"Piece" Sells...

as it is written:
  “None is righteous, no, not one;
  no one understands;
  no one seeks for God.
 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
  no one does good,
  not even one.”
 “Their throat is an open grave;
  they use their tongues to deceive.”
 “The venom of asps is under their lips.”
  “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
  in their paths are ruin and misery,
 and the way of peace they have not known.”
  “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
  Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
  
(Romans 3:10-20 ESV)

 We taste death every time that we draw a breath

And it don’t any get better

No matter how many years we have left

On this planet, we inhabit to wreak havoc for generations to come

We live by the sword, and we die by the gun

The type to shoot first, no asking

I just reload when I’m finished

Watch the light leave your eyes, then turn and ask your wife,

“Hey babe, what’s for dinner?”

Because if I’m not carvin’, I’m starvin’;

You bet your life that I can eat for days

For me, Valhalla is always rising

And my left eye’s looking crazy

Just like bulls on parade

We rally with a pocket full of shells

Doing what’s right in our own eyes

And you know we love to give ‘em hell

So, I’m not buying in to what you’re saying

Because in the end, “piece” sells

Profit margins increasing every year

While filling up school lockers like prison cells

Click goes the hammer, clank goes the slammer

But that homeboy had new Jordans

And Gilbert Arenas was the answer

Because I’m a pro when it comes to this

Catch him slippin’ in the lunch line

Bullet wizardry, a masterpiece

My own private Columbine

So now I stand before the Judge

No period to my sentence

A life of run-on pain

Like I was Prefontaine (minus the finish)

Lines drawn in the sand

Crossed every time without repentance

Treated darkness like a friend

Only to find it to be the very bane of my existence

Pushed life to the limits

Until death started pushing me back

Now it’s too late for a plea…

Verdict:

Sin is still whack.

 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
  
(James 4:1-3 ESV)

Soli Deo Gloria,

Shon

Posted via email from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)

Inexhaustible (Ever Since Ever Since)

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
 Tell me, if you have understanding.
(Job 38:4 ESV)

There He was, is, and is to come...ever since ever since.

Existing in the solitude of His Trinitarian excellence

A community of perfection to which no other can compare

Invisible. Spirit. Physical. With one voice They agree

Let there be…LIGHT!

BOOM! There’s your big bang

Voice echoing through the darkness to give it a name –

He owns it…

Before that it was nothing; just a figment of imagination

Until He brought it to fruition in an instant

Yet, thoughtful and patient

Two attributes which get lost in a humanistic sense

Because for us it’s microwaves, drive-thrus and art without evidence

But His attention to detail is a show of His benevolence

Inexhaustible…

Who would’ve thought to make every star, tree, plant, and animal?

They can’t be store-bought

A storehouse of works to behold

For, every eye to behold them since knows there’s a story being told

 “I AM that I AM” –

That’s the name that He gave

It implies that He don’t need you to breathe and He don’t need you to save Him

HE SAVES MEN

From Hell and everything that comes with it –

From pimps to false prophets to run-on sentences

Lustful deeds and all of the things I hide

Never get missed by His all-seeing eyes

Wiser than wise…I’m sick and He knows it, but He heals me by His Word

(Wow. A Great Physician and a Poet)

Or else please tell me what you could possibly comprehend

About One who can truly kill a man and then bring him back again?!

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

Of the living Word who can take a man from six feet deep

To where mercy is found.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
(Revelation 1:8 ESV)

Soli Deo Gloria,

 Shon

Posted via email from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)

Everyday, Apocalypse.

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
  

(John 1:1-5 ESV)

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
  “‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
  as even some of your own poets have said,
  “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
  Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

 (Acts 17:26-29 ESV)

Everyday is an apocalypse…

From the cars on the street to the people that we meet

God is revealing…Himself.

 He is constantly letting us know that we are not alone.

Also, that we are not our own.

But still we press on.

We press on as if everything that has ever happened

In the course of our existence was nothing more than a random, happy little accident –

A very precise, everything just right…”accident”.

Nothing more than a big “Oops” or “Uh-oh” that brought about change.

From ooze to the zoo to you – we’re all the same

“You might be free, but your relatives swing from trees

And throw feces in cages…isn’t that amazing?!”

No, it’s scathing and seriously inconsiderate.

It’s akin to taking the Artisan’s work and using it in a birdcage to catch pigeon sh**.

Art without evidence is a scientifically manufactured illusion

To free us from the notion of Divine inclusion, or better yet intrusion

And yet, we ignore the body of work like a crime scene at the dinner table.

So Cain didn’t kill Abel…it was an “evolutionary process”.

“The survival of the fittest shows us how much we have progressed”.

What a mess; but it’s our best guess

That we feed to our sons and daughters

We’re ignoring the fact that chaos can only produce more chaos

And never produce order.

Creation’s primary goal is not to self-create or to replicate;

Creation resonates

It is the thumbprint of a Creator –

So let’s do away with just looking at scientific data

And all the other formulas to make us too scared to admit it

Ignore all you want, but the truth is you still need some dirt to play with…

Ex nihlo, nihlo fit –

Out of nothing, nothing comes

Yet still our textbooks read as if two zeros make a sum?!

But the only way that a zero can compute is with…One

The binary code of nature binds us to a Creator

But in a rebellion of thought mankind screams out:

“There is no God…and we hate him.”

Equating the concept of an almighty God to the Wizard of Oz

And yell at me to get off my yellow brick road

While clinging tightly to the curtain of “chance”

Trying not to reveal that it’s just fool’s gold

“Just click your heels three times to wake up from your dream

You’ll have all the answers you need if you simply believe…”

In what?! You know what the scarecrow, tin man and lion have in common?

They all have no chest, so they follow with no conscious

On the whims of a little girl’s dream, they reach the end of the road

Only to end up back in Kansas with nothing to show

But we behold Topeka it in its beauty; people of every tribe, tongue and nation

A place where wayward sons can stop along the journey to their final destination

Just one of the many havens that display the vast glory

Of a Maker who is benevolent

Who made Himself a God-send and not one of Maury’s guests

Never worry about second-guessing who our Father is

Because our DNA is the proof we need to show us that we are known to Him

None like Him, so there’s none like us

He is holy, wholly Other; so I’m wholly broken dust

Made whole again by the sacrifice of His offering

Of a Kinsman Redeemer’s love

Lisping to us in the spoken word

Healing us from the greatest lie we’ve ever heard

The hiss from the serpent’s lips

That has thrown the true origin of our species off course

And has left us an inheritance of a violent wind

And blindness as a curse

But our Creator heals the calloused eye

And He also masters the storm

So even if all around me were swept away

His eye is on the sparrow –

Amidst the turbulence, this is my calm

Remember this:

The Devil is only in the details

Because his Maker saw it fitting for him to exist

So, in other words, there are no “maverick molecules”…

Everyday is an Apocalypse.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Shon

Posted via email from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)

Dust To Glory: A Ghetto Love Story

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.   -  (Hebrews 4:14-16 ESV)

A king without a castle born to an unwed mother

All the while, rumors circulate that he was fathered by another

Homeless for a while, then raised in the ghetto

Along side the hoodlums, riff-raff, rebels and winos

But He went to synagogue

Because that’s how his mom and his step-dad raised him

He’d grow up to be famous

But who really knew that then?

Coming up poor ain’t a means to an end

It’s hated, it’s shameful and often equated with sin

But not Him…

He left the block for the wilderness to fulfill the call in His life:

“Hey, why don’t you slow down? Take it easy…maybe even get you a wife.

Word is your real father, man, is crazy rich.

You’d never have to work a day in your life if he broke you off a pinch.

But if not him, come with me…I got a grip you can hold.

You can have anything you want. I got it under control.”

“Hell, No.”

Home is where the heart is

So the hood was His home

And used His life to let the hood know

That they were never alone

He became the people’s champion

So they gathered around Him

Politicians start to panic

While His family starts to clown Him

Pharisees start hatin’

And they call Him a “Birther” :

“This dude is sayin’ he’s from heaven

But he ain’t nothin’ but an earthling.

Everybody here knows him from that Nazerene block

No good can come of that place, they’re some real bad stock.”

But He didn’t stop

So now they wanna stop Him

His friends start to worry

That somebody’s gonna pop Him

Cool by Him

Because He already knew the risk

His death was the outcome

For which he sought to exist:

“Don’t be scared, homies…

They’re comin’ to get me

But I’m takin’ all the heat

Because that’s why the Father has sent me

Dying for the lost

So that they could be found

So that the end of your life won’t be the end

But a crown of life eternal

Given because you’ve be down since the beginning

And you’ll carry on ‘til the finish

Because my Father gives you permission

And don’t begin to think you chose this life for a second

I chose you first so now we’re forever connected

Blessed be the one who hears the words that I speak

And doesn’t shrink away from danger in the face of the Beast

Because the Devil is a lion

He desires to eat you

He can feast all he wants

But He can never defeat you.”

So whatever happens below

Just remember He’s above it

So when you see the storms coming

Don’t worry…

Just love it

It was death by love

Love in humiliation

Stepped out of eternity

To become the promised seed of the nations

Subjecting Himself to the same perils and temptations as “we”

Because He cares for little men in really tall trees

And for prostitutes on the track who believe the lie that they’re stuck

And for the addicts who think they’ve had and they’re about to give up

Listen to what comes after…

He is still speaking

So put one ear to the floor and the other to the rafters

Feel the earth move and know for certain

If He ceased to speak, it won’t happen

In His hands, it is stable

No one can ever knock Him off course

Even when the kingdom of Heaven suffers violence

 And the violent take it by force

Solus Christus,

Shon

Posted via email from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)

Resolve

Resolved:

Not to make any empty resolutions of delusions of grandeur

Like losing 20 lbs. or not being a man-whore

Because everything that I could ever dream to be

Would be unattainable or unrealistic babble…

Just to end up coming up short

To watch the crows and vultures gather

To pick at the carcasses left scattered

On the boulevard of broken dreams

Of things that don’t even matter…

Yeah, it would be cool to get some fresh new clothes

But my skin is the issue and it’s getting old –

It’s not the complexion that’s the problem

But it covers up my intentions –

A heart full of apathy, neglect, impenitence and impotence

If I want to see real change in my current situation

I don’t need a new scene or diet

I need propitiation...

Vegan, egalitarian, legalistic behavior modifications

Won’t bring me lasting peace; just new sensations

Pragmatic emotions to feel as though I’m getting something accomplished

While I’m locked in the wardrobe waiting for Aslan

Eating Turkish Delight instead of the King’s meat

Because “man can’t live on bread alone”

(And this stuff is so sweet)

And there I go…

Trying’ to get back to old days via new ways

Like a has-been actor who thinks he’s still got the chops

But I’m just a hack character

Waiting to break out and my performance needs enhancement

But I’m already broken, so a new role ain’t the answer

I’ll do my best work when I’m just a feature

And my features improve drastically

When I’m not the star of this picture

Attributes augmented by the perfect performance

Of the Lead Role Majestic

Whose method is conformity

My independent work showed me

For what I was to the people

But it never portrayed the truth about problems that haunt me

Or how to defeat evil –

So I played myself to the bone

As a notorious scene-stealer

But it couldn’t pay the bills and never guaranteed a sequel…

I’m done with low-budget “the grittier, the better”

This may be the Year of the Dragon

But the Script says there’s gonna be rain in the weather

So I’m giving’ up on my best life now until Eden’s made right

And the only way to becoming a better man

Is by living out life as the Bride…

True resolve found in the love of Another

 Say hello to the married life.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Shon

Posted via email from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)