We are living in a planetary war zone beyond the battlefields of gun and cannon. Harsh reality. Lust, gluttony, greed, envy, pride all create harm and potential devastation to others. Selfishness is the weapon of choice. News, movies, and social media of all kinds reflect the power plays from politics to the individual.

The harm done is as harsh, but not as visible as the battlefield. Cruelty is alive and well on this planet. We see the walking dead and maimed. We see people crippled by self treatment of drugs and alcohol, drop outs, derelicts with psychiatrists and care centers flooded by the injured. There are also all those who hide in plain sight, survivors, wounded but struggling on. Who among us hasn’t suffered trauma that impacts our lives?

There are warriors who fight against the trauma and pain in life. Wounded warriors are those who were injured themselves and fought to overcome it and work to help others overcome. There are agencies and care facilities who work against the tide of injuries. There are churches who recognize the power of God to heal the broken hearted.

Christ established God’s healing ministry on earth while He walked in the flesh and continues it through the work of the Holy Spirit today. All of us need this healing and need to be a part of this healing for others. We can choose to help or harm. Compassion is a choice. Love is a decision. Compassion and love are hard because they require a person to sacrifice themselves. The good is worth it for the individual and the world around them. The warriors are the people that make the world a good place to live.

I am grateful beyond my ability to express it for the many people who have been the agents of healing in my life. They are the heroes on the battlefield and in life. Give thanks to our military for protecting our freedoms. Give thanks to the life warriors who work to free minds and hearts. Give thanks that God opened heaven’s doors that we might find continuous help and encouragement beyond anything man can do alone.

It is commonly said that if you lead, others will follow. If you lead, and no one follows, you are just out for a walk. The same can be said of an “influencer.” A true influencer changes things. Many self labeled influencers are just people putting on a show because little or nothing changes. Working to be seen is not the same as being an influence.

Life imitation becomes life style after it becomes ingrained in behavior. That is why parents have always warned their children to choose the right friends, choose the right influence. There is tremendous power in the associations you have or choose. There is tremendous power in the community which surrounds you. We are more heavily influenced by our culture, our country, and the general beliefs of our world than we imagine. We are being bombarded every day from every angle. You can see this power in history because the historical people were confined to their knowledge base and circumstances during the time of their lives.

So many people tend to build associations by convenience instead of by intent. A person’s faith life should be an exception, even if all other associations and influences are through circumstances or through associations that weren’t chosen, and even if influences are convenience based instead of intentional. Food for the soul is far more important than food for the body.

Be careful with yourself. You are far more important than you may consider. Life is far more than the things we see around us. It is important to consider questions like where does love come from because it is more than a feeling. Love requires someone to humble themselves to care for another. Humility is not a natural human trait because we are self based creatures. Where did it come from? Where did selflessness come from? Where did the other values like honor, justice, faithfulness and the like come from? To truly exhibit those values, one has to give up themselves, contrary to the human nature.

There is a God in heaven whose nature is based on the best of all values humans desire above all others and are unable to achieve completely on their own. Our desire and His nature is proof of His existence. Even atheists believe in and desire the high qualities which are beyond human nature to produce. God’s interventions have introduced and given examples of the high values through history.

Jesus was an example of value beyond measure. He, as God, came and served man, selfless. He lived in the limitations of a man to show His understanding and compassion. He died to give the people killing Him, and all others, a chance to realize God. He rose from the dead to prove His divinity and validate the very opportunity He taught and gave us. Jesus should be our first influencer above all others.

Stained glass is highly complicated. You start with a design. For many churches the design is an image of an excerpt from the Bible. The image is created like a puzzle of individual pieces. Glass has to be found to fit the shape, color, and textures needed and be further refined by painting, staining, and etching as needed. The glass is scored, broken, and ground to fit the shape designated. Leading is put around each piece, soldered and stained. Sections of the glass are wired together. Amazing and beautiful, especially when the light flows through and shows the true beauty and relates the story.

People are like that. I went to an Uplift Columbia meeting in which individuals and resources gathered to create a coalition that will provide for the disenfranchised in our county. Churches, health care, and social agencies often under perform because people don’t know what is available or how to access the gifts those resources want to share with those in need. They gathered to share what they have and create a county team of healing services.

Many of the most passionate care providers were people who were themselves broken glass and shattered lives. They had been reclaimed from alcohol, drugs, mental illness, and every sort of distress available in this pain filled world. They found healing and now passionately work to provide it for and to others. They are beautiful stained glass from shattered life pieces reformed through Jesus’s healing hands. Now, the light of God’s love flows through them to beautify their surroundings and tell a story of hope to the world around them. They have become artists in the Lord’s grace, working with others like themselves, so the Lord can create the hope that beautifies our world.

These walking stained glass art pieces are the church on the street for those in need. They are the conduit of God’s light to others. Their brokenness can still be seen in the colors, shapes, leading, and structure, but they are so much more than the pieces. They are the beauty of God’s promise and the power of God’s plan and hope.

Anyone who has tried to free a rusty hinge or rusted gear knows the difficulty. It is a hard job, a difficult process, and one that may break or damage, possibly irreparably, the parts of the machine being freed. Heat, torque, and chemicals might be the first level attempts to free the parts. A cutting torch or similar device might be used if the parts can’t be saved. One way or the other, the device has to be freed to return use and productivity. I often feel that I’m getting rusty as I age. However, ingrained habits and processes can get thoroughly stuck at any age and become excessively difficult to change.

Thought and emotion can become so intrenched in the soul that it can be considered no different than a gear fused to its counterpart through rust. The work to free the thought and emotion can easily be as extreme to the soul as compared to the efforts to release the rusted gear with the same risk of potentially destroying its parts. The heart and soul, so welded/rusted to the past, cannot see or acknowledge a new direction or movement away from the old direction without humility. Increments of effort, like chemical and torque, can push toward revelation, but it is the persistent effort that makes the difference. It is not a single-try ordeal. It takes a massive effort of energy and commitment to put the gear in motion or sever it from its locked position.

Rust are all those thoughts and feelings which keep a person locked in their past, unable to hear the Lord, hear their friends, or even hear their better inner selves. Many do not change because of the work required. The hinge or gear is bonded through its entire surface, not just a single point. Persons undergoing change are often embarrassed or injured by those who do not understand or have compassion for the work of gaining freedom, and often do not see their own rusty hinges or gears. Some people might wonder why their trials are so hard when it might just be the torque needed to remove rust.

This is a powerful image to me as I attempt to make changes in my life. It tells me, “Don’t give up. Take the risk. Use all the resources necessary. Don’t avoid the work and discomfort. Don’t be distressed when it takes longer than you think it should. Partner with others who can use their resources to help break the rust. Take whatever time and effort is required.” Staying rusted to the past is a guaranteed loss. Gaining freedom is worth any effort. Jesus is the author of freedom.

Some words, moments, and people can impact life beyond the ability to understand them or express them. They are formative or life changing. I’ve often thought that high school was the second most formative four year stretch in a persons life. The first four year stretch is from birth to four years old when persons travel from a gurgling blob of humanity to walking, talking, thinking humans, able to interact with the world and people around them. High school transforms a child into the first stages of adult life and accountability. We go from child relationships to imitation and actual adult relationships. We are at the edge of the nest taking the first flights.

High school, for my class, was a place to build foxhole friends, people with which you identified for life. We grew up in the same area, experienced the same cultural events and understanding, the same knowledge base of human discovery, and the struggle for self identity and growth particular to the age. We were a team, formed in the defining forces of our shared time during a same age in a specific location in all our individual diversity and uniqueness. Somehow, that bonding gave us a personal investment in one another’s lives. We belong to each other in a unique way that is different from any other group to which we may belong. These are the people who can ask about what you did with your life and have rights to an answer.

There is a beauty in that kind of belonging that seems to be increasingly missing in our world, as individuals seem to be growing apart and groups don’t form attachments as they once did. We have more tech, more communication, more ways to reach and be reached, and yet less depth in the commitment and connection within relationships and communities. My high school friends were all on the same launch pad, at the same time, jumping into the lives we would live and the people we would become. We saw each other walk across the launching stage at graduation, remembering our four years and wondering what would occur in our dispersal. Now we get together and can see what has happened and who we have become.

Humans truly need deep community relationships. It is something worth giving a lifetime to build or repair. I pray that the pendulum will swing back to deep relationships. We need each other to live a healthy life. Investing in the health and well being of others is always an investment which pays good dividends.

Trauma is a source of ongoing pain. It is an injury so intense at its inception that it lingers in the heart and soul through the fear it caused and the shame it birthed. Trauma is beyond the individual’s ability to avoid, control, or win against. It is a loss, a damage, a defeat that the heart and mind can’t reconcile without outside help because it is too big for the injured person. All people have traumas of some type and some level from small to great, but all trauma leaves its time or event to continue contaminating in the ongoing life of the injured until it is stopped.

The first stage of stopping the trauma’s ongoing work requires humility. Humility can see or acknowledge something is wrong. People without humility assume that they are just doing what they do without realizing or examining whether or not they are compelled in their actions by a fear or shame they do not want to see or accept. Without humility, blame shifts to others, and the individual justifies their actions through emotional reasoning or stubborn acceptance of their behavior. They can not or will not see the injury their trauma is sharing with others.

There are many symptoms to trauma induced reactions and behaviors. Healing can begin once humility opens the window to let the light in. Prayer, going to Jesus directly, is always an appropriate first or ongoing step. God has made many additional resources available to us in America. There are self help groups related to any hurt a person can have. Counselors abound in faith and out. Books have been written to cover so many issues. It is incumbent on each of us to find truth, face truth, and find resources for healing as we need them. God wants us to be a blessing to others, not an injury. He wants us healed from His hand directly to us or through any of the many resources He has made available to us. Seek and choose healing. You will be glad you did, and so will those around you.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if you could lay out all your thoughts, memories, and life experiences on your front lawn to walk through and consider. I imagine it would be much like the experience of moving. Tona and I have been helping others move for the last two weeks.

Moving is like time travel through a museum. All your possessions are artifacts that you can date by year or decade. The fad buys of 2000 that are replaced by the new fad by 2005 and again in another group of years. Families with children can measure time by the toys that they still have, even after they have recycled other toys to friends with kids. Kitchenware, utensils, and appliances speak of the change of diet, cooking ability, and popular cooking fads. One toaster is plain metal. The next is colorful and stylishly rounded. The third has Grogu (Baby Yoda) emblazoned on the side. All three toasters work, and all three are boxed for the move. There are toaster ovens, crock pots, and instant pots. Each item trending in its own time zone and now an ongoing legacy of the family life in time.

There are no end of surprises as all the darkest corners and the least visited bottom-of-the-storage-places are unearthed like an archeologist who finds treasures forgotten or misplaced. The surprises trigger the memories of how you had to have it, used it once, and left to be covered by the next have-to-haves that ended in the same closet. Sorting through the archival treasures is like tripping through the tyrannical appetites that were found to be as temporary and transient as a breeze. You might even be amazed at how far you went out of your way to get that thing that just as suddenly became something of little or no value. You can see yourself, your appetites, your priorities reflected in all the stuff you have accumulated and especially the stuff you accumulated and kept.

People look at us and see our house, our possessions, our actions, our thoughts and words. They can see us more plainly than we can see ourselves at times.To them it may be like seeing all my stuff out on the lawn ready to be packed and trucked. These thoughts increase my prayer life. I want people to see that there is more than just me. The Lord has, is, and will be working on this life I call a home and all its possessions and being. It is not just the archives, but it is the present and the future. God is alive with His changes, moving me forward. I am not alone.

There are journeys within journeys and accidental insights within thoughts. Surprises are never far away with some bringing great joy. Following is a description of such a serendipitous event.

Lincolnton, NC is a seven hour drive from my home if you drive without break or interruptions on the road. That means my wife and I were on the road for eight or more hours one way. Lincolnton was the place of family, friends, and a high school reunion this past weekend. We decided to stay in a bed and breakfast we found online called White Rose Manor. We had never been there before or even heard of it. Now we intend to stay there anytime we head to Lincolnton. We met the hosts of the manor and realized that we would have been friends all our lives if we’d only met them sooner.

The manor was an old home with as many stories about its physical being as you would expect of an old man in his eighties. You could tell where the porch of the early building had become the exit from the “great” room and entrance to the dining room. Entrances and exits from rooms were punctuated with large or small steps to remind you that you were changing space and possibly shades of environmental differences. The hosts allowed us to wander from room to room. They explained what we saw until, at some point, we realized we were staying in a personality as much as a building.

All the furnishings had stories as well. We met parents, grand parents, and other ancestors through the treasures they kept and the stories related to the treasures. Our hosts loved their families, the stories shared with them and passed on with visitors. It was a place of ongoing lore of life lived, sacrifices made, courage experienced, and traditions of love and celebration. Cup and saucer sets represented travel and life from around the world in a way that could be shared with tea or coffee at a table where meals and life are shared.

Our hosts are deeply rooted in the past with a love of history, and they are engaged with community events and groups from Hart Square Festival to teaching Girl Scouts how to have tea. Their skillsets function in the independence and freedom from all the machine made, mass produced items that lack personality and life. We spent three days living in the environment in which the people in the home were the value to be enjoyed with the surrounding reminders of life, family, and personal creativity. They are life artists who share a testimony of values in caring. It was easy to experience God’s presence there without pretense or pressure. Thank you John and Allison.

Between 2005 and 2010, the American big three automobile companies had to receive billions of dollars in bailout money from the government. Japanese were building less expensive compact cars that were more economical to run and maintain. America was still building large gas guzzlers that were expensive and expensive to maintain. The consumers made a choice. The American auto industry wasn’t listening to them and their desires, so they changed to Japan’s line of choices.

Many of us come to the point of crashing and burning because we hold on to something that isn’t working for far too long. The example of the American auto industry can be applied across the board to life. You can hold on to a bad set of dietary choices until the doctor finally has to give you the bad news about your weight and the accompanying diseases, like diabetes. Humans pay a high price to ignore the truth in a failed effort to protect their comfort, however they define comfort.

Listening is far better than ignoring. The auto industry had lots of fair warning before their excesses caught up with them. All of us can say the same. There are people and organizations around us that provide ample warnings that we are moving in a bad or destructive direction. All marriage partners are warned before a divorce becomes a necessity, but they ignore. Businesses receive warnings before bankruptcy becomes necessary. Organizations are given warnings before they fail. People’s perspectives and life styles are given warnings before they bring destruction. Why hold on to ignore when it is obviously so expensive. Not everyone ignores. Many are rescued because they listen.

Ignoring is fueled by fear. Facing fear requires hope and courage. We need extra sources of hope and courage when our own is not enough to face the truth that will cause us to face ourselves with a willingness to change. Faith and healthy friends are two primary sources of hope and courage. They are worth finding. Jesus is alive and available to anyone looking. He has many who serve Him who are ready to help. Find hope and courage. Face the truth. Change the things that need changing so you can be healthy and joyful. The people around you will be glad you did. Most importantly, you will be glad you did.

The limit of self and the commitment to be in control and have power is often measured by the level of stress a person will endure before beginning to cave in and crumble as an individual. The illusion of being in control of life and circumstances will last only as long as the situation around a person cooperates. Even the most powerful and wealthy in this world only survive in the belief of their control until the life and circumstances around them changes. All the greatest will eventually find a cliff from which they will fall because no one truly controls the people and circumstances of life. The greatest cannot even rescue themselves from the limits of their humanity and their part in the brokenness of this world. There is always something greater pushing at our gates.

Humans create gods because their limitations daunt them. Money can be a god until the stock market crashes. Beauty can be a god until age takes it and surgeries no longer work. Anything can become a pretense for believing that invulnerability, eternity, or complete satisfaction exists within human control or access. All people are given the opportunity, like the Egyptians in the Bible, to see that the limits of humanity are too great for the need people are trying to fill. The one true God exists and can be easily found at the end of the human limits to fulfill all the requirements only a true God can fulfill.

It is a shame that so many of us, speaking of myself, have to come to the end of hope before the true provider of hope becomes visible. I have met many wise people who didn’t wait for utter despair but found Jesus readily available anytime and any place. I wish all people to have a softer landing on the truth than I had, but my landing was made from my own choices and stubbornness.

Each day is filled with choices. Our choices can make the truth easier to bear or harder to face. The truth of Jesus brings hope and joy to the best and worst of places, and all areas in between. I urge all to the hope and health of Jesus and away from the bruises and despair of humanity. There is only one true God.