The Long Way Up

I don't demand much from people, if I do at all. I'm typically easygoing and really not hard to please once you get to know me. Anger doesn't come as easily to me as offense does, but even then a subsequent response comes as a carefully thought out proceeding. I do not hastily respond when I am angry, as I prefer to weigh my words first before launching them from my mouth because once they're spoken, there's no taking them back. So when people come at me with repeated disrespect and condescension, I think it is but fitting that I put my foot down and speak my mind, especially when blatant disrespect is done repeatedly and in the presence of others. Never mind that I'm a pastor; that part can be disregarded, as far as I'm concerned. But if the other party can not, will not, or does not have the capacity to exercise good discretion, extend basic honoring to another human, and express respect to a fellow believer, I would most likely be provoked to g...

The imagery of dark-skinned Africans bound hand and foot by iron chains, shepherded into big wooden ships by their pale-complexioned captors, taken to distant lands as merchandise sold to the highest bidders, put to hard labor against their will without any compensation, and suffering abuse and injustice from cruel task masters may be a long-forgotten visual aid of the atrocious nature of human slavery, but the essence of it has lost none of its potency. We may not all be bound by chains, but we are all bound by something, whether we admit it or not. We are all tied to at least one thing that we either refuse to let go of, or another that refuses to let go of us. We may live in a day and age where blatant enslavement seems to be a thing of the past, but we are in fact living in a world where slavery -- in its so many varied forms -- is still in full swing. Cha-ching! Some of us are bound hand and foot by the chains of financial and material pursuits. We gain the whole wo...

Numbers From the zeros to the ones Combine To become heroes and guns Fractions Are just morsels of the whole Slivers That need the sanction of souls Inches Are too close to see far away Slower Surely much better a rate Crevice Agape can chasms become Distance Just look how far we have come