Becoming Last.

"BE NOT SIMPLY GOOD, BE GOOD FOR SOMETHING."

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Recently I have been troubled with a lot of anxiety. Anxiety over the future, anxiety over my present circumstances, anxiety about the people around me, anxiety about who I am as an individual, and anxiety that simply comes from being overwhelmed. This anxiety has been very overbearing recently and causing me to ask a lot of questions. Whether I am asking if people truly love me, or asking if something is wrong with me, I usually have to stop and try to change my thinking. Sometimes this helps, however, I never seem to speak truths to myself. I know that God loves me and that I am his masterpiece but rarely do I ground my roots in that knowledge and let my life produce fruit from its meaning. When Jesus said ” It is by grace you have been saved” he did not mean I am giving you this gift of redemption, however, I am still watching you and judging every single mistake you make. He meant, your actions or thoughts or achievements, WILL NOT SAVE YOU, only I can save you…so for heavens sake (literally), Just Let Me. By trying to earn our way into heaven we will just end up tattered and weary unless we allow Jesus to constantly breath truth into our lives. 

As I am still learning about Truth and its power I have tried to remind myself some of the truths of anxiety and what God does to those with a weary and tired heart.

“Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not be faint.” 

-Isaiah 40:30-31

-This reminds me of Remember the Titans and how Rev preached to his friends the importance of trusting in God and staying strong in him. Life always seems to relate to Remember the Titans…Doesn’t it?

Take a look for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0BVIM04TNs

“Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.”

-Proverbs 12:25

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.”

- 1 Peter 5:6-9

“Mam, with all do respect. Keep walking.”

There is dust clogging up their souls and

Not because they have inhaled the earth,

No.

They were dirty once.

Dirty still.

They see the particles flying through space

Illuminating light caresses their curves.

They see, Yes.

They have engulfed the earth.

Dust chokes their lungs.

But their souls cannot cough up its

Muddled fillings.

But sir,

If you breathe words that scholars marvel for but cannot cease at the sound of a drunkards beg, your disputes are in vain.

If your lips quiver at the sight of an orphan but spit at the cuffs of a murderer, your prodigal son will refuse to come home.

If you bow down to the commandments, the prowling lion within you will slaughter your need for a savior.

For what is life without peeling back one’s skin

only to find

you

need to be gutted from

dust,

just like the ones you

ignore. 

“For every band geek who picked up a guitar or drumsticks or a French horn instead of a bong, for every poet who picked up a pen instead of a gun and expressed their angers with ink and not blood, this one is for you”

-Big Poppa E

Early Memory by January Gill o’neal

I remember picking up a fistful 
of sand, smooth crystals, like hourglass sand 
and throwing it into the eyes of a boy. Johnny
or Danny or Kevin—he was not important. 
I was five and I knew he would cry.

I remember everything about it—
the sandbox in the corner of the room
at Cinderella Day Care; Ms. Lee,
who ran over after the boy wailed for his mother,
her stern look as the words No snack formed on her lips.
My hands with their gritty, half-mooned fingernails 
I hid in the pockets of my blue and white dress.
How she found them and uncurled small sandy fists.   

There must have been such rage in me, to give such pain
to another person. This afternoon, 
I saw a man pull a gold chain off the neck
of a woman as she crossed the street. 
She cried out with a sound that bleached me. 
I walked on, unable to help, 
knowing that fire in childhood
clenched deep in my pockets all the way home.

“If” by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
   And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
   And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
   Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
   Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run--
   Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!