The Re-arrange

Things, it seems, have been re-prioritized in my life over the last couple months.

I would’ve told you I was perfectly content with life a few months ago, saying things like, “When God does... but I’m not going to go searching for…” Working hard and sleeping harder, time with family and with friends all of it seemed just dandy.

Then things changed.

Something out of left field came streaming across the seemingly beautiful horizon of my contentedness, which contrasted deeply against the normal and shook the stupor from my eyes and the apathetic content from my bones. That blazing ball of light, which stunned me and scared me, awake, it seems.

Here’s my point in writing the above, and it is a simple point: God is in control.

Yes, that is all. There’s no need to relay any overly flowery words with eloquence and syntax of old, just to point to a small and solid fact, God is in control and we are not.

In contentedness he reigns and in the re-arrange he’s ruling. Classes, family, friends, the future, the past, the now, the all-of-life it’s his.

Which ought to be freeing thing rather than a binding thing. Something to give us a bounce to our step and nearly care-free demeanor, because we know that God is in control and we are living in what he knows is best for us. 

(Wichita Eagle file photo)

Friday's Ripped from the Journal

It is becoming increasingly important in my mind that we use our words properly. A higher level of vocabulary is not what is needed rather an understanding of the words already known. For true eloquence is not in the refined spinning of a phrase but in the speaking of the heart.

In the proper use of words is meaning conveyed and pressed forward, but in the flippant sentence is a misunderstood meaning and thus something is done unintentionally. (Saying something off cuff and instantly regretting what you’ve said, It’s kind of like the dream where your running around your high school naked. That sense of ‘uh-oh I’m embarrassed.’)

Yet, if we grasp what we are saying and are endured to its truthfulness then there will be conviction in our voices and belief in our eyes. Because words are the only real magic we possess.

For with words people are transformed--changed--what was once unknown to them is now known, what was once unknown to you is now a possibility. Do you see what I mean by ‘magic’?

Life is given, pictures are painted, blindness is cured, deafness can hear, people are devastated or built up and all of this comes from our use of words. We must use them properly. They are powerful. The can cut deep and run many away from what we ‘believe.’

This is a recent conviction of mine, to think before I speak (a conviction I so often fail at). Weighing the meaning of a word and its use in a sentence to grasp and saying exactly what I mean to say. Because if it is true (and I believe it to be so) and, “Faith comes hearing and hearing from the Word of God.” (Rom. 10:17) then I’d better watch my words carefully.