Marble Pavers -- Nosce Te Ipsum

It's a secret as old as the curse. "Know thyself." Meaning, if you don't know your self, your heart, including your thoughts, your desires, what you want, and what you need, measuring out each to know how deep each one goes, you will fall by not knowing how the balance of all these burdens can sway you toward a particular pitfall.

I've struggled with a different balance, that of knowing my heart. I would rather live life than spend all of it ruminating and navel gazing. Religion can feed this by emphasizing one's actions over the grace God has for us. Given the impact of my disability and how it leaves me a lot of time for thinking and non-action, you'd think I'd spend most of my time knowing myself. I am surprised how little time I actually do spend in introspection. What is worse? On one hand, I could spend all my time critiquing my own actions or inaction, curled up like a pill bug or armadillo. On the other, I could spend it running and chasing from spot to spot, not knowing why I did anything I did and leaving a trail of destruction as my legacy. Neither is worthwhile, so the task is choosing the optimum, with the emphasis on following God's guidance both in general life and personal choice.

Knowing one's needs and wants could have helped Adam. He knew he loved Eve. He would go through anything to keep her. And yet, her desire to be more than what she was, and his inaction in the time of her temptation, led him to destruction and heartache. Had he known that he could have stopped Eve from listening to the serpent, and that he didn't need to join Eve in her sin, he might have ...well, it never came to that, did it? He didn't know his own heart. He chose to join her because he felt that he needed her more than anything else. He didn't know his heart and that it would betray him.

And women wonder why we don't listen to them more often! I'm only joking, because those that know me know that I depend on the women of my family for their trusted guidance. In Eve's case, it's not one of a woman wickedly leading man to his doom. It's that men learn that their own hearts can often take what the woman says to him and cause him to make choices that are against his general welfare. Men mistrust their own emotions because they lost the big game on a decision they didn't want to make. What Adam didn't see, what men don't see, is that God is there to make the way for him. No matter what happens, if a man turns to God in repentance, the future is always better than what man could have made it by himself. And if a woman points him to God, Eve's mistake is redeemed.

For the first time in a while, I've looked deeply into my heart. I see how the disability has poisoned some of my heart's deep loves. I love being outdoors and yet I live with the poison of not being outside because I can't stand the traffic we live with in our back yard. Frankly, my body feels assaulted by the vibrations of the traffic moving along at 40-50 MPH inches from my back yard. I used to wonder why I didn't see more people in the backyards that lined our cities streets. Once, I thought I would gladly take the evils of traffic if it meant I could have a yard of my own. No longer. And yet, that's not really why I don't want to go outside. It's because I want to keep going.

I don't want to stop at my fence. I want to keep going until I find a place I can rest my soul as much as I rest my body. And yet, I know that such a place is far enough away and not presently open financially and possibly physically to me going.

I want to go to a place where the things Karen has to do are not required. Where she can rest with me and we can talk and enjoy each other, working together. I want my kids to be able to go and do the things they want to do with each other and on their own. I want my son to discover his heart and follow it so that God can show him even better things than I have. I want my daughters to find their hopes and loves available to them at any point so that they can pursue and embrace them. It's not a fantasy. It's a real place.

I used to think this was a place on Earth. It's not. It's in heaven, and I want to see each of them there eventually. God has promised me this, so it's only a matter of time and waiting. Until that happens, I will wait here, marooned in the now and not-yet. knowing my heart and what I hope for will not be too far off and that prayer, faith, hope and love will carry us as a family toward that destination, the Home I have down the Road.

Welcome to New Readers!

Hey there! I just opened up the Road Home to it's inaugural group of new readers. If you can see this, you're in a group of trusted readers that I've welcomed to "test drive" my formerly invisible personal blog. I've done this to help me figure out how to best interact with my readers and what I can do and can't do.

Can you help me out? Leave comments on whatever you read, if only to tell me you like it or don't like it. That way I'll know what initially attracted you and if you tell me why you didn't like it, I'll know what doesn't work for you and potentially how to improve the message, it's delivery, or whatever else.

The blog itself will remain restricted access for now. Eventually, this will be public, but I plan to go in and remove any personal feedback you might leave. If you'd like to keep it confidential, please send it to me in confidence.

Watch For Falling Rocks

Duck!

I saw a fireball once.

In 1992, I was at my home in Wheat Ridge, Colorado when I looked out the front windows toward the northwest around sunset in the evening. Almost immediately, I saw a streak of fire hurtling down so fast there was no time to react. It was much faster than anything I had ever seen before. It was the speed of a shooting star, which I've seen often enough, but much longer. It looked like it was between me and the mountains and that it could just as easily have hit the earth as burned up.

In a few seconds I realized that what I had seen was a meteor. The fireball's trail dissipated very quickly, so that when I went outside, I couldn't see any discernible trail. I almost wondered if I actually had imagined it. Yet, a day or so later, I saw reports in the local news that other people had seen it in the skies over Boulder, the same location I had seen it. Sadly, the only visual record is locked in my memory.

Yet, it's not without impact on me and surely on others who have such memories. Not unlike a satellite or meteor dropping through the sky, scientists and warriors have designed MIRVs, nuclear warheads, to drop through the sky and, instead of winking out of existence like my meteor, exploding over it's target with the estimated force of thousands to millions of tons of explosives. Seeing something akin to my fireball may be the last thing someone would see before witnessing the end of their own life and that of thousands or millions of others. It is a horrifying thought for any human being, one that this child of the cold war who had studied the logistics and effects of a nuclear war has thought about time and again. The abject horror of the thought does not grow easier with time, either.

Such destruction would not have to be caused by man, however. Victims of the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor blast and witnesses of the 1908 Tunguska blast know that such power does not solely rest with human beings. The blast of a rock, or in a worst case scenario, metal asteroid slamming first into the atmosphere and then into the crust of the earth is likely to have caused planet-wide destruction on more than one occasion, something humans cannot claim, yet, and hopefully never will.

Apocalypse Pow

Seen on Facebook

If you believe the Bible  as I do, a meteor or comet apocalypse is not only likely to happen at some point in humanity's future, it's actually prophesied. Right smack in the middle of Revelation, John the Beloved's prophetic letter to seven churches and the last book in the Bible, John writes of angels blowing trumpets, releasing events on an unbelieving generation of humans to call them to repentance and relationship with God. The third of seven trumpet blasts releases a celestial event.

Then the third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from the sky, burning like a torch. It fell on one-third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star was Bitterness [in Greek, literally "wormwood."] It made one-third of the water bitter, and many people died from drinking the bitter water. Rev 8:10-11 NLT

It's a roughly 1,920 year-old book, and a lot of the imagery can be taken symbolically, as Matthew Henry's Commentary does, or at least in the spirit that a person from our time might use to describe the events and technology of people from the year 3814 AD. And yet, meteors are still referred to as falling stars. Meteors or comets weren't unknown to stargazers of John's time. Yet anyone of his time would be puzzled to see the effects of radiological contamination. John does us a bit of a favor by not speculating on what he saw, and instead simply stating what he saw in his vision and leaving it at that.

Assuming John was being literal at this point, what could the source be? A failed nuclear-powered satellite? Radioactive cesium? Nuclear fallout? There are many possibilities, and not all of them fall under radiological causes. Nonetheless, radiation would be a prime suspect for wormwood's bitterness. And a third of the earth's freshwater going undrinkable would cause massive casualties in any generation, but especially from here on as the world's freshwater sources are largely already claimed for use.

Incidentally, chapter 8 is a pretty rough chapter for the people of earth. A firestorm of hail and fire mixed with blood, (possibly nuclear war), sets a third of the earth's trees on fire and destroys the green grass. That doesn't just mean no more lawn mowing or golf games. Grass is what much of the earth's livestock live on. That food chain would likely begin to fail. Further complicating that is the fourth trumpet that reduces all light reaching the earth by a third. That is Sagan's nuclear winter, folks, and food production would grind to a halt in less than a year. Considering how we eat fresh food much more than stored or canned food, this does not bode well for survivors of wormwood and the other events.

If you'd like to know more, let me know personally. I'd be glad to give you my take, but really, God will do the speaking Himself when the time comes. I hope that I and those I love are not there to witness the results. Regardless, if we are, I know that through the pain, we will push through as long as we can to give those who need God's love and grace all that we can. That's what His kids do.

Falling Like Lightning

Instead of an apocalypse, my memory of the fireball actually brings something else entirely to my mind. Preserved through 2 millenia are these words, "I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning!" It was Jesus' exclamation in response to His disciples as they told about their experiences once they had returned from their mission to go and tell people the news about God's kingdom. Jesus was telling them of the impact their mission had in the spiritual realm.

Just as that meteor streaked across the northwestern sky and caught all sorts of bystanders' attention that day over 20 years ago, so too can the disciples of God's kingdom have the impact today of dethroning the prince of the power of the air by speaking and acting in line with in Holy Spirit.

Just Fair Justice in Fairness

What's the difference between "Fair" and "Just?" Fairness not as in beauty, "Who's the fairest of them all?" Fairness as in equitable. Justice not as in the judge, but what he is trusted by the people to make day after day.

Fairness implies that it must be agreeable to the judgment of all involved. Justice seems to appeal to an objective judgment by a higher authority. "Justice was done," is a phrase usually given by those who comment on a justice system rendering it's judgment to the guilty party as an agreeable conclusion, usually meaning that there's consensus of fairness. Oi vey.

Fair can be used in a court setting. "He must be given a fair trial." But a fair trial doesn't seem to include the tried in terms of his opinion of it, does it? It seems to imply a fair chance to plead his case for innocence of the crime at hand. Yet justice only enters the courtroom when the jury renders it's verdict, and even then it's not guaranteed.

So fair depends on everyone with a stake in the matter. Just only depends on one judgment, none but God Himself, ultimately.

"Life isn't fair." We all learn that one early enough. The world won't care if how things shake out doesn't meet with your approval. If it did, no one would be happy for long. Life is not just, either. If it was, millions of people killed by a dictator would want their lives back. So what point is there to this?

Simply: Working for justice is noble. Working for fairness is for lawyers. One is worth your time, the other thinks their time is worth your money. Working for justice is attainable sometimes. Working for fairness will never be attainable everytime simply because no one is ever truly satisfied.

Take Me Home

I've been reminded so often lately of my ultimate destination. Home, as in the title of this, my personal blog, is what folks know as heaven. It comes up when I look at Facebook a lot. I see my friends and how they cope with their losses, a child here, a mother or grandmother there. It never seems to go away. It's a just a breath away in my mind. Ironically, for everyone, it is just a breath or two away. There are no guarantees that your next breath won't be your last. Instead of a sense of dread or fear, I now find myself filled with a sense of hope. Isn't that a weird turn? Instead of writing about the Road, I'm writing about Home. And yet, that's the aim of my journey. It's what keeps me motivated.

I've been a subtle fan of Phil Collins since his creative cover of "Love Don't Come Easy." Yet the chorus of another song "Take Me Home" keeps knocking around in my head and heart. His video is creative and the song enjoyable.



I long to see Home. I've had experiences in my life that have fully convinced me that my spirit is real. It is something I can't measure or touch, but I can tell you that, while my body is mine, it is not all of me. It is not Steve Walden in his entirety. I know that if I died right here, right now, that it would be amazing and real in a sense that few earthly sensations are. I wouldn't be able to describe how lifting off the ground and looking around would be so exhilarating and freeing, but I would relish it.

So often, we look at life as a brief 70-90 year stint on this planet. We don't know what life is! I cannot prove to you that life is a mirror in which we only glimpse briefly for a few moments in our many years what truly life can be, but I can tell you that there is One Who can, and His Word leaves little doubt. In his writing about the rapture, Paul says "in the blink of an eye" that we who live until Jesus comes will be changed and caught up in the air with Him. It won't be a painful ordeal. If we die, we may feel pain through our bodies, but the moment it stops feeling, that's the end of the pain. We go from that instant to being with the Lord. What's to fear?

I guess living with pain for years has changed my perspective quite a bit. If I do go home without much advance notice, I want folks to know that I have total peace about it. I ache over those who are left behind, but there's one certain way to see me again. And if you take advantage of that offer, I promise I will not throw in a fish emblem for your car. I will, however, give you a big hug when I see you next time.