Dedicated to my love, Mark.

JONES, NORAH LYRICS

"The Nearness Of You"

It's not the pale moon that excites me
That thrills and delights me, oh no
It's just the nearness of you

It isn't your sweet conversation
That brings this sensation, oh no
It's just the nearness of you

When you're in my arms and I feel you so close to me
All my wildest dreams come true

I need no soft lights to enchant me
If you'll only grant me the right
To hold you ever so tight
And to feel in the night the nearness of you

Many of us experience loneliness in this life. There are many different reasons and circumstances that cause loneliness. Some may be sick, others may be grieving the loss of a spouse or family member. In the middle of the pain, there sometimes comes a great sense of aloneness in our grief.

"Where is God when I am lonely?" is a question asked by many depressed people. It may not be actually articulated, but it is there deep down nonetheless. Of course the answer is, "Right beside you."

"Whether we feel it or not," writes Margaret Clarkson in Decision magazine, "we have His presence for our loneliness, His understanding for the human misunderstanding that ruthlessly assaults our quivering sensitivities, His unchanging and unchangeable purpose for the seeming hopelessness of our frustration and apparent uselessness. . . . Our very infirmities can open up our lives to more of the power of Christ."

Scripture abounds in promises, divine undertakings that await our appropriation. There is no conceivable situation for which there is no appropriate promise. Be alert as you read the Bible to discover what God has promised to do and then lay hold of it. Say to the Lord, "Do as You have said." Promises must be claimed by faith. It was by faith the patriarchs received the promises. Abraham had an abounding confidence in his God. He was "fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised" (Rom. 4:21).

The validity of a promise depends upon the character and resources of the one who makes it. God's holy character and boundless resources make His promises credible.

"Every promise is a writing of God," said Charles Spurgeon, "which may be pleaded before Him with the reasonable request, 'Do as Thou hast said.' The Creator will not cheat the creature who depends upon His truth, and far more, the heavenly Father will not break His word to His own child."

God's promises are bound up with His character and rest on four of His attributes.

His truth, which renders lying impossible.

His omniscience, which makes His being deceived or mistaken impossible.

His immutability, which renders change or vacillation impossible.

His omnipotence, which makes anything possible.

So, when we come to God with one of His promises, we can do so with the utmost confidence, for "He who promised is faithful." If there seems to be a gap between God's promises and our experience of their fulfillment, it is because we have not committed ourselves to claim them.

John Bunyan quaintly described his experience in endeavoring to appropriate one of the promises: "Satan would labor to pull the promise away from me, telling me that Christ did not mean me in John 6:37. He pulled and I pulled. But, God be praised, I got the better of him." Bunyan has not been alone in this representative experience.

I hope you are encouraged by these words and they change all of our lives forever.

"Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness."

"It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature—and the rest will betray it.

It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning—and it is those few that I have always sought to address.

The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or “The Fountainhead” that they will betray: it is their own souls."

~ Ayn Rand, 20th century Objectivist philosopher

“A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That’s control.

Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That’s abandon.

A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind.

No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment.

A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions.”

~ Carlos Castaneda

-I dedicate this poem to my beautiful, resilient, and faithful children, Ryan & Mandi. I love you both with all my heart. May you have wisdom and a strong faith in God above all else in this life.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

- Rudyard Kipling

Mandi this article is dedicated to you, my sweet.

The Fruit at the End of the Limb

Too often in our lives we have people tell us “to get real”, “don’t rock the boat”, "you'll never make it", "are you crazy?" and so many doomsday predictions. They tell us how we must be afraid to fail, how "It" has never been done before. Don't go out on a limb, or someone will saw it off!

I wonder about this. The way I see it, we went out on a limb the day our souls decided to enter this world, We went out on a limb with the first word we ever spoke, with the first step we ever took. We took our chances when we first asserted our developing identities as we screamed 'no, I won't!" to our mom or dad. We dared to fall as we learned to ride a bike. We exposed ourselves when we engaged in our first meaningful relationship. We take our chances when we marry, when we decide to have children, when we try to say all the "I love you"-s we never said before to a dying parent or loved one.

So tell me, what's the big deal? Or is it that as we get older we get more afraid? Afraid of losing all the "things" we have accumulated, trophies of success in a world where if it doesn't glitter, it isn't enough and if it does glitter, it has to be real and valuable.

I'm not buying it. Literally. Where would we be, as individuals, as a nation, as a world, if we didn't do the unthinkable (like who would really think we could go to the moon, besides Jules Verne, that is). What if we channeled our unthinkable, incredible, not do-able thoughts and energies into feeding every person in the world? What if we accepted as a fundamental reality that women, children and men in all countries would no longer live in oppressed or dangerous situations? What if we really went out on a limb and believed that peace was normal? What if we implemented strategies to sustain our world's natural environmental health because we recognized our life connection to Nature?

Hey, I am really going out on a limb here! But as Shirley MacLaine says, “You can’t get the fruit if you don’t go out on a limb.” So in honor of those people who climb out there anyway, I am climbing up to meet them on that high limb. Because when I taste the fruit, I'll remember how sweet life really is.