Offensive Joke

I speak weekly before an audience who choose to rely upon what little gravitas I have to navigate the intricacies of life as lived together with them. I always ponder the unrelenting responsibility to pastor my congregation with words that are somehow prone to abuse or lift the souls of despondency. The hardest task is to discern where the people are when I open my mouth. More often, I am but a myopic microphone providing loose pegs that float without anchored context.

I was listening hard for Jokoy during the Golden Globes 2024 event, and amidst the challenging atmosphere, I saw myself … sighing with ulcer-like spasms on what he must have felt when the blow torch of free speech lit up the night with divisive rhetoric.

Words are not mere alphabets. They have the power to kill or give life.

I find myself a “Jokoy” at times.

Either I choose death over my stumbling craft or I regroup and start anew to trust this simple yet wild tool of seeking to tell you that I do really care but weak enough to fumble and look like a fool and hope for a day that I look more like a sincere human being who has truly spoken from his heart.

Yahoo Men

The lies of men are beguiling only to themselves. The mastery of deceit takes the form of art but not before the peering eyes of the Lord God Almighty.

In His gaze, all black turns crystal. The masks are exposed. Manipulation and duplicity rise in public stare as the suave perpetrator receives proper judgment.

Woe to these boys who seek to prey on the innocent. They shall all be tied with stones that’ll be thrown towards the base floors.

Once upon a Time

The elusive search for a spouse escapes the precision of analysis. My journey towards my present blessing of marriage is favored and flavored by grace alone. Once upon a time, I chose to entrust my heart to God’s infinite counsel and the find was epic.

34 years since, I have been ruminating on my unworthiness and God’s apparent cancellation of my inherent status. I have been blessed beyond measure, beyond my competence, beyond my ask, beyond any of my foolish pretensions.

Manel has lived with me this past three decades and I can only wish for an eternity more.

The Promise

W O R D O N M A R R I A G E

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. {Ephesians 5:22-33 NIV}

Today in Calgary, a young man looks back and remembers what his dad promised a long time ago. There is a lovely woman who likewise glimpses and knows what his dad promised. Covenants were sealed then and this day, the same blessing remains.

Badong stands before God and witnesses to speak his intent towards Olivia harking back to the spectacle of the first marriage in the Garden.

The man is called to love without limits while the woman is invited to follow with sweet resolve. The arrangement is referred to as Covenant for it is God Himself who walks in their midst to guarantee their flourishing.

In everything, Badong sees Olivia beyond compare. She goes first next to God. He leads with gentle and kind intentions seeking her benefit above all. If his very life requires this pursuit, he does so with tenacious resolve, in obedience to His Master, whose love for the church reflects his imitation.

In all things, Olivia respects Badong without trepidation. He remains the lord of her home. She commits to making him look good at all times. And thus, she receives affection, provision and protection from her respectful poise.

As time passes, their unity stands in the fulcrum of Christ’s promised presence. When their candles wane and extinguish due to expected life storms, they remember their vows and understand why their marriage holds steady. It is because of the One who remains faithful all the days of their lives. Every squall and storm will be stilled in deference to the Maker of heaven and earth.

As both declare their “I do’s” before God and people, we are called to observe the resplendence of another miracle that stays unabridged: the covenant of lasting marriage.

For as God solely declares, as they become one, no one and nothing alters their sacred union. It has been defined well and needs no further amendments .

They shall be blessed by His outstanding and loyal love, signed and sealed by their Redeemer’s life and energized by the daily hope of unparalleled grace.

Let Christ’s holy kiss be their daily refuge today and for always.

Major Insult

The Insult: God defines success. I was made for a purpose. Whether my life is good or bad, successful or a failure, is determined by whether I fulfill His design.

My instinct is to resist that notion. I want a vote. I fear God selecting a design and me having a preference for something else. I would then be forced to choose between pleasing God and joy. I would be trapped and feel cheated either way.

But this resistance is built upon an assumption – that I could conjure a joy contrary to how God designed me that would be more fulfilling than God’s will. But, when examined, that seems absurd. Could a fishing pole be more satisfied doing anything but catching fish? Why would I want to rebel against my design?

These are the words of C S Lewis.

Other men throw insults daily without the grill of holiness.

Breakthrough

But the answer is not to capitulate to the current ‘identity agenda’, and then to enforce it with breast-beating, finger-wagging neo-moralism. Douglas Murray doesn’t like that and neither do I. The answer is teaching and practicing the whole biblical gospel. NT Wright

AGender

This is the three-dimensional meaning of ‘justification by faith’: all those who believe in Jesus, rescued by his cross and resurrection and enlivened by his Spirit, are part of the new family. This was and is central, not peripheral. The church was the original multicultural project, with Jesus as its only point of identity. It was known, and was for this reason seen as both attractive and dangerous, as a worship-based, spiritually renewed, multi-ethnic, polychrome, mutually supportive, outward-facing, culturally creative, chastity-celebrating, socially responsible fictive kinship group, gender-blind in leadership, generous to the poor and courageous in speaking up for the voiceless. NT Wright

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