Immediate Afterthoughts

Read my previous blog post first...

Only an hour after posting one post, my mind is still running.  I can already hear it..........all the opinions, all the politics, all the arguments....maybe I'm preceding something that may not happen, but with all the Internet traffic in the world and all the eyes.......there are always sides, beliefs, and opinions.

Adam and Eve is just a story and the Bible is just a book.......maybe a fairy tale.  It may be something that to you, may have happened so long ago you don't even believe it is real.  Maybe Jesus is just as fictitious as Santa Clause to you....just a story that someone made up for some kids.

Some days the only way I feel I can explain my faith is like the wind...you can't see it, but you can feel it and hear it to know it is there.

Some days I get really tired of reading everyone's opinions on Facebook and seeing all the politics fly back and forth like the food fight I remember having at the dinner table as a kid.  If I close my eyes, I can still see those mashed potatoes hitting the window and that chicken leg hitting the wall, and if you ask my sisters, they can also remember what we had for dinner that night.  If you really think about it, sometimes the arguments we have are just as ridiculous and childish and I just want to yell, "Two words people: GROW UP!"

What I really want more than anything most times, is for God to just set foot right in the middle of a conversation or an argument and just show up and say, "This is how it is!"  I mean sincerely...I wish God would literally show up, put His hand over our mouths and say, "Silence! Who made man's mouth?" and set us all straight the same way He did Job and say, "Excuse me, did YOU make the sun? Did you name all the stars? Did you create the world and everything in it? Did you put the moon where it is now? Who created your eyes? Who gave you that breath you just took? Who started your heart to beating and Who ALONE knows when it will stop?"  Sincerely....

No, sincerely....let's all take a step back for a second and think about it.  You gotta sit still and internalize and visualize with me for a second.  I don't know why I always do this, but I always think of celebrities for some reason.  I mean, someone I don't know who is far away. When you take a person...geez, anyone...Justin Beiber, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, sheesh, I don't know...anybody and you strip that person of their material possessions and you take all they own away, who are they?  Who are they without all their stuff?  So many people define themselves by their STUFF.  If you don't have all that stuff, the house, the money, the cars, the clothes, the jewelry, everything the WORLD has to offer, who are you?  Now get closer to home and apply that to yourself. When you take away your stuff, who are you?  Your house, your clothes, your job, your money, your friends, even your family...who are you?  Now, when I say, "who are you", I am basically asking....what stuff are you made up of?  When you're stripped bare of everything we know you as, what is left?

Here's the thing, when you die, when I die, when Justin Beiber dies, when Tom Cruise the Scientologist dies...what is left?  Who are we?  What are we made of then?  Listen, when it's all over, there's nothing left but our souls.  A person is really no more than their soul.  In the end, all that's gonna matter is "What is inside of your soul?"  Sincerely...think about it...after it's all gone...what else is there?  They put your body in the ground and your soul lives on.  Your body is just a mask, just a facade, it's what we know you as, but it's not who you really are. Think about it if you've ever been to a funeral....you're just looking at a vessel, but the person is gone, gone.  So....WHO ARE YOU?  In the end you are nothing but a soul standing face to face with your Maker.  You are stripped bare of the life and possessions you had to have in exchange for forsaking all that really matters.......which is what you do with your soul.

My prayer is that when I look at people...instead of seeing people, I will see their souls.  Everyone on the face of a planet has a soul.  EVERYONE.  Everyone from you to me to Osama bin Laden. Think about it...the only part of a person that's meant to live forever is a person's soul.  I can hear you already, I can hear you..."But what if I don't believe that?" Really think about it.  Just get quiet somewhere and think about it.  If what you believe were not true, would you still want to know it?  The answer for me is "No".  If what I believed were not true, would I still want to know it, and the answer is "No", I would want to know the truth. The purpose of this life is not to focus on the outside, the external, the temporal, the fading, the aging...the purpose is to focus on the inside, the internal, the eternal, the everlasting, and the part that will live forever.  EVERYONE on the planet will live forever in one of two places.  My pastor said it best.  If you are born twice, you only have to die once.  If you were born once, then you will die twice. Think about it...if you don't know what that means, just ask me.