THE HUMAN TOUCH

I wanted to write tonight, but all that seems to be on my mind is a subtle sadness. My daughter is leaving for a trip to Washington DC tomorrow evening with her eighth-grade class, and this is the last night before that trip. I am feeling a bit dualistic right now, if "dualistic" is even the right word. I am extremely excited and happy for her, but gently silent and sad for me. How is it possible for us to be so complicated at once?

Why do I feel so lonely at times? If I had to name the most overbearing problem in my life, it would be loneliness. Me...lonely. How can that be? Don't I have God living right within me?

Sorry, Father, sometimes I think even we who realize you live within us desire a more physical relationship with you, or anyone, for that matter. All I know is, I didn't bargain for loneliness, I didn't bargain for not having my daughter with me all of the time through her growing years, and I didn't bargain to have no one else in my life besides her. Those were things that were decided for me, and I must admit openly, I still resent those things a little bit to this day.

Maybe you'll ask, "Why don't you hook up with someone else, Tom?"

I'll answer that as briefly as I can. First, trust is a problem for me, as in, I don't trust women easily anymore. I used to, but I don't anymore, and the more time passes by, the harder it is to trust. There are times I believe I am to the point of not even trying anymore, because I don't want to put effort into something that won't last...it all seems way too pointless to bother with.

Second, frankly, I don't really want a relationship with anyone right now. Having said that, I am sure some might think that has to do with trust. However, the real reason I don't want a relationship is because it just isn't, and wouldn't be very high on my list of priorities right now. Trust being the issue it is, if "relationship" is way down on a list of priorities, then it probably isn't a wise idea to begin something that won't receive the attention it deserves. I'm just not geared for that type of experience right now, and so I wait.

But the longer I wait, the less I find myself able to want to put any effort into an attempt. Does that make sense? It's like this; if I meet someone I might want to get to know, my life is such right now that there isn't much room for her. And since I know this, I think sometimes, "Why bother?" Make more sense now?

At any rate, loneliness is the big trouble for me. My daughter being gone for a week isn't the end of the world, but I am definitely looking forward to the day she comes back. That reunion is always sweet, and it sometimes seems to make me forget about all the loneliness I might have felt with her gone. But I also know that my loneliness is not a result of her being gone; it's something deeper.

Maybe a companion would be nice, but I also think that a companion might only serve to mask the real problem. Which is? I don't know. Maybe it's a part of the human experience to suffer loneliness at times. Maybe that's all it is. I am certainly aware of God in my life, I am not lacking there, but the human touch is missing...most of the time. I think we all need that human touch.

WHATCHA BEEN UP TO, TOM?

A great blogging friend of mine, Bruce, asked me "Whatcha been up to, Tom?"


I figured I have neglected this blog enough for the past few weeks, and I had better actually post something if I want this to be a weblog...you know, where one periodically updates things?

What have I been up to? A whole lot of work, that's what. Furthermore, unlike many who might not like to work so much, I have been loving it. Not that I love not writing much, and not that I love not having much free time right now, but I do love the work I do, so doing more of it isn't exactly what I'd call a hardship. I am blessed to love my job, and I still have found plenty of time to be with my daughter. So my priority of "daughter, then work" means something has to suffer, and sadly, it is this blog that has suffered.

I miss writing, I would be lying if I said I didn't. I miss visiting all of your blogs and leaving unwise, goofy comments wherever I go. In all, I simply miss the connection with you all, even if it is only electronic. I happen to believe that whatever medium we meet within can be transcended by hearts that truly care, so whether it is physical or electronic, the meeting is real in my mind.

I have been watching a bit more tv lately as well; my baseball team, The Milwaukee Brewers are televised quite a bit, and at the end of the day when I am tired, I find myself for the last few minutes of my day enjoying another (so far) mediocre season. Up...down...up...down. Funny thing is, I never get tired of it. :)

I'd like to say that I have been busy working in my yard as well, but that's simply not the case. It's very wet in my yard right now, the grass needs to be cut, and my tractor will only tear up the lawn if I happen to drive on it. Last years' leaves will just have to be cut up by my mower, because I doubt they'll be dry enough any time soon to be swept and burned. So my yard certainly isn't grabbing any of my attention.

But work has eaten the lion's share. I wish I could have you guys with me when I work, I'd love to have your help, and I'd love to teach you what I know about finish carpentry. That should take about thirty seconds. :)

I have also been researching for one writing project, as well as researching for a new phase of my business; home building. It's one of the things I haven't done yet, and I'd like to do it. However, if my research is any indication, there's a lot more to home building than just "building". There's selling, advertising, personal relationship building, business relationship building, additional insurances and codes to meet, liscenses to gather, and the all important first house contract to land, unless I actually decide to build a speculation home. That might be a bit iffy right now, given our economy and the market for spec homes dropping like a rock off a cliff. Nevertheless, I press on, and I love it.

I love you guys, too. I hope you will be patient with me, and the sporadic posting habits I have formed recently. I sure do enjoy all of you guys and your comments and caring. I wish I could do more, but right now, it just isn't possible.

Thank you, Bruce, for asking the question, and giving me a little incentive to write. :)

WHAT MUST WE DO TO DO THE WORKS OF GOD?

"What must we do to do the works of God?" they asked Him.

"This is the the work of the Father, that you believe in the one He has sent."


Hi guys!!!!!

Sorry I have been away from bloggyland, almost completely. I'll be back soon enough.

I invite you to figure out what Jesus is implying with the passage I included above. It has to do with "working for God". The question the Jews asked of Him was very direct. I believe His answer was even more so.

What do you think it means?

FREE

You will be truly free when you stop trying to do work FOR God.

I leave you to think about that for yourself.

MORE STUFF

Since I still don't have much time to do any decent post justice, I'll just write some more stuff tonight.

I am a major sports fan, and have been enjoying with pride the Milwaukee Brewers resurgence into decency. For thirteen years, I stuck with a team that was considered nothing more than a perennial loser. It looks as though this year, they may actually contend for a playoff spot, and if early returns are any indication (with they usually aren't), this team may be very difficult to beat for anyone. They have jumped out to a five and one (5 wins, 1 loss) start, and it's great to see their younger players finally starting to take off. Keep an eye on Prince Fielder. The boy can can flat out smack the baseball. ;)

In other sports interest, we in Wisconsin have been waiting patiently for Brett Favre (yes, I spelled it right) to decide if he is going to play one more year. I do so hope he will, not because he is the greatest quarterback to ever play the game (I don't decide those things), but because the fans in Wisconsin would like the chance to say good bye to a man who given his life to this state for the last thirteen (fourteen?) years. It sure would be nice if we would get the chance to make his last year as special as he made he every other year he has been here. I know he wants to play for another Super Bowl, but we in Wisconsin would just like the chance to say goodbye for longer than five minutes during a Monday Night Footbal halftime special.

If you are a Brett Favre fan, why don't you tell me what you think he is going to do. While we are at it, if you have enjoyed watching him play these last years, why don't you let us know what your favorite Brett Favre moment is? I will if you will. :)

STUFF

Hi guys,

My daughter has stuff going on in her life. Whenever I ask her what she did for the day, she'll either answer "nothin" or "stuff". So here's my stuff.


I have been absent for the most part from my blog these last days, as well as from quite a few of yours. That doesn't mean I no longer love writing or visiting you. I do.

It does mean that my time priorities have been adjusted for the next weeks because I am working about sixty hours every week. Usually it's only fifty or so, but when you subtract ten available hours from your schedule for writing, you tend to write less and less...and less..................and less. I'll try to write more short pieces these next few days to stay in touch, but let's face it, you aren't going to die if I write nothing at all, and neither will I. I am just glad that anyone reads what I write, because to me, writing is enjoyable enough without an audience.

Did anyone happen to hear about an ancient scroll found in the midle east somewhere recently, which seemed to say that Judas beytrayed Jesus at the request of Jesus? I was just wondering. I heard it on the Paul Harvey radio show this afternoon, and was wondering if anyone else knew anything about it.

Abideea, bidea, bidea, bidea, that's all folks. (anyone remember Porky Pig and his stuttering goodbyes?)

WHY I DON'T TRUST MODERN SCIENCE, PART ONE

This begins my series on why I no longer trust science. Admittedly, this post is an odd one, but I think the topic is one of great import, and one that shows quickly that modern science is confused about what is truth, and confused about how it defines life, intelligence, and processes. This post does not include any footnotes. I admit it is an almost entirely philosophical post. The rest of this series will be have documentation attached, so you can see for yourselves where I got the information I wrote about, and why I claim what I claim.

Let's start this simply. Here is my statement.

Natural Selection IS intelligent design.

Now, we all know that natural selection is the process by which scientists say evolution occurs. However, not all scientists agree on whether that process is intelligent or not. The majority of those disagreeing scientists will be creation scientists, but there are nonetheless some scientists in the secular fields who believe Natural Selection must be an intelligent process. Personally speaking, I don't really believe in evoluton for more reasons than I care to list in this post, and therefore natural selection does not exist for me. But for the sake of the series, I wanted to start with natural selection as I believe it comes to bear on why I say modern science is not trustworthy. Darwin's theory of evolution is related to many scientific fields today. I believe that because that theory is highly flawed, the foundation of modern science itself is also highly flawed.

NATURAL SELECTION.

Think about that name for a moment.

At the very least, I would have believed evolutionists would have given the process a different name by now. "Natural Selection", as defined by Meriam-Webster means "a natural process that results in the survival and reproductive success of individuals or groups best adjusted to their environment and that leads to the perpetuation of genetic qualities best suited to that particular environment"

I don't need to look at that definiton for longer than a minute to realize that it smacks of intelligence. Let's look at the words that have been "selected" to portray the definition. There's "process", "success", "adjusted", "leads to perpetuation", and "best suited to that particular environment".

Let's start with the word "process". Any process involves steps, and any successful process involves the same steps, repeated over time to guarantee success. In my industry, it takes real planning to guarantee any kind of success, in essence, it takes intelligence. I suppose, though, that the type of work I do is not very similar to what scientists claim nature does, so maybe that correlation isn't a very good one.

Next, the word "adjusted" jumps out at me. Meriam-Webster defines the word meaning "to bring to a more satisfactory state". If we stopped at simply that definition, then Natural Selection is in real trouble if we want to continue to define it as being an unintelligent process. The idea of a more satisfactory state implies a sense of knowing what is not more satisfactory, in other words, of knowing the DIFFERENCE between satisfactory and unsatisfactory. However, Meriam-Webster also defines it as "to adapt or conform oneself", which, admittedly, is a much more fitting definition for "adjust" in the sense of Natural Selection.

Let's tie that definition in with "best suited to that particular environment". Our definiton of Natrural Selection, then, would be that life adjusts itself to be best suited for that particular environment. How does this process occur?

Does it occur by trial and error? Let's use a wild, outrageous example. Does a single cell that lives in a hostile environment of cell-wall eating acids try a thinner cell wall first? And if that doesn't work, does the next generation try the thicker cell wall, or maybe a cell wall that is impermeable to acids such as these? How does it happen? How does the living cell know which trait gives it the best chance for survival? Do the cells that perished somehow communicate to the still living cells which attempts didn't work?

If we stick with the definition of Natural Selection, then it is clear that there is nothing random or "trial and error" about the process scientists claim drives evolution. The very idea of selection is the ability to choose. The very idea of natural selection is that the species is able to select which traits give it the best hope for survival in the long run. Careful, we might just be accused of saying that evolution not only is unnatural, but that it can predict the future as well, in an entirely unintelligent manner.

When Darwin proposed that Natural selection was the vehicle by which evolution occured, he also proposed that evolution was entirely random, without any outside guiding influence other than the environment. I propose that if evolution exists (and I do not believe it does), that it MUST be guided by intelligence. Anything that can adjust according to what makes it best suited to live in a certain environment has the ability to DECIDE what is best suited, and what is not. Decisions are entirely intelligence based. A badly failed "trial and error" attempt at adjusting to the environment would mean the cesstion of life for that species. Can you imagine, now, that the process of trial and error occured not just for complex multi-celled creatures, but for the very simple first single- celled and self-replicating creatures as well?

Trial and error? For that is what it would have to be to suggest that "Natural Selection" is entirely unintelligent. That, or rename the process, because Natural Selection implies intelligence by its very name and nature. Anything that can "select" something, or make a choice is intelligent, regardless of what the selection criteria are. Something so critical and involved as survival takes much more than trial and error attempts to gain success over any length of time, and we must keep in mind that science claims life has been on this planet for almost four billion years. That many trial and error attempts should result in disaster, not the proliferation of the various species.

It's a simple scientific experiment; you can do it in your own kitchen. Set a large bowl on the countertop, and begin attempting to toss the cover (the only cover that fits) on the bowl through trial and error. How many attempts will it take to place the cover exactly where it belongs? Do you have time to make that many attempts? Or will something (your environment) demand your attention before the attempt that succeeds occurs? In the case of life, what demands attention is survival, and survival cannot be left up to amatuers who believe that trial and error is going to asure success over the long haul every time. There just isn't enough time, and the environment is constantly demanding attention for a different problem than the one "trial and error" is currently trying to solve. I propose that by the time life has evolved to solve even one problem, several hundred more problems have occured which make it impossible for that species to survive in its current state, because the environment is never going to wait for a process that requires as much time as evolution does.

Science says I am wrong. But if we take a simple look at nature, we see that what I propose occurs naturally almost constantly. Especially in the case of diseases and natural disasters, the various species are completely reliant upon their ability to adapt or flee, and if they cannot, they die. If multiples of environmental concerns attacks a species, that species' ability to mutate and change rapidly enough has never been witnessed by man. In fact, the only species capable of surviving MANY multiple environmental changes simultaneously IS man, and it is exactly due to man's intelligence, and his mastery over providing protection for himself. Animals do not have that sort of intelligence. It is ludicrous to believe that single living cells do.

Any survival of life on earth requires intelligence, because without intelligence, life simply cannot change rapidly enough to withstand the ever changing environment around it. Scientists claim that many generations are necessary for the process of natural selection to meet an environment that is changing. I propose that species often do not have more than a single generation in which to respond to environmental change. It should be simple, it should be logical. Instead, science claims it is illogical to believe in an intelligence that not only created life, but guides it even as we live now.

Think about it yourself. Can we understand that life without intelligence simply cannot change fast enough to survive its rapidly changing environment? We have witnessed numerous species' extinctions due to single environmental changes, and yet we propose that life can survive many multiples of environmental changes and disasters without intelligence?

Science claims to know why evolution occurs, and it calls the process Natural Selection. Furthermore, science claims that Natural Selection is unintelligent. I propose that if evolution occurs, science doesn't currently have a clue as to why or how it occurs. If they could just admit that, they might be trustworthy. But my high school science text (and some current ones) claimed that the giraffe grew a long neck to reach the more tender leaves at the tops of trees.

What, I ask, do leaves at the tops of trees have to do with survival? And how, I ask, can the neck of the giraffe not be considered an intelligent design if the leaves at the tops of trees have anything at all to do with survival?

Science has much explaning to do, and they could start with admitting that they are still clueless as to the origins of life as we know it, instead of pretending to know that a mindless random process determines life.

THE WORST CAN NEVER HAPPEN

So many people are trying to become pleasing to God. Then there are those who cry out, “Well…I doubt they ever really were Christians." Nothing makes me angrier. How judgmental can a person become than to condemn someone based solely on a few external actions they have witnessed?

Which leads me back to my original point. It’s all judging, and I am becoming convinced that one of the things we people do best is judge others and ourselves. Or, should I say, one of the things we do worst? That’s just the trouble, we don’t judge rightly, not even when it comes to ourselves.

We seem so busy with trying to fix the faults we find in ourselves, and I seldom see Christians simply enjoying life. The saddest thing I witness above all is that of someone who has been a believer for a long time, whose life becomes less and less joy filled. Yet time and again, I try to tell these people that if in fact they really do think that God loves them, and if in fact they really do think that they can never be separated from Him, there is absolutely no reason in the world for their lives to be anything less than as full and fantastic a life as they can imagine. No reason whatsoever.

This leads me to believe that not many people really think God loves them, or really think they can never be separated from Him, because not many people are living their lives in such a fantastic way. How my heart yearns for them to know for certain so that they can live free of fear; and, having that fear completely removed, they can excel and soar unfettered by the worries they once were enslaved to.

I will tell you a secret. The one thing I notice more than anything else in new believers is a changed life. Not just a life that now struggles to be free of the things that confined them. What I witness in them is true joy and freedom. Somehow, from the moment they believe to the moment they have been with Jesus for a length of time, that freedom slowly seeps out of them, until they are but a shadow of what they once were.

What is the cause of this? I believe one part of a cause of this is the belief that not all are redeemed, and that somehow, it is our position to judge the “unsaved” first, and then offer them an olive branch which they are free to accept or reject. The second part is that they never believe themselves to be truly redeemed; they always seem to have to prop themselves up on a bible verse, or in the past, when it seemed like they were more joyful.

The most alive Christians I have met have been the ones who could tell me RIGHT NOW how free they feel, how loved they feel, and how secure they feel. Truly, once all fear is gone, the land beneath our feet is like air under the wings of a bird. We can fly, when we are not shackled with fear. And what do we have to fear? Absolutely nothing.

Peace to you all has been proclaimed by Jesus Christ and his followers, peace between God and man. There is now nothing to fear or to be condemned for, so stop condemning yourself if you are, and stop fearing the worst if you do. The worst can no longer happen.

TELL ME ABOUT IT

I will find out this week if that job as a project manager will be offered to me. One week ago last Friday, I went for a second interview, and I thought it went really well. I found out this last Friday that I was the only person to receive a second interview, which I take to mean the fellow who is doing the hiring either liked me, or just wanted to make sure his thoughts on my absolute inability to do the job were right the first time around. We'll see.

How are things going in your lives? This blog always ends up being about me, me, me. Well...maybe I want it to be a bit about you, you, you, today. So, what do you say? Care to share? Got a plot? Name the game, stay and play, let's talk a while, 'kay?

REAL POWER

Check out Steve's latest post called Real Power. I was going to post something tonight, but I am pretty sure that I can't say it as well as Steve does. Go ahead, what are you waiting for?

WHAT IS FAITH FOR?

I left this as a comment over at a friends blog, and realized that what I had said was sort of an illumination for people about how my faith works within my life. The question was asked, "what does trust in God do, what is it for?" Well, this is my answer. Thanks, Eddie, for asking the question, even though you didn't ask it of me directly.





We don't trust ourselves enough, even those who believe in God, and we ought to be able to trust ourselves more than anyone else, considering what Christ said about believing. Whether you believe in God or not, there is one thing that is most definitely true of the human race: A large lack of trust in ourselves. I think faith in God helps to overcome some of that. For whatever reason, we tend to believe of ourselves that we are very limited creatures. We tend to believe that we can't see in the dark. Yet when a person remains calm, and gives his eyes time to adjust, he can see in many more dark places than he believed at first.


We tend to believe that we could not survive a thirty foot fall uninjured, yet I myself have survived such a fall completely uninjured. People would say that such a fall would most likely kill a man, and certainly would injure him seriously in most cases.


In short, there seem to be more things we believe we cannot do than things we believe we can do. For me, trusting God makes everything possible. The only doubts I have are about my abilities, and even then, there are things I can do today that I believed I couldn't do years ago.


I believe the message of Christ is not just life after death, but Life during life. I believe that within me, there is a power unlike anything else in this physical world, and that this power is always available to me. Like I said, I don't trust in my ability to make use of that power, but there have been times when that power was most certainly manifested beyond the belief I had of my limits. Because of trusting in God, I am more inclined to believe I can do something than I was before. It is confidence, certainty, and strength where many times, people who don't believe in God would stop or not even try.


I am just learning about the lack of faith I have in me, and the strength of the God who makes up for any lack I have. I am a beginner, a cub, a calf, whatever name you would put on it. But the more I learn about the lies of the human mind in believing we have so many limits, the more I realize and experience that I am doing things I never could do before. Most of those things manifest themselves through my work, making things that others just look at and say, "How in the world did you ever make that with the tools you have?" Or someone being able to see the difference between my work and someone else's on the same project, such a difference that experience alone cannot explain. I'm not bragging here, either, it's just explaining a fact.


My trust in God is for perfection, not because I have to be perfect, but because I can be. My trust in God is for me to do those things I have believed I couldn't do because of perceived human limitations.

THE PRAYER SPOT?

The following article appeared several years ago in a Newspaper called the Sydney Morning Herald. It was endorsed by Bob Murray, PhD, and Alicia Fortinberry, MS, who founded the Uplift Program. The Uplift program is dedicated to the treatment of depression and the overall mental well being of all people. I have read a little of Bob and Alicia’s work, and find their ideas fascinating, as well as similar to some Christian concepts of community and prayer, or even meditation. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

If you suufer from depression, and are looking for help, visit their website, The Uplift Program.

'The Prayer Spot' Found

May 22, 2001

A couple of years ago researchers at the University of California at San Diego found the famous 'God Spot,' a part of the brain that reacts to certain spiritual/religious stimuli. Now scientists have gone even further to probe the biological underpinnings of prayer and other kinds of religious experience.

Professor Newberg, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose work appears in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, takes images of the brains of people during peak religious experiences -- deep prayer and religious meditation.

A pattern has emerged from Professor Newberg's experiments. There is a small region near the back of the brain that constantly calculates a person's spatial orientation, the sense of where one's body ends and the world begins. During intense prayer or meditation, and for unknown reasons, this region becomes a quiet oasis of inactivity. "It creates a blurring of the self-other relationship," said Professor Newberg, "If they go far enough, they have a complete dissolving of the self, a sense of union, a sense of infinite spacelessness."

Professor Newberg and other scientists are finding that people's diverse devotional traditions have a powerful biological reality. During intense meditation and prayer, the brain and body experience signature changes, as yet poorly understood, that could yield new insights into the religious experience.

An example is a National Institutes of Health-sponsored clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore that will study the effects of group prayer sessions among black women with breast cancer -- the first such study. Already, scientists say, the young field has provided evidence that these meditative states -- which rely on shutting down the senses and repeating words, phrases or movements -- are a natural part of the brain; that humans are, in some sense, inherently spiritual beings.

"Prayer is the modern brain's means of connecting to more powerful ancestral states of consciousness," said Gregg Jacobs, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. With meditative states, people seem to turn off what Professor Jacobs called "the internal chatter" of the higher, conscious brain.

Eventually, researchers hope to identify a common biological core in the world's many varieties of worship.

We have been saying for a long time that humans were inherently spiritual beings. This will not come as news to Fortinberry-Murray practitioners. Bob Murray, PhD.

HE ALLOWS US TO GO AWAY

I wrote A Reason To Believe not for its story, although I like stories, but rather for its capacity to inspire. In truth, I didn’t expect my story to inspire anyone, mainly because I believe it was meant to inspire me at a time when I had given up. Yet somehow, that story continues to inspire me, and now, I am told, that it inspires others as well.

I am both glad for that, and a little concerned. Glad to have been able to share one of my stories and allow people to see a part of my journey through my eyes. But concerned because for some, maybe this story inspires them because they believe they have nothing in their lives that is worthy of being inspiring. Maybe they do have something, but cannot recall it. Or maybe, they didn’t realize what an incredible lack of faith I had to have when this happened. This story isn’t the only such story I can tell. There are others.

You see, I have always believed that I was given these inspirations exactly because my faith was so weak. Surely someone with strong faith wouldn’t need to be reminded, would he? And surely, someone who told God to go to hell possibly requires a bit more evidence? After all, the healthy don’t need a doctor, do they?

At that moment in my life, I needed a lot more than a doctor. I needed something that was going to last, something I couldn’t make happen by myself, and something that someone else could verify, so that I didn’t end up believing I had made all of it up in my mind. You might think the chances of that are slim, but if you had known me before I met Christ, you’d know that my mindset would have eventually led me down that path. Putting it as lightly as I can, I think too much. I have been told this numerous times in my life, especially by other Christians.

In fact, Brett’s wife used to say it to me quite often. I work things around in my mind, never leaving them alone, constantly searching for the truth, and not being able to make sense of the things in my life. I question God a lot. I question His intelligence, I question His love. I question His presence, and I question His existence. Yes, even after the story I related to you, I still sometimes question His existence. Not for real long, though. Something usually happens fairly quickly to silence those questions for a good while.

Why am I writing this? Because it’s a part of who I am, and a part of the way I am. And all these parts of me, and all these experiences, have shaped how I view God and His love. I know deeply that any God who can be told to ‘eff’ off and still give me evidence of His presence must certainly love me beyond my capacity for understanding. And the lengths He goes to for me describe not only His love, but His veracity. I don’t believe He feels these things only for me.

But I do believe that my experiences with God are very unique. I believe that God does not deal with us only according to His own attributes, but to ours as well. That is why I have become a believer in salvation for all, even though I cannot pinpoint every bit of evidence for it. The evidence for me lies within God Himself, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, who, it is written, "takes away the sins of the world", without prejudice.

There are times I get upset with people who don’t believe. There are times I cannot believe they don’t believe. But most of the time, I find myself accepting it, even when I am forced to because none of my words or deeds give them a reason to believe. I believe God allows people to stray. He has allowed me to stray far more often than I care to tell. If anyone has blasphemed God more than me, I’d like to hear their story, because I would have to doubt it based on memory and experience alone.

All people everywhere wander from God. The story of the prodigal son isn’t the story of one man who ran off with his inheritance. It’s the story of the whole of mankind, and the father who rushes out to meet him is the God of all creation. So if He allows you to wander…heck, if He allows you to blaspheme Him and ignore Him, to deny His very existence, I know that someday you will understand why He simply won’t crush you, the bruised reed. He will neither extinguish you, nor turn you away. And all of this is your inheritance simply for being created. I do not know when you will know this, but I hope it’s soon, so you can celebrate His love and joy of you with me.

A REASON FOR BELIEVING / PART TWO

“Why have you abandoned me!?”

I was done. I was completely spent, and drew my next breath deeply, my head suddenly pounding from the exertion and pressure inside.

Seconds later, my telephone rang…….

Brett was traveling about a hundred twenty miles away on the same morning I exploded. I had only known Brett for six months, having met him in a group setting with some other friends of ours from church. This group now met every Sunday evening; my wife having joined as well for the preceding six months.

We met to discuss issues of faith and love, and learned a lot about ourselves and God along the way. But in that time, I really only knew Brett and his wife Sherrie as acquaintances. We didn’t talk outside of the group, nor did we sit together in church or do anything together as friends sometimes do. There had never been a reason for either of the couples to interact outside of the group; as a result, Brett had never called me prior to that day.

During his travels that morning, Brett was troubled by something he couldn’t put his finger on. As a short amount of time passed, he became aware of an idea to give me a call. He shrugged it off several times, before the idea became more insistent in his mind. Still, he couldn’t decide whether he should call or not. You don’t just call someone out of the blue unless you have a reason, and from Brett’s point of view, never having called me before, he didn’t feel as though he had a reason. Yet he couldn’t shake the insistence of his thoughts.

He drove on for another while, and after a time, several hours had passed since his first inclination to call. The persistence of the idea to call me began to be louder in his mind, to the point of actually becoming a hindrance to his attention for the road on which he was driving.

When he finally could not stand it any longer, he pulled over to the side of the road. He had decided to call his wife, who was at home, to ask her for advice. He described to Sherrie what he was experiencing, and asked her what she thought he should do. After all, how do you tell someone that you have this incredible need to call them without any reason whatsoever? What should he say? What would Tom think?

Brett had never had a reason to call me prior to this, so his conundrum was fairly vivid to him. If there had been several other times where we had spoken, if only we knew each other better, maybe then a call such as this one wouldn’t seem so wacky. But to call out the wild blue like this?

Sherrie convinced Brett to try calling, so he asked her if she could look up my telephone number and give it to him. Before he hung up with Sherrie, she asked him to let her know how it went.

Here is how it went.

I gathered every remaining breath in my chest, and shouted deafeningly, at God, at the cross, “Why have you abandoned me!?”

I was done. I was completely spent, and drew my next breath deeply, my head suddenly pounding from the exertion and pressure inside.

Seconds later, my telephone rang…….

I looked at my telephone in disgust. “Who could possibly be calling me right now!?” I asked no one in particular. I hesitated. I couldn’t decide. Should I answer it? Why answer it? I was angry, sad, tired…defeated. I felt as though I had nothing left to say to anyone. I just wanted all of this over with. I wanted to not have to deal with it, to not have to think about it, to not have it be the only thing I knew in my life, the only thing that currently defined me. I wanted to run from it as far and as fast as I could, but I was too tired to run.

The phone rang three times, and then a thought occurred to me instantly. “I do NOT want to listen to any messages! If I let it ring again, I am going to have to listen to my wife’s voice telling someone to leave a message. To run out of the room, or to pick up the phone, what should I do?

I picked up the handset, pressed the “talk” button, and said, barely audibly, “Hello?”

Brett answered hesitantly (or so that is how it seemed to me at the time). “Hi Tom…it’s…Brett…LaChappelle. How are you doing?”

“Fine”, I lied. Of course I wasn’t doing fine! Who cared anyway? And what in the hell was Brett doing calling me?

Up until this moment, I had not confided in anyone what had occurred in my life. No one knew that my wife had left me. No one knew that I had lost my job. I certainly wasn’t going to tell Brett. My mind was made up!

That’s when Brett said, “Look…Tom…,” with more hesitation than before. “I don’t know why I’m calling you. I…I…don’t even know what I’m supposed to say.” He paused for an even longer moment. I was listening, and it strikes me now that it is so strange that what he was telling me then wasn’t registering in my mind as odd. I mean, it certainly was “odd”, but it didn’t seem “out of place”, if that is even a decent way of describing my thoughts about it all.

He continued,”I have just had this feeling that I should call you, and it’s been getting worse all morning.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, not really interested too much at that moment. I don’t know when it finally kicked in to me that this was weird.

“Yeah”, He said. “I was driving along, and had to pull over and ask Sherrie if I should call you, and then I didn’t have your phone number, so I had to ask her for that, too.”

“Oh yeah?”, I asked again. Something was beginning to register now, and I remember trying to figure out just what Brett was trying to get at. Then it came.

“Is everything alright with you, Tom? I don’t know what else to ask, Like I said, I don’t even know why I am calling.” Brett said, and something about the concern in his voice, or maybe it was simply agitation at the position he was in, cut its way through the fog that contained me.

Now I had a choice, and I was very, very aware of that choice. I don’t know why I remember that awareness so vividly. I had to choose whether to tell Brett what had happened. At that moment, it seemed so hard to say anything, like it would just take too much effort to tell the story, and I really, really didn’t want to tell it. I was ashamed, struck low, angry, and sad. “What will he think of me, a failure as a husband?” I asked myself inwardly.

There was a long pause before I said anything. It was like the calm before the storm.

“Brett, Nina left me…for another man. She took Ally” I said, through sobs and tears, “and I haven’t seen her since yesterday…..”

After that, the entire conversation is a blur in my memory. I told Brett as much as I could, and balled like a newborn baby over the phone. Through it all, Brett listened. He didn’t interrupt too much except to ask a few questions. Other than that, he just listened.

In exactly three months, it will be six years to the morning since this event occurred.

Every so often, Brett and I talk about that morning, and that phone call. Every so often, Brett talks about that phone call with Sherrie. Nearly every day, I think about that morning. I can still fell the pressurized throbbing inside of my head from shouting “Why have you abandoned me!?” I can still feel the first breath after that shout; long, ragged, and deep. But what I think about most, what brings tears of joy and hope to my eyes even now is the answer I didn’t have enough faith to believe in on my own.

I had walked away from God on that morning. I told Him to go to hell. I dropped MY faith like a bad habit, and was glad in my anger to be rid of it.

This is one story.

This is my story, but it isn’t the only story in my life. It’s just the story that God used to give me a reason to believe.

Nothing else in my life has inspired me in the way this event did. I used to believe in a lot of things, none of them God. I used to believe in my ability to carve my world and my results myself. I used to believe that it was up to me to make my world a better place; I used to believe I could actually do it. I used to believe in science, and in math, in everything I could see, and in nothing I couldn’t.

Now, whenever I begin to doubt, I think of that morning, and how I lost faith. Now, I know that I will lose my faith many times. But when I think of that morning, I know that the faith God gave me will never die. The two are different, my faith and His. The one is fickle and completely reliant upon circumstance. The other is not.

May the God of Sherrie, Brett, and Tom be with you all. He the God of the Living, and not the God of the dead.

A REASON FOR BELIEVING / PART ONE

It was early on the morning after my wife left me for another man. The prior evening, I cried myself to sleep, with the pain inside often welling up into uncontrollable sobs and heaves of the heart. Several times during the night I woke up, unable to recall my bearings, until the memories of the last day would rush at me once again, and I would cry myself to sleep once more. I was in a fog on that morning, sipping coffee which threatened to blast back out the way it had come; my stomach was doing turns and overall, my intestines felt as if they were doing back flips.

I sat at my desk in my home office, trying to make sense of the last few days, in which my wife had told me I was not a satisfactory husband, and that she had never really loved me anyway. She had told me she deserved better than me. None of what she told me meshed with my memories of what our marriage had been like, especially the early years; the years she claimed she used me and never loved me. I had been deceived.

It was this deception that began to spark an anger within me which could not be measured. I had never grown so incensed, so enraged against God, as was occurring within me while the morning drew on. Yet for a while, I remained silent on the outside, while my insides were dying. For over an hour, I remained as a statue at that desk, recalling also the events of the prior week.

My home office was small, hot, and quiet, as I considered how for the last nine years, I worked as a project manager for a firm specializing in HVAC construction and design; four of those years in the very home office I was currently sitting in. It had all come to an abrupt end on the past Monday, when my boss had called me to drive an hour and a half for a meeting with him. I thought nothing odd of the meeting; we met regularly on Mondays to discuss strategies and projects. I thought this meeting was going to be another of the same nature. But when I arrived, my boss immediately began to berate me, declaring that I was being fired for attempting a hostile takeover of his company, all the while leaving the door to his office open, ensuring that everyone within the building that day could hear how the best project manager this firm had ever employed was being taken apart by the Owner of the firm.

I don’t recall which was worse; my feelings of embarrassment, or the fact that I was being fired because of a lie. A young man named Mark, whom I had helped recruit, hire, and train, had told a story to my boss. His story included a fable about how I had informed Mark that I was going to start my own firm, and steal several projects and principals right from under my bosses’ nose. It was just the sort of story my boss would believe, because he was admittedly a very paranoid person. And later I would find out that Mark had admitted to a friend of mine that he had indeed made the entire story up in order to gain my position in the firm. I never had a chance to explain that the story was a lie. Before I even opened my mouth to refute the lie, my boss had shouted, “I don’t believe anything you say! Get out!”.

The entire day seemed surrealistic; I couldn’t believe that I, the top project manager, had been fired because someone had lied about me. It didn’t seem real. I couldn’t shake my funk over the entire issue, and drove home wondering where to go from there. Could I fight this? Would there be any kind of a business relationship to return to? Being a Newbie Christian, I tried to pray, but my mind kept interrupting, and there was no peace for me the entire drive home. During the week, I tried to talk to my boss on the phone, but he wouldn’t take my calls.

Three days later, my wife informed me that she was in love with another man, and was leaving me. She said many other things, all of which I wish I could no longer remember.

Prior to that week, I had been a very confident man, even after coming to know Christ. I believed there wasn’t anything that was beyond my abilities. I was arrogant in my beliefs about myself. Yet somehow, I had been able to separate that arrogance from my family, which I loved as best I could. Apparently, that wasn’t nearly good enough. My wife left me for a man who left his wife, and his newborn daughter.

Nothing seemed to compute. How could this man be such a wonderful man, I wondered? How could my wife fall in love with someone who was willing to abandon his newborn daughter for the sake of his pecker? That thought was typical of how my mind was working that morning.

As the rage continued to build within me, I recalled my adult life up until this point. I had been a husband to a beautiful wife, was father to a wonderful daughter, was a success in business, owned a nice house, two nice cars, and had seemingly everything under control.

In the space of one week, all of it was gone. Everything I knew, everything that daily made me “me” had changed, or been taken away. But what angered me most wasn’t because it happened for reasons I didn’t understand, or under very suspicious circumstances. What angered me most was that once I began to know Christ, everything fell apart. I had started becoming a human being. I had stopped being a machine, and started feeling again. Instead of being concerned only about money in business, I had started to be concerned about the people. I had started to learn how to put my wife first. I had started a love affair of fatherhood with my daughter that grows even until today.

What angered me most was that I had thought I was able to control everything, and that my growing love for God, my wife, daughter, and people in general would help guide me the rest of the way. But it all disappeared like a small comet smashing into a mountainside.

I began to talk to God, loudly. I paced around my house, crying, speaking, imploring, begging. All I received in answer was silence, and that silence destroyed what little control I had left. I shouted things at God I am ashamed to repeat. I screamed and raged that he didn’t love me, that everything had been just a big joke, and that this “game” of his was stupid, and furthermore, I no longer wanted any part of it. I cannot recall how many times I told God to “fuck off”, or “go to hell”. I used every word I knew, and uttered every blasphemy known to man; I didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, there was no God, how could there be if the moment I started learning how to be a fellow human being, learning how to feel again, he would allow this catastrophe in my life?

I couldn’t see past this day; I honestly felt as though I was going to end my life.

Still, there was nothing but silence, and I finally entered into the area of rejection in my heart. I screamed even more brashly at God, calling him a liar, and a harlot for allowing my wife to leave me for a corpse of a man. I accused God of harming my little daughter, of not caring what this was going to do to her. My mind was racing, my head was pounding, and my throat was beginning to become raw. I asked God, “What does it matter if I leave you? Who gives a shit? You sure as hell don’t!” I said all of this as I was staring at a cross I had nailed to my wall a few months earlier.

For some reason, that cross made me weep, and as I bent over my kitchen countertop sobbing uncontrollably, rivers of tears streamed down my cheeks and dripped onto the countertop, forming a puddle.

But the tears only lasted a few minutes, and soon my anger reared again. I paced before that cross, again shouting at Him, asking Him “Why?!” I asked Him what I was supposed to do now, and waited in my rage, knowing after a minute that God’s only answer was silence, because in my mind, He didn’t give a crap about me, or anyone else.

This infuriated me even further, and I gathered every remaining breath in my chest, and shouted deafeningly, at God, at the cross, “Why have you abandoned me!?”

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT POSTING