Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:11

…………………..

“Been there,
Done that;
Again and again and again.”

This I quote from an anonymous writer.

I am an ugly man. No really, I truly am.

Have you ever cut off a man’s hand or seen the intestines of a man by the work of your knife?

I did.

So don’t tell me that you are like me.

You are not.

Stuck in a cycle of hate and hurt, I did not want my life anymore. Scum like me would make this world a better place simply by disappearing. Perhaps, parachuting out of the window would make everyone smile. Who knows? I might even get a standing ovation.

But standing there on the ledge of the open window, I heard these words.

“If you don’t want your life give it to me.”

Pallets of tears fell and fled as I sat at the edge of twenty storeys crying.

Who could love one such as I? I destroyed a man’s life — nay — two men’s life. And if you only knew, more was polluted by my unbeautiful ways.

WHO COULD LOVE ONE SUCH AS I?

“I do.” Came His voice again.

If anything, my one saving grace is english. And it is contextually wrong to say “I do” when the correct answer is “I can”. That in itself spoke volumes.

I do.

If anyone, He was most like me at the moment of my despair. He too hung from a height — between life and death — with blood on his hands. And He decided whether to live or to die.

But He chose death.

And then, He chose to live again.

Thus, my Lord chose to be my perfect offering.

You there.

Do you know what’s a confidence man?

Or a con-man, perhaps?

I am such as one.

People look at me and they think: great guy, blessed, cool, have it all, better than I, what have you.

But all I saw in the mirror was a loser. As a result, I chained myself with fake strength, behind a door of illusion, caged in a vault of silence. What you saw, was what you got — that is, if you ever got anything from me. You see, I was made for the word irresponsible. Give me a responsibility and I will add the ‘ir’ in front for you.

“Chill, what’s the rush?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll get done.”

“The world’s not going to end.”

I hide my inability behind calm collection (aka cool). I try to make you think it does not really matter. Really, I try… and fail.

Those who worked with me on a project would know; they loathed me. So I wear these great clothes, these new watches and bags — social leaves I use to cover my nakedness, my inability.

But all that changed when that man came along. He picked away at the leaves, one layer at a time and whispered things into my ears, things too intimate for me to tell you. But they were words that made me strong and gave me hope. Slowly, little by little, I began to unchain myself, open the door and step out from the silence.

Today, I am no longer a confidence man. I am a confident man.

All because of him.

Haha! This blog has unknowingly become the archive for all my writings and I can actually take out excerpts to be used for my ministry.

This is awesome.

Silver, Thirty Pieces

So they decided to use the money to buy the potter’s
field as a burial place for foreigners. – Matthew 27:7

Thirty pieces of silver was all it took to buy a place where I can die. The price of his death, both measly and insulting, purchased th field where, in death, I can find peace.

To die is hackneyed.

But in burial is rest.

Land bought with silver earned by blood, will you not, dear viewer, see the sanctification of an earth once cursed? To be covered in dirt made holy by crimson silver, there can now be no bitterness in death. Like a tattoo that once said (and is still saying on a body somewhere), “To die is an awfully big adventure.”

I am on my adventure.

But there is more to this story, more to the price of thirty silver pieces — there was also a kiss. We call it The Kiss of Ephemeral Intimacy. But we do not stop here. There was also the acceptance of the kiss of the one who was, who is, and is to come. Had he not accepted the faked affection, you and I would be standing in a grand load of — for want of a better word — shit.

In Love, he took the kiss. In compassion and understanding, he looked his beloved in the eye, into the one whose one capricious deed condemned him forever. And he created no more trouble when he said, “I am.”

O that you would know the width and length and and height and depth of his love which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of Christ!

He loved you, better yet, he still loves you. You did not choose him, and neither did you, by your own effort, garnered faith to earn his love. No, friend, His love is free, priceless. It cannot be earned, and therefore, it cannot be lost. If only you knew how he loved Judas, how he bled for Judas, you would not, in arrogance, declare the lost of His love. But we will fail. We will fail to love like he does, fail to ensconce in Love, fail to seek after the Lover of lovers. But you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever lose his Love.

And his love is working even now to straighten all that is veered away, restore all that have  broken, and reclaiming that which had been lost.

All this for you.

*

And with this and with the new year, I end my seemingly short (yet feeling it undeniably long) hiatus from churning the words. I need to write and if I don’t, my mind gets bombarded by the little inspirations day after day sparking a nausea sous disgust with my self.

So I’m back.

And a happy new year to you too. Woo. Yay. Wee.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

So here I am, walking quietly, one step ahead per foot, along the canal — its waters totally still. The path stretches on ahead as far as I can see in this dark, clear night. A yellow lamp lights the path every 12 metres. Yellow dots reaching far into the end.

In a sentence, this is my life’s summary.

The road stretches on with no curves and bends. The senses tell me it is cool. My surroundings dark — although not in a morbid sense. And the interval of lights beckons me.

This is my road. Today is Christmas. Today is Eeyore’s birthday.

Happy birthday, my blessed partner-in-bed.

It is hard to believe that it is Christmas again. Somehow, I wish last year’s 24th December repeated itself, reveling in the joy that was so utterly true that day. But that this be true happed not. A year’s journey filled with so much memories outcries the need for a solitary day of utter bliss. I have sojourned a year far and have arrived where the place is dark, the air cool, the path straight, and the lights a wafting solace.

Jesus, why does your name seem so alien to my fingers and to my tongue? Why is it that your name ‘God’ becomes the frequent address? The intimacy is nowhere near what we had. I know the right answers to my questions. I know them by the back of my hand. But Jesus, I want to experience them. I want to know you on a much deeper level. This is the reason why I’m on this journey. This is the reason why I want to be initiated into the things on Man. I want to be a man of Your stock; I want to be thrown onto that level of Greatness which You have intended from the very beginning.

It’s not getting difficult, Jesus, but it is getting stale. I want to go on and on, breaking barriers and climbing cliffs. But somehow, I still find myself inhaling the air from ground zero — being the last to know that it began raining. Lord, will you not begin bringing me on to that adventure that we’re supposed to have?

I am whining.

Sorry… It is Your birthday after all. How does it feel to have the world taking a rest and celebrating you (even when they do not know it)? Leave a reply, alright? I’ll be here, always coming back to check up on this blog. I love its name but kind of wish that its layout can change to something much better. WordPress can learn from Tumblr a thing or two.

Merry, merry Christmas, Lord.

It’s really difficult to put this down in writing.

Escapism.

I find myself looking for ways to forget and evade the hurting knives.

And I a knave.

So I’m going to stop writing.

It will be a sabbatical.

After all, the one joy I found in writing was for her to read my words.

I’m sorry God.

Always remind me that I’m your beloved, won’t you?
Tell this to me today.
Once more (or however many times you want to) tomorrow.
Then continue the same thing for days that are rolling on ahead.

Tell me you love me always.

What if…?

Then we will.

We will trust God, the author and finisher of our faith, of our book.

This is not the epilogue.

This is not over.

What if?

Then we will — yes, we as in us three — will have to weather this storm together. Him with his wings keeping us warm and dry in the midst of the storm. Yes, it hasn’t been easy with the wet tears that turns warm and then cold in a single second, but by God, by our heavenly high priest, our almighty Jesus, this is not over, Weiling. This is not over. Not over until our omnipotent God says it’s over, until he closes the book to welcome us into heaven. This is not over until we stand at the altar knowing that this journey has not been for naught, has not been for only heartaches. But it shall be a journey of a love so divine that we will  have no part to play but to dance along to it’s wonderful melody. And by God, by Jesus, this is not over even when we are at the altar but another book of another longer, more beautiful journey together.

I love you.

I still do.

Every morning,
I wake up realising that
I still love you.

Every beautiful, painful, raining, shining, shimmering, dull, gloomy, created, redeemed morning.

I still love you.

I still care.

But forget I. This is not mine to love, mine to give. It is the author’s will and delicate plot. It’s difficult, how difficult it is for you, I will never understand. We can never know what is happening in each other’s life unless we verbally communicate, unless we literary write. I can only formulate my own assumptions from what little things I know and read, and as always there is a fabricator, not author, that continues to scheme and plot and lie to draw out the deepest blood from within our veins. Veins not arteries because the blood begins to flow back to the heart. And we (3) have to depend upon Him to hold us together. Remember Deuteronomy. Remember it clearly. Remember it always. You know which one I’m talking about and know that our heavenly daddy is not one to forsake us, not one to take us off his shoulders because he is tired. Surely he will carry us all the way until the place that which he has promised us. He remembers my prayers. The ones I prayed so many years ago and he is faithful to realise them all for you and for I.

For us.

Before the tender shoots can be seen, the seed first must die. Before the fruits can be gathered, the flower has to wither first. We must die to ourselves, to our circumstances. We must die to the fact that there are so much contradictory facts around us. We must die to know that he has risen again, and that his word is not a fluke. I know you’re going through a shit load of crap. I know.  God. I hate myself for always being able to see the two sides of the coin. I don’t know if this is for good or for bad, but we have to see things for what they are. They, in the big picture, cannot pull us down into the mud and never to be seen again. It is the Lord who raises us up to the highest place far above every powers and principalities. Principles of love, of account, of economics, of plots and of the law can no longer hold us down. We are flying, yes we are flying upon his wings. Upon his wings we are flying.

I also am going through my own dark valley. And it feels awfully lonely in the knowledge that no one else is walking the same journey with me at this same time. Nobody (that is those around me) will just be unaware of what is going through in my life. You won’t too because you have your journey for now. How can two journey together unless they be agreed? Some time ago, whenever we tried to communicate it was like a duck talking to a chicken, I suspected that we were talking about the same thing on the same track but we never seem to understand one another, like the tower of Babel, you know? At that time, God wanted them to break apart for the men were beginning to trust in their own flesh and effort trying to attain what would have been a gift from heaven — reaching heaven itself.

Once again, we find ourselves so broken, so meshed up. But be strong, my little girl, for it is when we are weak then are we truly, truly strong. I love you, and Daddy God does too. For when we find ourselves so emptied of ourselves will we find us the one who will fill us. Who will be faithful to his word, to his personal promise to us in Deuteronomy. We will be living — nay — we already are living in his finished work.

At the end of all this shit, I want to be standing at the beginning with you.

I want us to be able to trust each other with freedom.

With freedom to love those around us and yet, deep inside, know that it is with the strongest, hardest, fiercest love that we love each other.

I want us to be living in that self-sacrificial love that He has shed true the cross. I know I’m not there yet and neither are you, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. That (all the ruins you see around you) doesn’t mean things aren’t being restored as we speak; as I write.

[continued on twp]

The death of a butterfly.
Never to hither.
Never to thither.

Never again.

LIFE
dea/th

It wasn’t just the candent brutality of the cross that flares the darkness of illumination but that you laid down your potentsome life to nulling ground zero  in absolute sorrow, facing both rejection and pain, but then you clenched onto it as though reaching for a brimming cup of life and raising it high to acclaim a bride of the grandest excellence, and left it there at the level of the lateral eight.

- A new style of writing that I am exploring
through the language of a lazy Farsi.

Justin,

Take a step behind. Fall back. You’re not a toothpaste wrapper; squeezing out the words are plain pointless if they aren’t real to you. Don’t try to act all spiritual and write things in HdwB to edify the readers. Drink of the waters first yourself before giving it to the others. Fill yourself and your barns that there be plenty for those who are hungry or dirty. Wash their feet with the waters you drink, they be your masters and your kings. Love them with that which you have been loved. For there is no impact in a wind starved of motion. Come on back and eat from Dad’s table.

Hmmm..

He said, “If you are on an island, and you are going to spend your whole life on that island and there’s nothing on that island, ask yourself which girl you think you can live with for the rest of your life.”

Then I realised that when the Lord asked me that question that I was not looking for a ministry partner; I was looking for a life partner. Because back then, my  Pauline was not a public speaker. She’s gentle, quiet, elegant.

This bring things back into perspective. This really does.

Is it a sin to laugh?

Is it a sin to pretend nothing happened?

But here in front of the computer, my restrained countenance faces release. Gravity does the rest of the work.

She lets go.

I let go.

But why. What happened?

Why did she cry?

Why the tear-stained pillow?

Why the grubs of tissues?

Why did you cry?

It takes a conscious effort to not ask you this through an instant medium.

– Through the technology called phone.

Why?

Did I do something wrong

again?

I do not know. >.< :(:(

The Love Imperative is unavoidable… a necessity.

As an adjective, it’s a command — no — a demand. There are things the Love Imperative demands of this wonderous place that cannot be refused. There is just no such possibility. Love gets what it wants.

And it governs my life.

It commands things to happen in my life. Remember your father? Think about the best day you have had with him. It would have been beautiful. Every thing that you wanted he gave you. Holding hands, the both of you ate icecream while walking down the lane watching the world pass you by. That’s love being imperative. Everything else just takes a backseat.

Yeah, I’d like that.

But what happens when damage is dealt? When crisis… crisate? Where then is God’s favored principal?

I do not know.

But panicking would be a silly thing to do. Rest. Let God be God.

Beautifully written by E.W Kenyon, he wrote that “Love is God, unveiled. God is love.” It is God’s imperative to do as he likes in heart-winching, mind-funking crises. It is Love’s prerogative to do as He wants to in your life.

Rest. Seat easy. You’re Lover is forging your answer to life.

Your lover.

Not taker.

Of a Field

Jacob went close to his father Isaac, who touched him and said, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”
– Genesis 27:22

This was the moment when Jacob went before Isaac to receive the first-born blessing. Pastor was reading this passage in one of his sermons when it struck me. There is no difference now when I come before Daddy. He hears my voice but feels the hands of Jesus. The hands pierced  by iron pegs. He blesses me on account of His first-born even when he recognises my voice.

I have always wondered about that. If Dad sees Jesus when he looks at me, where is my identity? How then can I be called special? It confused me .

But not anymore.

Papa knows my voice, He knows me on the most intimate level; and because He loves me, He reaches out to touch me, smell me — smelling Jesus.

And at the exact moment He smells Jesus, He blesses me.

… “Come here, my son, and kiss me.”

So he went to him and kissed him. When Isaac caught the smell of his clothes, he blessed him…

– Genesis 27:26,27– Genesis 27:26,27

But unlike Isaac, Papa wants to bless me. He wants to give me every good thing.

Lord, give me.

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Remember

Remember that this blog is called “Hisdeformitywasbeautiful”.

Remember that it is a finished work.

Remember that this place is all about him.

Remember that by his word all things were made and without him nothing was made that was made.

Remember that all things work together for those who love him.

Remember that even when you are just so tired and cannot take a step forward anymore, he carries you as a father would carry his son.

Remember that when you are weak his Grace is made perfect is made perfect in your life.

Remember that he remembers the prayer you made, not just a month ago, a year ago, two years ago, but even five years ago.

Remember that he turned water into wine.

Remember that you are his beloved.

Remember that he is faithful even when those you love turn around and hurt you.

Remember that he is in you making you blameless.

Remember that his righteousness infects the leprosy and makes your life whole.

Remember that you are not here to write about anything else.

Remember that your readers are not stupid.

Remember to make them think.

Remember that when everything seem to be going wrong, when the devil is trying to make you react because chances are whatever you do will be wrong, he is still mightily in control.

Remember that you are in his perfect plan.

Remember that he holds you so tightly that no one can pluck you out of his hands.

Remember that his are not human hands and they are much bigger than yours.

Remember that as you are reading this, he is solving your problems.

Remember that you have given him everything. Everything. Everything that includes your pain, sicknesses, frustrations, stupidity, poverty, faithlessness, restlessness, curses, and fear.

Remember that you are remembered by him — nay — he is thinking about you. Now.

Remember that when you were in your room speaking those quiet, hurtful words, he heard them and wiped those tears away.

Remember that in your darkness, his mighty arms swooped down and rescued you.

Remember that he would do it all again if that is required of him.

Remember that he loves you.

Remember that always.

Somehow, all my favourite writings are the ones set in private visibility. Be it sad happy or crazy, they just mean so much to the writer and they, i suspect, will give any reader satisfaction. But i won’t be posting them because they have really effective polarising effect. It’s simply because I care for your feelings that is why I end up writing my best pieces and yet the most hurting ones. Ambiguous, huh. Well, clue: hurting, not hurtful.

Whatever, lah.

Push me to the brink. Pull me. Stretch me. Enlarge me. Crush me. Break me. Bring me to my limits – then carry me further. I am yours to use. Yours to break. Yours to mould. Empower me. Set me in places further, greater than where i am now. Higher. Better. I desire so much more. More, more of that powerful, aggressive love in my life. God of heaven, i give you all the honour. For you are worthy to be honoured. So honour sour Son that is in me. In me. Fill me. Intensify me. Sozo me with the love of your son that I may fulfill my destiny. I want to testify.

Get me a tumblr!

Blatant about Love.

“Your Father is there — always waiting.
Your Love is here — always pursuing.”

Papa,

I am in pain; the aching in my heart persists.

Am I not allowed solace in slumber? Shoutld that which besets my mind from dawn to eve bear its pinions deeper into the place of dreams?

Jesus,

You are my bread. You are my cistern.

Direct my heart and humors toward everlasting.

I’ve been dreaming about the same person 3 times in a row now. Each time, she takes on a bigger and bigger role in my dream. Coming closer to my mental self and yet having no interaction with me in the dreams. It began with  her name being mentioned in a dream prior to the past 3 nights and then her taking on a greater role each night.

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Good morning, Jesus. Here is the day that you have made specially for me. Everything about today is wonderful, beautiful. Lord, I am going through today, a second at at time, with you. You are always with me. You are constantly holding my hand, leading me. Thank You, Jesus.

I am precious.
I truly am
even if I don’t treat myself precious.

Faith is a living, daring
confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain
that a man can stake his life upon it
a thousand times.