That went very well, and it meant that I would have an extra hour this morning.
So, naturally I used the time in the most selfish way imaginable - I determined to get an extra hour of sleep. I had only about two hours of sleep on Thursday night, followed by a rigorous day of fishing, then staying up late to watch the kids when the wife went out. The next morning (Saturday) I was up early helping someone with their roof - and on Sunday I was up preparing etc. In short, I have been feeling short changed on sleep this weekend, and this looked to be a boon for me.
Except that I totally spazzed out. Tuesday morning is our leadership prayer time - I normally meet with the leaders of the church for prayer at 5:30 a.m. in our church building, which I didn't realize I was missing until 6:15, where, as I was blissfully praying in bed I suddenly realized where I wasn't.
My doctor told me that it's all downhill after forty. I just didn't think it would happen so soon! |
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posted by Daniel @
9:40 AM
6 comment(s)
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| This was a triumph |
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Well, okay - maybe not huge success, but the Conservative Party in Canada won another minority government, gaining a few seats in the house. A minority government, btw (for our 'merican readers, means that in the House of Parliament, the conservative party holds more seats than any of the other parties, but still holds less than half the seats in the house. Some would argue that minority governments are better for the whole than majority governments, since they do not have complete control over the house - that is, they cannot "pillage the village" but must work with the villagers. That's fine if you're one of the villagers, but not as good if you happen to be a pillager.
Either way, it is better than most alternatives.
To give you a idea of just how apathetic the vote was, the stats for my riding have about 40% of eligible voters actually voting. That's a 60% couldn't-care-less rate.
Now, back to your busy day...
Wait - before you go back to your busy day, if you are an American, and especially if you call yourself a Christian,...
READ THIS, read it all.Labels: politics |
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posted by Daniel @
9:01 AM
17 comment(s)
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| Fiction Friday: The Man With Two Masters. |
The interior of the palace was awash in orange and gold as that great and silent light slowly sank along its eternal course behind that line where the earth and sky met in the west. The high windows shaped that fiery light as it filled in slanted rays, the great cavity of that room. There, far ahead on the raised dais, the throne and him one who sat in it – figures cut from light itself it seemed, waited. The sharp echo of their footsteps could have told a blind man how grand the room was. The dust and smell of the harvest hang in the air, even here, and in spite of the himself, the majesty and beauty of this place seemed to pull from the recesses of his soul an admiration that he himself would rather have denied.
“Kneel.”
The command jerked him from his silent thoughts – had they passed through this magnificent chamber so soon? He looked to the speaker even as he begrudgingly humbled himself on one knee. His lord's attendant was never so kind as his lord.
“All the way.”
The voice wasn’t harsh, but its timbre and tone left no room for hesitancy, and though his heart swelled against the command, yet he smoothly forced the other knee into obedience.
“Why have you come?”
The question hung there knitting itself into the fabric of the fading light, hovering with the sweet smelling dust of harvest. What could he answer? Could he really tell his lord all that was in his heart? He relished the notion of suddenly answering the question truthfully – he would never do that of course – but the thought so tickled him he let it play out in his thinking for just a moment.
Why? Is it not obvious that you are my lord, and I am your vassal? Did you not conquer my lands and my people – and is not my presence here on my knees evidence enough that you have conquered me?
“I bring the tribute.”
He raised the heavy box he had brought in before him. An ornate, carved and beautiful thing – but filled with silver and gold. As he raised it, he opened it and waited. In the silence that followed his thoughts continued.
I have to admit – I admire this lord. He not only defeated me, but every day since he has worked tirelessly to advance my lands and my people. He is a better manager of my own things than I have ever been. He is noble and kind, strong and virtuous, and even here in his own throne room he looks more concerned about me than my tribute. He is loved by his subjects, and rightly so – I have never known a man to be his better. My own life has so greatly improved under his guidance and reign, and yet here I am before him, welcomed into his throne room, and still my heart is full of rebellion. It weeps in the dungeon of my chest for the old rule, and I am torn daily in a struggle between my desire to be ruled, and my desire to rule.
There is a stirring on the dais, and this time it is not one of the vassals who speak to me, but my lord himself – a father, a soldier – a man whose authority is by no means lost in the tenderness of his voice,
“Why have you been away so long?”
My head instinctively bows, and my eyes, were they open, would be cast upon the floor. I speak the truth; why not?
“I wanted to bring you a tribute, but wanted it to be worthy of my absence...”
Without hesitation, but kindly, he reaches to my bowed chin and lifts my face to his concerned stare. He drinks in my countenance, so that his reply doesn’t come in words, but is written in compassion of that kind and noble face.
I shiver within as he seems to examine me – there is no rebuke in his gaze - none at all. Yet I am weighed down in my soul by some phantom rebuke – one that I have heaped upon my own soul. I feel the weight of it - made all the more heavy as I know how I would have responded were I in his shoes. I think I am trembling, but it is a trembling within. My heart wrings itself beneath his benign and kind rule – he is the enemy of my heart’s reign – and for this reason my heart continues to writhe under this happy yoke, and I feel myself a sad puppet being yanked apart day by day as those sorry strings that bind me are being manipulated by two very different masters.
“I am sorry my lord.”
The words are uttered so inaudibly, so mixed into the drone of the dying light, that I suspect he hasn’t really heard me. I know this man is no liar, but my heart, my heart has only known poison, and it pumps it through me to keep me under its spell. I want to be more sorry – I want to be able to shut the door forever on that beady eyed demon in my chest – that whisperer who chafes at my joy day and night for want of another joy. There it rocks back and forth in the inky blackness of my deepest self; scheming and deceiving – holding onto the mad and undying hope that continues to well up from within – a septic putrescence giving resolve and ashen strength to my raging breast so that I find myself rubbed raw each day by contest between the good rule of my lord, and the sour desires of my impenetrable heart.
His eyes are reading my face. He knows perfectly well the turmoil of my soul. He reads my shame, my inner struggle, his own face the picture of strength adorned by compassion and understanding.
“Rise”
I do. I know what comes next too.
He will inquire as to what I will need to run that part of his kingdom which formerly was mine, and which he has awarded me governance in his name, and I will give some answer, but somewhere inside I will feel that I am somewhere else – for that thing in me refuses to draw close to him. How I want this time to be the time when I reach down and tear my own black heart from the hollow of my heaving chest and throw it to the floor before him – so that he might do what I have begged him from afar to do ever day since he took control of my lands: impale that vulgar thing once and for all.
The two of us begin to talk, my voice is dry as dust, his quiet and attentive. The golden orange that once crawled across the floor had dimmed and reddened, crawling up the east wall until the room is in the shadow of night. |
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posted by Daniel @
2:48 PM
3 comment(s)
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| Live For The Moment... |
Not this moment, not the moment right now. Live for the moment when you may here hear, "Well done my good and faithful servant..."Labels: Ten Second Theology. |
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posted by Daniel @
6:13 AM
3 comment(s)
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| The Imputation of Righteousness |
There are two (main) aspects to the doctrine of imputed righteousness, and some tertiary afterthoughts. The first aspect is that righteousness can be imputed, and second that it is Christ's righteousness that is imputed.
To the first:
In Romans 4:21-22, Paul argues that when Abraham trusted God to keep His promise, that by this same trust God counted Abraham as righteous. That is, Paul teaches that Abraham was regarded as "just" by God, not because of Abraham's piety, or his holy conduct - and certainly not premised upon Abraham being sinless (for all of us are sinners).
Paul is teaching that the righteousness by which Abraham was justified was not produced by Abraham, but was reckoned to Abraham the moment Abraham placed his trust in God.
Paul goes on to argue then, that the righteousness that justifies us is imputed to us and does not come from works of the flesh. We are not justified by our own righteousness, for no one is truly righteous, rather we are justified by faith because through faith God reckons righteousness to our account.
To the second part (this righteousness is Christ's):
If we are agreed that sin is indeed worthy of the punishment God demands for it, then God cannot fail to administer that punishment, lest He himself be unjust, or the punishment be unjust. If the punishment for sin is just, and God is just - then the righteousness by which we are justified cannot be "pretend" righteousness, it must be "real" righteousness, or God is not just in justifying us.
So was ask, where then does this righteousness come from?
The answer is that it is God's own righteousness (c.f. Romans 3:22) that comes from God (c.f Philippians 3:9) and is reckoned to our account, in and through Christ (c.f. 1 Corinthians 1:30, Philippians 1:11) who Himself is equally the source of it (c.f. 2 Peter 1:1).
Thoughts:
An important question concerning the integrity of this imputation is raised by those who object to it: How can God pretend that a guilty man is just, and on the basis of that phantom, declare the man innocent? Does not God's justice demand punishment for the sins, and can that justice still be justice if it can be thwarted by God pretending a man to be innocent?
I word the question as an adversarial, because it really is quite valid. How is it that a just God can merely pretend a guilty man is innocent, and expect anyone to agree that this is just. Does it become just because all parties agree to the ruse? Or is it in fact that we have framed the question poorly? I think the latter.
God doesn't pretend that guilty people are innocent - He is perfectly just, and will by no means allow the guilty to go free.
That leaves only one option - the guilty do not go free, and the righteousness that is reckoned is not a pretend righteousness, but actual righteousness. The question is, how can real righteousness get accounted to guilty sinners, and the answer scripture gives is, I believe, through being born again.
When we are born again, something happens - we are baptized into Christ Jesus - we become spiritually "married" to Christ - the "two flesh become one flesh". Not married in the way that we think of marriage today, but married in the way marriages were done in biblical times - where the marriage begins with the betrothal. Recall that when the betrothal was announced the two were considered married, but the ceremony wouldn't take place until after the groom went to his father's house, and made a new room on the house for him and his bride to live in. When the addition to the house was completed, the groom would set out (at night) to take to him his bride. They would return to his father's house, where there would be a great celebration ending in the formal consummation of their marriage.
The take away here is that we, when we exercise faith in Christ, enter into a union with Christ that is pictured in marriage. Paul described marriage as a mystery - not in the sense that we use the word, as if we meant something that can never be fully understood - rather it meant something that was previously unknown, but has now been understood and revealed. Marriage, says Paul, pictures the union of Christ with His church.
Paul writes about our union with Christ all over the place - it is this same union that makes the imputation of righteousness "real".
It isn't that God pretends we are righteous - it is that we are united to Christ who is righteous. God cannot deny Christ's righteousness, and since we are united to Christ - the bride of Christ, and one flesh (as it were), his righteousness is our righteousness in a very literal and real way.
It becomes our righteousness because through our union with Christ we are not only crucified with Him, but we die with Him and are buried with Him - and the moment that God raised Jesus from the dead - He raised us up with Him too - and in that moment God declared us truly righteous in Christ. Our sins having been punished "for real" in Christ, our righteousness is just as real "in Christ".
Our sins were put on Christ through the union that is called the new birth.
It is a new birth because we die in (and with) Christ on Calvary, we are buried with Him in the grave, and in that moment our debt is settled forever. So that when God raises us in Christ, he is not raising us and our debt too, our debt was paid, and it stays in the grave. In Christ, our righteousness is not pretend, it is tangible - it is the righteousness of one who has paid their debt, and been restored to God in and through Christ.
The foundation of my justification is Christ and Christ alone. My justification does not depend upon my righteousness, it depends upon Christ and my apprehending Him by faith. It depends upon a genuine conversion - a real birth from above. The righteousness that is imputed to me is real righteousness. It isn't that I start acting righteous and my new righteous acts justify me - it is that I am clothed in the righteousness of Christ which becomes my righteousness through the new birth.Labels: imputation |
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posted by Daniel @
3:04 PM
6 comment(s)
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| Fall Out From Pastoral Exits |
Somewhere along the road, the office of Pastor became just like any other profession. A Seminary education nowadays has more clout in most places than the a divine call - and even divine calls are no longer something that the church recognizes, but rather have been personalized - as though God calls you, but tells no one else about it. The end result is that most men who become a pastor do not do so because everyone in their congregation recognizes that they have a gift and a calling, but rather because they themselves have thought that being a pastor would be pretty sweet.
So they go to Seminary with a bunch of other young men, and they get certified by a group of established academics with a degree, or two. Now they are "qualified" by man to be pastors, and the job search begins. Soon they are being interviewed by churches full of people they don't know by elders they do not know, and often the answers to all their questions can be had from the churches' published statement of faith. The "candidate" has to have that good pastoral feeling if he wants to get the job - he has to come off as both gentle and full of conviction, intelligent, but warm - and above all, he better be entertaining in the pulpit. If he has enough sparkle, he will be in a pulpit sooner than his less bubbly counterparts.
But, as often happens, hiring a perfect stranger to be an elder in your church sometimes ends up being a mistake. As a man who has preached in several churches suffering the fall out of this syndrome, sometimes more than once, it breaks my heart, especially in those places where I have preached often, and formed relationships.
In comes Mr. Pastor - oh he is just the right age, not dodderingly old, but with enough gray hair to get respect. He is so well spoken, and interesting in the pulpit - never a dull sermon, and best of all, he has big ideas for the church. Sure he is a perfect stranger that we met two weeks ago, but hey! We all prayed about it and besides, we have been without a pastor now for two years!
Yet two years later, Mr. Pastor isn't working out. His "vision" for the church is cut and pasted from the latest church growth propaganda, and he himself, however educated, never seems to preach anything deep - it's all shallow this, and shallow that. The older sheep are starving, and the younger sheep are just coming to be entertained. The other elders in the church - the ones who have been commit ed to this body for decades - they do not fit in with this pastor's vision, and there is strife. The immature outnumber the mature in the church five to one, and so the pastor is "well loved" and the elders begin to look like "old school" grumps, the pastor feels his hands are being tied - he can't implement the latest Saddleback methodology with these guys hovering over him - and sooner than later, there is a power struggle, and the guys with the greater investment in the body are not going anywhere soon.
So Pastor leaves.
And those who were coming to church with our modern day "consumer" mindset, they leave too. Why? They leave because the pastor was the only reason they were coming to the church. He was like the movie, and the church was the theatre - when the movie ends, you don't hang around in the building. So too, when their reason for being there leaves, they stop coming.
Sometimes these same lambs follow the shepherd and a new work is started - other times they disperse and find other preachers who can tickle their ears.
When I was more immature in the faith it happened to me too, so I know what I speak of. I was attending what seemed to be a great church: nice people, awesome preaching. It was my church, and I was glad to be a member. But when the pastor resigned suddenly, I likewise "suddenly" felt entirely disconnected to that body. The truth was that I hadn't really connected with that body in the way I had connected with that pastor - and so when he left, I felt no connection to the church, and left that assembly because one of the remaining elders was using his office corruptly. It was a good enough reason to leave, really, but had I been more mature, more connected to the body - I would have stayed behind and worked at fixing what was broken rather than use it as an excuse to leave.
The lesson here is this: First, make sure you are not connecting with just your pastor, but with the whole body of believers. Second, when new people come into your assembly understand what love looks like - it looks like going and connecting with them as often as possible, and encouraging others to invest in their lives too. If your heart isn't in it, talk to God until it is. It may be practical advice, but doing it without a heart to do it is like building a house on sand. Thirdly, stop hiring pastors as though pastoring was a job you could be qualified for by academics and experience - you are qualified to be a pastor when God in the person of the Holy Spirit selects you to shepherd a particular body of believers. There were itinerant preachers in the NT, but this pastoring here for a few years then being "called" someone else once the water gets tepid, that's pure bunk.
It shouldn't be that when the latest pastor exits after two short years in the pulpit that 60% of the congregation leave the church! Unity doesn't just happen, those who are strong in the faith come along those who are weak in the faith. Grrrrr. This stuff gets me excited in a bad way.
Anyway, wherever you find yourself this Sunday, seek to be glue there.Labels: Advice for pastors, pastoring |
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posted by Daniel @
6:51 AM
11 comment(s)
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| Wednesday Night Christian Fiction... |
He had been born to a middle class family in Tennessee early one September morning in 1971. He had heard the gospel twenty times growing up, but mostly it was the "say this prayer and you will be saved" sort of tract gospel - the kind where repentance is just a word, and you do what you have to do in order to secure heaven for yourself. He had said the prayer many times, but even he knew that didn't make him a Christian.
At 30 he heard the gospel for the first time with his heart engaged, and suddenly sin was real, and hell was real, and Christ was real, and he knew deep down inside that he loved his sin, and that was why he hated Christ so. He knew in his head that it was madness and death to deny Christ's rule in his life, and yet that knowledge wasn't enough to pry the love of sin out of his heart, and in a despairing moment he knew that sin owned him, and yet in the bleakness of that crushing certainty, in the utterness of his certain damnation - in the very moment that he was certain that he was lost - suddenly the message of Christ was more than a message, it was life itself. What only moments ago was unthinkable - an act of surrender so alien to all he had ever been suddenly poured itself out from the deadness of his heart - life where once there was death, beauty replacing ashes, and belief, hope, and joy gushed into his being as he surrendered the entirety of his life to Christ.
That was in 2001.
For the next eleven years he labored tirelessly in faith. His walk was steady, methodical, paced out by the silent rhythm that rises from that tension between what we know we should be in our faith, and what our faith allows. Slowly the house was being cleaned, and with the cleaning, new light, freedom, and grace. Whether the path lead through the valley of the shadow of death, through wilderness, or rich fruitful and easy fields - the pace was steady, and every step worked with each previous step to bring him to wherever he happened to be.
He had studied as an architect, but particle physics was his real joy. Though only an online layman, his interests and his untutored brilliance began to cause seasoned trend setters in the trade to take notice. Some of his ideas - rough and even outrageous - they were nevertheless, plausible, and even solid. His faith was not something that got in the way of these things - it was all part of his personality. He wasn't one of those "quack" Christians who harmlessly invites you to dinner then suddenly snaps and tells that you vote wrong, and that you're going to hell, and that its the devil who makes you smoke. Naw, he was just a very serious thinker, and though it seems impossible an unlikely combination, he a wit that was at once warm and caustic - which while being magnificently hilarious, never made anyone feel bad.
So it was interesting when he began to study time. Now, in reality, the past and the future do not exist, all that exists is the present. The past is something we remember in the present, and the future is something we anticipate in the present, but what is gone by cannot be touched, nor what is to come. We see evidence that things have happened before this moment, our own memories testify to this - and our experience in the present, tells us that a future is immanent; but we only have the present.
Time travel, or so the theory went, was really a matter of relative space/time. In order to move through space, we must move through time, but because time and space are relative to where you are, you can only really measure it according to one observer's observation of another - and either time is going to seem faster or slower but never backwards. Which is why when he began to speak of the possibility of sending information backwards in time it would have been laughable, had any one else mentioned it.
He had this idea, a theory really, about "inverted space" I never really understood it, and it sounded bizarre. His premise was that sub atomic particles were not fully "tuned" to this reality, having only one or more "phases" that passed through this reality to give them the semblance of presence in this reality. But he theorized that these phases were part of a hyper dimensional state that could only be fully understood if one graphed the whole object across both space, and "inverted space".
I didn't see the point, and he took a lot of flack in the community - that would have all started, I suppose, round the winter of 2011. There were a couple of guys who stuck with him, but he started to withdraw a bit and in a few years, most of the regulars had moved on, and I seldom hung in those circles, having finished my PhD, not in physics but in Maths.
But in the spring of 2015, I came across an article on trans-phased string theory that had all the marks of you-know-who, and it was sheer brilliance. He had gone to the woodshed and worked on his chops for a few years it seemed, because this article was both crazy and stunning. By tangling a phased string, he theorized, one could "twist" information round into "trans-phased" space - quarks and whatnot, he described as trans-phased spiral vectors that twisted in and out of phase in our time/space so that if one tangled a twist, one could pass information through the phase and it would appear again "simultaneously" when the twist again re-entered this side of the time-space continuum - tangle-twisting up the chain was impossible for some reason that though he explained well enough, I really couldn't understand, but one could twist the tangle downward - and that would drive the information encoded in the tangle, theoretically at least - backward in time.
On August 14th, 2019, in his own basement, he built a very rudimentary communication system, and as he was about to try it, a message from his future came to him telling him of their success. He then sent the message. He then received three more messages, one from the 15th one from the 17th, and one from the 23rd of August. The one from the seventeenth included lottery numbers for the 16th.
The numbers won, but he didn't play - he was, as you recall, still a very committed Christian, and the idea of depending upon his invention to supply his needs rather than God was a temptation he was unwilling to surrender too. But a thought came to him after that - why not send back hard earned Christian lessons - wouldn't it be better to learn up front what took years to know? He determined to do just that.
By 2030, he had streamlined his invention, and no longer needed a special "receiver" to receive messages, he could use the twist-tangled string to influence radio frequencies - and thereby, use wifi connections in the past to transmit data packets to their long ago networks. In fact, he could even send emails to people, and naturally he chose himself as the test subject.
His first email he sent to himself was received before he even came up with the idea of twist-tangling strings. He sent it to the time just after he was saved, and knowing all the struggles he was about to go through - he carefully and thoughtfully explained all that thirty or so years of Christian growth had taught him. It was perhaps, a doctrinal masterpiece that only he could truly understand, for he knew what questions and doubts had plagued him, and what struggles he had passed through to arrive at an illumined answer - and he documented it all and sent it back to himself.
What a profound gift (or so he reasoned) he was giving himself. All that struggle and hardship could be avoided, and who knew the heights his faith could reach if only he hadn't spent so long toiling in this mire then the next. Here was a road map through all the struggle, and sent to himself at the time he most would need it. When he finally sent it however, his heart went cold as a stone in his chest.
Time manipulation is funny like that. Because he suddenly remembered that he had received that same email so long ago, and how he relished it, and for a season had seemed to grow spiritually in leaps and bounds, only now he remembered that it was only a short while after that, that some small struggle had overcome his "faith" - and he had given up on Christianity. In fact, for the past twenty five years, he had been a great hater of the faith, a bitter atheist who only had contempt for Christ, and here he was, not happily married and content, but suffering burnout from two divorces, having three children, one who died of a drug overdose - and about as far from happy as you can be. In fact, if it weren't for the booze, he wouldn't have strength to face another day.
It was a strange thing to do, but hating Christ so much, he determined to send one more email - to warn himself of the ridiculous faith he was about to embark upon - and he poured all the venom pent up in his soul into that email - and when he had slandered Christ with a cold and satisfying wit, certain that this would save him the folly of a few years wasted in Christianity, he hit send.
Yet suddenly he remembered that too - he remembered getting that vitriolic email, and he remembered deleting it with disgust, and deleting the next days email from the same address. He remembered his struggle in the faith, and his perseverance, and suddenly understood that there was a point to his struggles, a point to his failures, a point to all his walk - that maturity and perseverance are not hindered by struggle, they are produced by it - and without struggle, without chastisement, if you will, one is not a legitimate child. It was then that he put away his invention, erased his notes, and prayed himself, with much thanksgiving, to sleep.
The end.Labels: fictional fun. |
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posted by Daniel @
9:13 PM
10 comment(s)
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