Wisdom from Philippians chapter 4.

In whatever circumstances, whether in lack, whether in abundance: 

they had sent Paul money

and he turned it into a veritable seminar, after debating the Stoics(Stoicks, as the King James has it) on Mars Hill, it had really did some rejiggering of his perspective. He would be all things to each and every one, for sake of the Gospel. If only today's believer took to the message, were not so closed-off to shun local ministry, a combined contempt for the indolent, the addict, and the atheist when scripture tells each believer to strive to impute those undesirables belief!

Most people in America are doing much better than they believe. Its selective that we pull from scripture "life and life more abundantly", while ignoring "in whatever circumstances". Sure, sure it is the American frisson to want everything, and therein is the purest conundrum of the present depression among our eager populace, because its not always possible, when all the fish are schooling in the same direction: someone makes the donuts, someone hands you your gourmet hotdog.

If we had what they have, we'd share in their misery, after all, and we see so many of the wealthy, those that have supposedly won in the game, tell us its a facade, that happiness comes from within, that churning the milk into butter is life, not the butter after, not the butter after. Imagine if our very misconception was reality, we'd trade today for what? The uncommon and unlikely Lebron, Beyonce, Theron? We are ourselves, first, and we don't sacrifice that, we don't give over today and tomorrow for a few years in repose. Such was the point of the phrase "one must imagine Sisyphus happy", enjoying the process, an advertising slogan about "enjoying the journey".

One doesn't salt mine 80% of his life, in other words, for the purpose of unfettered enjoyment 20% of his life.

Because

Life is that struggle of 80%. That's what Keanu, Oprah, et al tell us. People who can't read, misunderstand geography, never balanced a checkbook, tend to see only the money, missing the truth, and told in the media to mistrust those luminaries, roundly indulge in a misuse of their own lifespan.

It was the Myth Of Sisyphus, Carpe Diem, the Romantic movement with Wordsworth, the eclectic beat poets in Ginsburg and Whitman, the Stoics("The obstacle is the way").

wandering and bottomless, clutching our ideals, irrespective

It requires no particular circumstance that given a choice, as in the willing yoke of chains of security, people would toss down their weapons so to grab hold of their piece of prosperity. Yet, history roundly crayons it that humankind is betimes neither particular human, and less kind. For the very wrongest of reasons do people instead clutch their own ideals and give time and treasure to the violent, totems of resolute behaviors that act irrespective of the future: not to sacrifice to better ideals, but just to grab hold of whatever glints their own imagination.

In the age that heretofore has clearly needed the apostle John, they reach towards John Wick, or needing the peace of doves, they instead would opt to destroy all they hated such that only peaceful embers inhabited earth, to murder the pebble in the shoe, to hate instead of acknowledge. Variously, they could use more Keanu Reeves than any John Wick; let John Wick be a fairy tale, and Keanu our partner on the early constitutional. Were we to rich man/poor man our lives, let it be that we had much of the poor man's peace, and the same of the rich man's leisure, but still today do we have that Bigger, Better, Bolder unction such that we have the poor man's wandering appetite for food and the rich man's bottomless appetite for entertainments.

"unless we allow it to..." reflections, ruminations, refractions, replications, repercussions of Galatians.

Consider each thing of itself...  ...for the days are full of evil.

Man is a social animal and all things work together top to bottom in cooperation to bring us to God's appointed ends. Though temptation may abound, risking our peace and joy, our salvation doesn't rely on feelings; and days full of evil are given to us as an examples. A bright beginning does not necessarily facilitate a bright future, or a bright ending: while I trust God, I set my watch expecting Satan, with his fingerprint of subterfuge and misdirection, his chaos and usury.

And days full of evil give us examples, that life is a series of what man believes to be choices(though God knows your heart). Always our common burden in our cooperation with mankind and nature is the weight of choices, along with the consequences of decisions. Obedience to God is based on faith; we trust God, while expecting Satan's wiles. 

And days full of evil give us examples: forgive with great mercy as you were forgiven, if we are to cling to the confines of the Narrow Way. Its protective, that not-limitation but the appropriate suggestion based on the promises of God. Would we that we believe each of us our own doubts? "Thoughts can be brought into captivity" says the Pentacostal, knowing the weight of his words, and in days filled with evil, he knows his burden, he knows your burden, being the weight of choice and the consequences that always follow.

God and hope, as we have, and hope, and Jesus as the mediator, holder of our hope of reconciliation.

YOU that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled: his body of flesh presents you unblamed and unreprovable in his sight:

--knitted together in love--

'stablished, grounded and settled in mercy, peace, magnanimity, love, equanimity: inner balance.

--not moved away from the hope of the Gospel, which reached our ears and is proclaimed to all living creatures.

Thus it is about us all to see, hear and holding, beholding, is the eternal: we see, hear, and handle the Word of Life.

WE speak of Jesus, the product of the Eternal that lights the Narrow Way, to give you a lasting joy. Jesus is our advocate, our forgiveness and our connection to the Eternal.

The Eternal God is light, and in him is no darkness whatsoever.

In the light is Christ Jesus, waiting for our fellowship, our friendship, bearing our forgiveness.

IN our need for forgiveness, we cannot lie about having sin; if we say we have no sin, we deceive even our own selves, and the Truth is not in us, the Word is not with us, and the Eternal, the Narrow Way, darkened. Christ is our hope and our reconciliation, after all, and that reward is the same for anyone, be it in fervor or hopelessness, in the dawn or in the twilight: the Eternal reward does not vary. 

The Christmas Michtam; God have you been so good.

 The near edge of Christmas: I can smell it, like the elephant in repose smells the dust of the earth, like the snake when coiled in repose smells his own anus and genitals.

The fringes of the Risen Savior, the Cloud of Unknowing, the interconnected fingers of human animalism and transcendence; if we claim not to have seen, then it has only been carried within us, and if we claim to have seen, then we lacked for it within ourselves and were thus refreshed.

My Lord, My God, as have you seemed afar, but how you within my precepts have compassed the waters.

"A day is a recognition of the light." The Light of the World as a Christmas Tree daisychain.

"Whilst I am in the world, I am the Light of the World." -The Jesus.

He bid us not to hide our light, as we are a city on the hill, not to hide our light under a bushel: for we are, along with the paracleton, the Light of the World.

It is such that in our own darkness, we are dependent upon the light of our fellows, that in moments of darkness, the believer needs the light of others to provide his illumination for his own path.

I was seeing one projecting their darkness, at their every word, that preamble of "these are my past wrongs", and the rejoinder, "but not anymore".

"No longer am I a sinner, and I hope my joy is returned unto me."

Speaking from lack, despair, of a future, and continually manifesting, in saying same over and over, seemingly contemned to never take up the phrase: "it happens today".

The wrought soul-stirring humility of wearing one's past is admirable, humble, honest, but how much is designed to keep one under the yoke of sin, and how much is put in place to offer the sinner hope?

Take it off your tongue, maybe?

Today is not a thing set by the calendar, not a thing that occurs on the precipitate of clock mechanisms:

a day is a recognition of the light.

Say "though I were, I have progressed, I have come through."

The wheat and the chaff.

I speak these things to you through a glut of faith, knowing full well having received the grace of God in ways without measure.

Faith assures of one thing: 

not in regards the drinking of alcohol,

or the marrying of one woman,

or tossing teacups

or petticoats in pews

or planting George Washingtons like apple seeds.

Faith assures us that an implacable, indifferent universe which part and parcel of the Lord our God

is good.

100%.

In doubt, the absence of God, we are, in fact, in a theological version of hell, that which is enunciated so graciously in textbook language to reflect a great myriad of troubles.

A world of troubles,

but a world imbued with a some small piece of faith that propels one over and above such unmerciful.

We have all, indeed, received mercy, just as all have sinned(Romans 3:23): and not merely that the just have received mercy, or the faithful have received mercy, but included are those which exist in the impolite corners of the inner regions of hell, including all the addicted, the lepers, the layperson, the shunned.  God is with them too, in forms that aren't revealed to us.

The wheat and the chaff are cut from the field together; as our book says, "it rains upon the just and the unjust alike", "i reckon there have not been troubles that are uncommon to man".

It is our faith.

Our faith is the calling unto all believers into a portion of joy, hope, peace, and even if we never even so much as sensed it, mercy.