Should I say, “I’m Sorry”

I have no control. No pride in that. I like it much better this way.

Its hard though.

I want to run ahead, and be the one who figured it out. But I am finding – once again – that God is my only Obstacle.

When I wrote that in my journal all those years ago, I was expressing my exasperation with trying to become whom I was supposed to be by now. All these years later, the begin point of this blog, there’s still that same frustration. And then, there’s that same submission to his rule and authority?

I don’t think the evil that God allows to co-exist in this world is God’s idea. His grace and mercy is attached to us – his children. The evil around me, the pain of the ones around me, effects me, limits me, and gives me pain.

I think of that family down the road, pain in every room. Each with their own burden. When I speak to him, he hears through the paradigm of his own experience, of his own lens. He doesn’t say it out loud, but my words land on his ear, and are instantly re-ordered. Do we do that to God, as well?

A young man that was walking through our neighborhood the other day, for example. I noticed out loud that he had no fear of me. He later re-iterated that he couldn’t accept what I’d said about him, because he lacks confidence. I told him that’s not what I said. He equated “no fear” with “confident”. So words, break down, communication isn’t a simple transaction, its fluid, its interactive. But there has to be trust. There has to be safety.

Oh to be a SAFE PLACE to be.

‘Treat the other man’s faith gently; it is all he has to believe with. His mind was created for his own thoughts, not yours or mine.’

Henry S. Haskins

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

TWO LETTERS, A TELEGRAM, AND A FINALE

By H. S. Haskins

“New York, September 10.

“Dearest Marian:

“Is it not time to break silence? Three months have passed since we quarrelled on the eve of your departure for the mountains. I wrote twice during the first week. You did not answer. Pride forbade my risking another rebuff.

…

“I have stopped running risks in the water. I observe the legal rate of speed in my car. But I have not given up an equally hazardous adventure—loving you.

“Forever and ever yours,

“John.”

Full Text click there for the rest of their correspondence

Joshua 1:8

Hebrews 13:12-14