Megaphone

Lack of gratitude is a symptom

Of a greater problem;
Our attitude is a side effect
That creates a rejection of law and grace...

And that duplicity has been duplicated 
Reproduced in our DNA 
Until it's become 
All the rage...

All the bitterness.
All the lust.
All the fickleness.

The richness of our humanity
Is buried beneath mediocrity
And a downward slope towards Gomorrah
A corner office view of Sodom

Welcome to where the weather is always autumn
And the trees bear no fruit 
Because the roots are rotten
So they might as well stay there...

Dead and buried.

Ever receiving the blood of martyrs and prophets
While the profit for delivering their heads
Has skyrocketed most
To a more comfortable life...

The bride takes another husband 
And never thinks twice

A harlot's heart in a wedding gown

That's a sullied white

And while we cry for freedom from ISIS

The No. 1 killer of mankind is "niceness"

We have our cake and eat it too

And pay no attention to a missing tooth

(or two)

Regardless of what we've been through

It always comes back around again

The danse macabre of a tone def mob

Waltzing to cacophonous megaphone of pain

(cf. Psalm 14:1-3; Romans 3:10-12, 5:3, 8:35-39; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” - C.S. Lewis

Soli Deo Gloria,
Shon

Deliverance

Came into the world with collapsed lungs
And a heart barely beating
My beginning could be the end
If I don’t respond to the treatments
The prognosis – it ain’t pretty
Doc’s preparing my mother for the worst
Sayin’ even if I make it to tomorrow
My future would still be uncertain
But just as the curtain closed
She knows something that they don’t know
A Great Physician with a different opinion
On how the story’s supposed to go

“Lord, if it’s his time, that’s fine
But if he lives, he won’t be mine…
He’ll be yours to shape and mold
Give him life and make him shine”

The curse of death was looming heavy
But He chose to remove it
Took a broken, feeble fetus
And He purposed to renew it
So when I get fed up
And want to let up
Thinking that I’ll never make it through this
I remember His past mercies
And how relentless His pursuit is
He makes all things good
And critics attribute it to “western privilege”

But the postman always rings twice
And only the Christ can deliver

Psalm 22:9-10, 51:5, Psalm 139:14; Matthew 6:13; Galatians 1:3-5
 
Soli Deo Gloria,
Shon

Posted via email from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)

Zeros and Ones: Why Did Jesus Come?

In this discussion, we take a look at the reason that Jesus Christ had to come to us...
To bring us to God.

We discuss the radical nature of sin and how it effects all of us. Putting us in dire need of a savior from the wrath of God for our inherent evilness, Jesus comes not only to call us to repentance, but to satisfy the wrath of God by becoming sin for us.

"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." - Mark 2:17

Soli Deo Gloria,
Shon

Posted via email from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)

East of Eden

"But let us now, as in bad plight, devise

What best may for the present serve to hide

The Parts of each from other, that seem most

To shame obnoxious, and unseemliest seen,

Some Trees whose broad smooth Leaves together sew'd,

And girded on our loins, may cover round

Those middle parts, that this newcomer, Shame,

There sit not, and reproach us as unclean".

So counsell'd hee, and both together went

Into the thickest Wood, there soon they chose

The Figtree....

John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), Book IX, lines 1091-1101.

Unknown –

Living bad to the bone

Thinking like a three year old child

Even though my body’s fully grown

Traded the very best 

For an absolute mess

Now the stress is gonna to kill me

While I’m breaking a sweat

Wet from the waist down

Because I’ve pissed away my future

Wife was dead wrong 

And the serpent’s a bad tutor 

Passed over the fruit of the vine

For knowledge not mine

Only to whine about the outcome

Because I fell for the lie

 

Hook, line and sinker

This shattered image is tanking my demeanor

Until a Fisher of men stepped in

And played the role of Redeemer

My disease was my disease –

Couldn’t see the garden for the tree

So I went from naked and unashamed

To using the foliage to cover me

Until it begins to wither away

In the heat of the day

And the ground is spitting up seeds

Because it’s starting to betray me

Reminds me of where I come from

And where I’ll be going 

We’re all keepers of a dirty little secret

With nothing to show for it

 

No “S” on my chest or bulletproof vest

Is going to stop the fate of a defective heart

And a mind covered in darkness

Living east of Eden for committing high treason

Forgetting all the while 

That we never had a good enough reason

To leave it all to chance

And face the coin toss 

To see who’d get to be the boss

In the land of the lost

Found by the Good Shepherd 

Because he paid the cost

To bring us into the fold

Never again to be tossed

 

Laid it all on the table

No Cain because he’s able

He truly is his brother’s keeper

And his hand is stable

The one true Prodigal

Who makes life eternal possible

By justification through his blood

For completely unworthy hostiles

 (Genesis 3)

Soli Deo Gloria,

Shon