God, Leave Me Bread Crumbs for When I Stray

One thing that makes me uncomfortable is when my friend mentions something from my past.  By my past, I mean middle school: my middle-ages, my dark ages

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I’m watching TV right now because I’m an American.  I’ll cut to the chase of what I want to point out and say there are a handful of shows about material things.  

Paragraph two, add evidence  

• Pawn Stars is a History channel show about a pawn shop on the strip on Las Vegas (and I actually like this show but that’s neither here nor there)
• there’s a similar show called Hardcore Pawn— it’s like Pawn Stars and Cops had a baby
• there’s American Pickers which is about people going to places like houses and stuff, looking for stuff to sell
• there’s a show called Hoarders which is pretty self-explanatory
• there’s a show called Storage Wars which is about buying a public storage garage to sell the stuff in it
• there’s a Fox show called Buried Treasure which is like American Pickers; I’m watching it right now, actually.

What I’m getting to is what’s happening here?  So many shows about material things.  Is this what we’ve become, as human beings?  Have we been conformed to a mindset of more stuff = happiness?  That sucks.  Whatever happened to experiencing happiness.  

We’ll see.  I’ll watch.  But I don’t want to think that what I own says who I am.  I don’t want my friends to think like that too.  It ain’t right.  God knows.  Everything is temporary, especially all these physical things, the things we can touch.

My aunt and her kids have some issues and drama going on, man.  I’m not nosy or saying anything to belittle them (they are family after all, and I do only wish the best for them) but I just want to take this moment to say:

Thank God and to Him be the glory for my nuclear family!  I cannot be thankful enough of the fact that both my mother and my father are godly people; their love for God and each other makes my sister and me grow with a very healthy relationship to each other and more importantly, to God.  I love how we don’t have drama, we don’t have issues, we can be honest to each other, when one falls out of line the others will point out so, we rebuke each other, all that lovable jazz.

Thank God.  I’ll never trade this blessing for anything.  No woman, no amount of money.  I love my mom, I love my dad, and even though she ticks me off, I love my sister.

on Pinoy TV (a Filipino channel).  (Imbestigador, sa mga nagtataka.)  It’s like Cops but more systematic and it makes me give respect to Filipino enforcement. 

They were showing some clips of a husband physically abusing his wife in broad daylight.  I’m utterly disgusted.  This man was beating his unfortunate wife like she was a rag-doll or something.  These weren’t cute baby punches you share with your girlfriend; these looked like punches hard enough to knock a person to unconsciousness if it lands on the cranium.  Horrible, to say the least. 

I pray to God I things like that don’t happen.  Not to my future wife.  Not to my sister.  Not to my mother.  Not to any woman near, dear, and close to my heart.  

Never to a daughter of God.  I just want to say firmly and audibly “Never lay a hand on a daughter of God.”  

I don’t have to be a big brother to have that innate feeling of protecting people I love.  Maybe even to people I don’t know.

I really can’t put my thoughts into proper paragraphs right now.  I can’t.  Whenever I see things about spousal abuse or trafficking, my mind imminently dishevels.  I’m not trying to sound zealous, I’m just trying to say how much I hate these things.  

Respect people.  Be a man and respect a woman.  Abuse ain’t cool.

and I don’t want our relationship to involve me only going to You when I’m in trouble or down in the dumps, but I feel like that’s all I can do now.  My mind’s just utterly disheveled, and I need my rest.  My strength means nothing, but I need to do well on that test.  Give me clarity of mind, God.  No one else can help me now.

No one.

(There’s a reason for everything. I can’t deny that. Sometimes, I tend to forget, but when remembered, I cannot deny.)

This afternoon, we were driving home from church. Great message, as usual. Pastor Dudley talked about how we ought to reach out to people. That’s just a nutshell sentence of what he said, because I really can’t recapitulate everything he preached about.

As we were driving home, I really thought about what he said. Every time he says maybe there’s someone in your school who doesn’t know Jesus, pages upon pages of names pop into my head— names of people I’d like to see if/when I’m going to heaven; people I’d probably lose myself for just to save.

I was riding shotgun on the ride home, so as I turned around, I noticed the extra space in the backseat. It’s always been there. In a car that can occupy five people, this four-membered family has room for one more person.

I thought about that. I came to the conclusion that there’s a reason for that space. There’s someone out there that needs to fill that space up. One more person in the car equals one more person in the kingdom of God. There’s one more person who might not know about this humble church— about Westside Shepherd of the Hills— that’s just always been here at the VA.

There’s one more person out there who might be trying to find a way to fill that God shaped hole in her/his heart.  If you’re out there wondering and wandering, there’s a space here for you, wherever/whoever you are.