Honesty

Issue: I'm interested in an article you sent, so I tell you I'll read it later.
Honestly: I'm not going to read that article later, but I still bookmark it with the hope that this time will be different.

Issue: I say, I read a book about that.
Honestly: I probably read most of that book, but rarely have I read all of it.

Issue: You send me a video link to watch.
Honestly: I'm probably not going to watch it. Videos make me feel like I have mental claustrophobia and I'm being forced to go mental spelunking as !y sole means of escape.

Not If, But Where

It seems to me that we often judge the goodness or badness of most things or events in our lives by the shadow it casts upon them. But any object, any event can cast a variety of shadows, depending on the angle of the light which is cast upon it. In this case it is both life and death.

Our life sentence is inclusive of a death sentence. This much is an inescapable fact: All of us will die at one point or another. Some of us sooner than others but the length of time between birth and death is of no real consequence, as it will always seem too short to someone that cherished it. 

Life I believe is measured more by the impact it has had on the lives of others than by the length of it, and any life that impacts another will be seen as loss by those who remain to feel the void that life once occupied.

I have found over the course of my years that it is primarily my lack of understanding God that causes me to question him, but I also think that any faith worth having is also worth questioning. Anything less is superstition. Certainly we cannot hope to understand everything but we should understand what we can, and everything else is faith at some level, even a non-faith.

As for prayer, its place and purpose, it is in large part to me a great and wondrous mystery, but I will say a couple of things. 

As I think about prayer I feel that is it a monumental endeavor for any of us to recognize or even understand the answers to them, when we can barely fathom the many facets and magnitude of so many of our questions. Thankfully, in my experience God is more likely to give us what we need rather than what we ask for.

If there is an all knowing God that allows us to petition him, but then gives us answers that seem to defy our logic perhaps it is wise for us to consider that it is not the wrong answer being given in the larger scheme, as much as it may be the wrong question (or emphasis therein) that is being asked.

I  was once asked by a good friend, who has since passed, why God does not seem to answer his prayers sometimes. As with much of my pondering about God my only response was that of considering it from the perspective of a father... This much I have come to know, that sometimes silence is the greatest grace we can hope to receive when the answer as such, is probably more than we can bear in our current state.

Christianity is a religion of seemingly contradictory logics, among those is that death is not at all to be the end of life but the beginning of it. 

I too have lost parents, children and friends but I consider that when Jesus wept it is clearly noted that he did not weep for the one that had gone on but for those who remained behind.

Just some things to think about.

 I have.