Humanity

Cry out!

by taohobo

Why must These tears fall,
crying, crying, into the night –
missing… missing… we have lost them,
lost them all.

Wheel of time,
you’ve hardly turned before they’re gone.
Turn back, turn back and restore,
restore to me mine!

I will hold you, hold you ever,
in thought, in prayer, in sighing breath,
my child, my sister, father, mother, brother, lover —
here, here in my heart living ever.
Here in my heart,
live forever.
Here…
And still I cry!

Why we serve

by taohobo

Like some other veterans, or maybe it is just me, I’m embarrassed when you thank me for my service. It’s because we feel that we were just doing our duty, just doing our job. Because I’m flustered I don’t often remember that this is what I want to respond:

“No, as a veteran, I want to thank you for taking the freedom we’ve defended and using it to live your life to the fullest and paying it forward by being all that you can be and, when possible, lifting up just one other person. It is our honor to serve.”

Well yes, but…

by taohobo

With Passover and Easter fast approaching and Ramadan in June it’s a good time to reflect on how we live our lives.

Don’t Just Believe In God, Believe Him is the title of a blog on The TJ Blog, by – wait for it – TJ. I know, you already guessed that. But take the time to get to know TJ. I know that you can only get to know as much about a person from their blog as they’re willing to share, but TJ does a pretty good job of that. But, he’s young, only a little younger than me, but that’s because he’s more mature than his years and I tend sometimes to be (someone I love would say immature) a little less mature than my years. Which doesn’t diminish what he has to say.

But, that’s not what this post is about. It’s about what TJ had to say on the subject of God, about believing Him. That’s spot on. Believing in God, is very different than believing God, and TJ clearly sees, from experience,  that that simple difference has profound potential if you take the next logical step of trusting God. But, do you trust Him enough? There are amazing things to learn when you’re willing to trust Him enough to step off the path. The path that seems to be the main highway of life these days – the “my way or the highway”, “they’re different, they’re wrong”, “us or them” path.

But, then there’s Pope Francis. How’d he get into this discussion? Simple, he’s stepped off the path and taken the next logical step after TJ’s blog entry. Francis believes in God, he believes Him, and he’s obeying Him. If you’ve missed that, step back and look at what he is doing and saying because it’s all tied to two verses in scripture. TJ cited the first one, John 3:16, and Francis is living the second one, John 13:34 (Actually everything God wants for and from us is summed up in three verses: Mark 12:29-31, in the Qur’an 98:5 and 103:3 or if you’re neither Muslim or Christian, the Golden Rule). I hope you read and think about those references before you finish reading this post.

TJ lived it during his mission years in West Africa, read about it in his blog. TJ closes the blog entry that started this ramble with “Trust Him. Let Him take care of you. It might be scary at first, but He won’t let you down. He loves you.” But, now it’s time to love others!