SelahV Today by hariette petersen

Who Shall Lead Us In Perilous Times

"But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:

For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good,

traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.

And from such people turn away!

For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 

Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth:

men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith; 

but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was." 2 Timothy 3:1-9

We have been warned. Will we heed the warnings or simply have a form of godliness while "denying its power"?  selahV

Save

Save

Broken Once More

and it's okay.

There's nothing to be ashamed of.

I just made a couple of really life-altering decisions which catapulted me into a whirlwind of emotional turmoil. The decisions were not made in haste, mind you. They were considered carefully, albeit bathed in entirely too much emotion. When a person tends to be merciful, she does things she feels will make life better for everyone. When one battles co-dependency and is also merciful, that person can find herself swirling in a vortex of consequences that were never factored into the decision-making process. When a vortex is strong enough, and long-lasting, even the largest oak tree will be reduced to splinters.

When broken, we reflect. We muse about other choices we could have made. We consider all the possibilities and weigh the outcomes of having chosen another path.  We learn. We get better. We get stronger. We heal.

Eventually.

"The LORD is near the brokenhearted; He saves those crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18

Because the LORD is faithful, his nearness shoulders our burdens as we lean upon Him.  The more we lean and trust, the more we rely on Him for answers-- not others.  We recover from the aftermath of brokenness through time, through surrender, through forgiveness, through acceptance.

We accept others as ourselves: fallible, imperfect-- and perhaps a bit broken from their own decisions. We forgive what they did to us. We surrender the pain and allow the balm of God's goodness and grace to permeate our thoughts. 

Superglue doesn't work on people like it does on broken dishes.  Elmer's wood-glue can't mend an oak tree ravaged by a tornado. Even if they could, those adhesives take time to assemble, to dry and harden.  Likewise, a crushed spirit needs more than reading a group of cliches to heal...and even then, we're never quite the same.  And that can be a good thing as we strive to be wiser, stronger, and far more discerning with each storm. ~~selahV