Humble Your Pride

Silently, stealthily pride creeps into human hearts. It filters through the body’s veins until it controls every action, every thought,and every whim. It is the vice that leads to every destruction– it breaks relationships and stalemates any feeling of charity or forgiveness.
A man controlled by pride is a man who thinks he can do all on his own; he heeds no help, he needs no God. “As long as you are proud,” C.S. Lewis writes, “you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” A proud man is focused entirely upon himself. He does not see others around him, unless it is their faults; he does not see God above him, for he has made himself his own god.
A proud man will take offense as quickly as a breeze can change its direction; one must watch what they say around a man consumed with pride, for he will analyze your words until he sucks as much offense from them as he is able to, and then turn and throw it like sand back to sting your eyes. When he is the one in the wrong, he will do anything to be seen as right. Men consumed with pride make their list of facts and twist them until it is only themselves that appear to be purely honest, strong, and good. A proud man is all the things that he tries so hard to hide; deep in his soul he believes there is no one as good as he, but God is the humbler of human hearts, for “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)
Pride is the devil’s main trick; he will happily ensnare you when you believe yourself to be humble; he searches and watches eagerly for a condescending look to pass from your eye, or a lifted nose or a snub remark to pass from your lips. “The devil laughs. He is perfectly content,” C.S. Lewis writes, “to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride- just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.” It puffs your mind and eats your soul, and one day every proud man will awaken to the fact that he is nothing at all. The misery then will be enough to drown him in its depths, and like swelling ocean waves, close over him and carry him out to sea.
Pride, you see, is a drug disguised as you, and its only goal is your destruction– not only of your life, but of your very soul.

Bending, Swaying

Down I look
Down at my feet
As I pick up one
And then the other
Faltering as I carry on.

This ground sways under me
Like the waves of mighty seas
Like a tree bent in the wind
I’m struggling to rise up off my knees
And carry on again.

But I can’t stop this shifting
This swaying of the ground
Maybe it’s all in my head
Maybe I’m just falling down.

Everything is quivering
Before my eyes
I don’t hear what you’re saying
And I cannot even think.

These eyes are heavy with these tears
I’ve never shed
And this burden lodged deep in my chest
Keeps coming up to surface.

And each time it surfaces
To take another breath
It lives another day
So it can surface again;
And when it takes that breath, you see,
The pain is so sharp it brings me to my knees.

My knees are scarred
And black and blue
From falling on the ground
The rocks they pierce and draw my blood
And suffocate my soul.

I cannot think of love, my dear,
When I cannot see its source
I cannot think of joy, my dear,
When there is only waves over me.

I look too long and far too hard
At all these blackened waves-
Swirling ‘bought my feet and heart
And breaking on this beach.

The wind is cold and stings my face
And crinkles up my lungs
And I shrink from Nature’s touch
Like she’s out to do me harm.

So cold, this wind
So deep, this pain
So dark, this world around me.

My soul, it cries in bitter pain
And suffers oh so greatly.

Oh Jesus, take this shaking hand
And put your arm around me
My shoulders are so small and
I can’t see where I’m falling
My eyes have blackened and slowly I become
Warmed from the inside out
It spreads to every limb
And somehow I’ve stopped drowning.

Just a Shadow on the Carpet

Enveloped here I sit
Wrapped up in this silence
Like a mist it flows until
All around me is completely still

Still except my quiet breathing
The rise and fall of my tired chest
Like a deep sleep come awake

Still except the mournful breathing
Of the wind against this cold chimney
The hollow sound it makes

Still except this single clock
As it ticks around the face
It never stops, just keeps on keeping on

It’s when my heart quiets till
Barely even a heartbeat can be felt
Just a comfortable quiver
Is lodged inside my chest
And my eyes grow sleepy,
Sleepy with lack of rest

I have no care to move
Or a worry in my mind
All I want to do is sit
Sit and watch the leaves go by

The sky isn’t slate
But it’s covered in gray
And the trees bend with the wind
Cold wind, unfeeling as the days go by.

I’ll just sit here until I have to move
Spirit at peace
And quiet
These moments are so few
I’ll keep them while they last
These moments of quiet rest.

Shame is Cast Upon the Head Who Wastes a Precious Gift

The greatest human character is not of a human source, but of Almighty God. Love was shown when the Creator stepped down from His throne to die a humiliating and excruciating death, while the crowds stood by laughing and mocking Him, and He said not a word, except “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He ascended to glory after rising from the dead so that we could be saved from the deepest misery of an eternity in Hell. Justice is practiced by the Ruler of all. If any law, any one point of His law is broken, your immediate sentence is death, but because of God’s marvelous sacrifice of love, you can be spared your punishment. Not by good things you've done, but by receiving the eternal, unchanging gift of eternal life- full of joy and peace. With no more pain- no more tears, for He will wipe your tears from your eyes. All that you've done is erased in His eyes…you are pure, clean. An heir of the Creator of the ends of the earth. God is the author of peace. One night on the sea of Galilee, a horrifying storm blew and the small boat would have been destroyed if Jesus had not spoke, in His gentle but commanding voice, “Peace- be still” and the waves ceased to roar and the wind ceased to blow. The rain quieted to a symphony of nature, and the sky ceased it’s quarreling. In my heart when a war is raging- between good and evil…struggling with the question why, His gentle but commanding voice whispers in my ear, “Peace, my beloved. be still, and know that I am God.”
“Aren't two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s consent. But even the hairs of your head have all been counted. So don't be afraid therefore; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:29-31 HCSB)
You are never at liberty to say that you are not loved, because He who made you died to save you. Don't waste His gift by refusing it.
“For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16, 17 HCSB)

Whispers in the Dead of Night

3 o’clock in the morning
When all is silent except for this thunder
Through this quiet house the lightning flashes
Devoid of rain
But the scent lingers in the air
Like a bitter memory
But sweet as honeycomb

Across my face this wind brushes past
It’s silken fingers grazing my neck
Enticing me to drift into sleep
Stirring my hair
Lifting my soul
As a mournful violin
My heart plays this sad song

Through the night
The light flashes
But in silence
I wait

This tune in my heart
Beating out through my chest
Am I a ghost
Wandering through this quiet night
Where nothing but silence touches me
When this brush of a kiss is so imperceptible
Where nothing illuminates my heart but the flashes in the dead of night

I’ve learned to live half alive
And when the thunder rolls
I stand here not knowing what to do
The rain pelts my face
And the wind knocks me down

I wanted to feel alive
How better than to fall down
And understand the pain
And understand the misery
To see the destruction done
How better than to stand in the midst of it

So here in the midst of this storm I’ll stand
I’m not a ghost,
It hurts too much.