Today I read a story about a WWII vet who was recently carjacked, in broad daylight, at a busy Detroit gas station only to be left alone to crawl across the dirty concrete lot to get help. His leg was broken during the attack as he was forcefully knocked down by a despicable coward. The man, Aaron Brantley, is 86 years old and the father of eight children with 18 grandchildren. Interestingly, he described the experience not as one where he was just attacked, but as one where his need for help went unheeded. He said:
"People were passing me just like I wasn't there...I was crawling and they just walk by me like I'm not there," he said. Ironically, he was on his way home from Bible study.
He continued: "I was trying to go in...and see if somebody could call the police and an ambulance because I couldn't stand. I had to crawl - I tried two or three times to get up." I shudder at the fact that not a single passerby chose to stop and bend down to give succor to a man in need. So high in their own interests, such spiritless people would rather move with the wind instead of against it, which, in the end, only really fans the eternal, harrowing flame of regret. Like the rich man who denied Lazarus, those who choose to deny the downtrodden will soon find their own selves looking up, tormented, begging for aid, and finding none. The Savior warned of this state of apathy and its consequences to the world.
"And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." -Matthew 24:12
St. Martin of Tours, the "glory of Gaul," is a venerated Christian who, like Job, eschewed evil and followed the Lord in all things. As the son of a Roman veteran, he began his own service in the army at the tender age of fifteen. The story is told that as he rode towards the town of Amiens, France one bitter, winter day, he noticed at the gates a poor man, thinly clad, shivering with cold, and begging. Moved with compassion as well as surprise that none who passed ever stopped to help, he realized he had nothing to give but the clothes he had on. So, rather than move on like everyone else, he drew his sword from its scabbard and cut his fine woolen cloak in two, offering the one half to the beggar. Later that night, while Martin slept, he thought he saw Jesus, surrounded by angels, dressed in the half-cloak he had given away. He then heard a voice asking him to look and say whether he recognized it. Jesus then proudly pronounced before His angels, "Here is Martin, the man who has covered me with his cloak."
We would all do well to consider the beggars among us and always be ready to aid those in need. A virtuous life is the one where thoughts of self do not count first. It is said that a certain blind man once sat by the way side of Jericho, begging. And when the multitude passed by, this man was rebuked for not "holding his peace." But there was One among the crowd who heard his cry and then acted.
40 And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him: and when he was come near, he asked him,
41 Saying, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight.
42 And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.
43 And immediately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God. (Luke 18:35-43)
How sad that a "multitude" of individuals, in a moment of opportunity, failed to show in themselves the same compassion as the Savior which they had surely already seen, felt, and heard by His instruction! It was also He who first drove all the larger beasts out of the Temple with a scourge of small cords only to ask them that sold the doves to, "Take these things hence." (John 2:16) In other words, Christ singled out the doves to be taken out. The dove. A symbol for love and peace. Even in a state of chaos and confusion the Master still showed compassion.
As a nation, are we choosing to drive the doves [beggars] out of our own midst with a whip of indifference? Do we rebuke faster than we relieve? Furthermore, do we prefer to keep down those who need our help by ignoring their pleas? Who knows, maybe one day the Master Himself will crawl before us on a stony lot, disguised as an elderly man, bruised and broken, looking for cover in the comfort of a cloak. Will we then choose to hang our sword over him in censure of his pitiful state, or be moved with compassion to cut our own robe in two?
Long live the fighters
Monday, February 27, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Nevermore, Nevermore
We are a haunted nation. Therefore, it seems appropriate to shed light on a mischievous entity that for the last three years has disrupted the highest office in the land - creating chaos and disorder like the daeva, or, 'wrong god,' of Iranian folklore. But despite its delusory actions, which have sought to confound and control the simple-minded, its vaporous trail and form can be readily marked by the open-eyed freeman. So far, this entity's movements have passed through Liberty Square, an ironic name for the spot of ground where attending drones continue to spread their excrement (both figuratively and in some reported cases literally) as loathers of labor and anti-capitalists. In truth, their constant rapping at our nation's chamber door has awakened a terrible monster - vicious and amoral - man's natural horror whereby the used and godless conduct themselves in ways both senseless and bestial. Moreover, this specious spectre, so enamored by its own false reflection, has tormented the private sector with its sickle and hammer of regulation as it has banged and rapped against the door of our individual freedoms and minds like Poe's painful raven. As well has it moaned and groaned for guaranteed entitlements without the responsibility of work and moved defensively for social justice rather than personal liberty.
We cannot afford to taste sand anymore while the twisted movements of a venomous viper slither condescendingly above our buried heads. To defeat this adversary, we must reveal its intentions with the light of truth in order to reclaim the ninety and nine who have unwittingly succumbed to its mischievous and unintelligible actions. To be certain, this thing that haunts us, the wrongfully assumed "One" who for the last three years has terrorized our nation's economy and scoffed at our sovereign rights, is none other than our core-less leader and President, Barack Obama. He is a heliophobe, an enemy of the light, an oath-keeper to the secret works and combinations of men whose author is not God. At best, he is a wraith, an apparition bent on control and the endless pursuit of that which he cannot obtain - prosperity and happiness in doing iniquity.
Even still, because of our own lack of will, our very freedoms have become more slippery, lost in the foul mist of political spin where only the rattling chains of Charles Dickens' paired evils - Ignorance and Want - shake without pause. How prophetic he was then in portending the doom of man and the high national cost of ignorance. But we need not despair. The empty bag cannot stand upright nor darkness ever defy the dawn. For over three years now we have witnessed the decline of a generation more than its increase who have learned by sloth that happiness and success seem more of a right than a responsibility. How uninspired and lifeless a person [and nation] becomes who entertains such haughty logic!
Like cockroaches, the wicked disperse at dawn's first light in the same way the uncreative run and hide at the correcting sound of a godly conscience. Accordingly, in 10 months time we will find out just how loud that inner voice has been, or more importantly, how much it [He] has been heeded. It is my hope that all of us can remain faithful and not surrender our first principles and freedoms for the flaxen cord of popular sentiment. At the same time, may we not give ear to the distant clanging sound of chains known as totalitarianism but stand firm in defense of God, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. May it then be said, one year from now, that a poltergeist is fled from Washington, never to return again - disorder and all.
Nevermore, Nevermore.
Long live the fighters
We cannot afford to taste sand anymore while the twisted movements of a venomous viper slither condescendingly above our buried heads. To defeat this adversary, we must reveal its intentions with the light of truth in order to reclaim the ninety and nine who have unwittingly succumbed to its mischievous and unintelligible actions. To be certain, this thing that haunts us, the wrongfully assumed "One" who for the last three years has terrorized our nation's economy and scoffed at our sovereign rights, is none other than our core-less leader and President, Barack Obama. He is a heliophobe, an enemy of the light, an oath-keeper to the secret works and combinations of men whose author is not God. At best, he is a wraith, an apparition bent on control and the endless pursuit of that which he cannot obtain - prosperity and happiness in doing iniquity.
Even still, because of our own lack of will, our very freedoms have become more slippery, lost in the foul mist of political spin where only the rattling chains of Charles Dickens' paired evils - Ignorance and Want - shake without pause. How prophetic he was then in portending the doom of man and the high national cost of ignorance. But we need not despair. The empty bag cannot stand upright nor darkness ever defy the dawn. For over three years now we have witnessed the decline of a generation more than its increase who have learned by sloth that happiness and success seem more of a right than a responsibility. How uninspired and lifeless a person [and nation] becomes who entertains such haughty logic!
Like cockroaches, the wicked disperse at dawn's first light in the same way the uncreative run and hide at the correcting sound of a godly conscience. Accordingly, in 10 months time we will find out just how loud that inner voice has been, or more importantly, how much it [He] has been heeded. It is my hope that all of us can remain faithful and not surrender our first principles and freedoms for the flaxen cord of popular sentiment. At the same time, may we not give ear to the distant clanging sound of chains known as totalitarianism but stand firm in defense of God, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. May it then be said, one year from now, that a poltergeist is fled from Washington, never to return again - disorder and all.
Nevermore, Nevermore.
Long live the fighters
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Condolences
Kim Jong Il, the supreme and terrible leader of North Korea, recently died after an almost 20 year reign of control and slavery. The world is a better place because of his departure. Yet what is most disturbing to me is that there are those within our very own borders who outwardly choose to mourn his absence and are even going so far as to express their condolences for a despot who tortured and starved his own people. One such king-man is the airy Jimmy Carter who recently expressed his own sympathies over the "tragic loss" of one of the world's most beloved dictators. This moronic fool, so enamored by the dirty haze of the 60s, still believes that sensitivity to dictatorships results in genuine peace and mutual understanding. Fool. I suppose that if Carter had lived during Old Testament times that he would have been the one ignoble Israelite with the chutzpah to come down and lay a bed of roses upon Goliath's headless corpse - only to find that the warm "fuzzy" sensation he was feeling was not the Holy Spirit but rather the outpouring of blood born by a thousand Philistine arrows. Evil men do not reciprocate fawning. Men such as this deserve our grief as they have ashamedly abandoned all reason for madness.
"And it came to pass that my sorrow did return unto me again, and I saw that the day of grace was passed with them, both temporally and spiritually; for I saw thousands of them hewn down in open rebellion against their God [and reason], and heaped up as dung upon the face of the land." (Mormon 2:15)
So, I choose to express my condolences to Jimmy Carter and to all those of the same ignoble ilk who have surrendered their higher freedoms and principles for the lowering chains of ignorance.
Long live the fighters
"And it came to pass that my sorrow did return unto me again, and I saw that the day of grace was passed with them, both temporally and spiritually; for I saw thousands of them hewn down in open rebellion against their God [and reason], and heaped up as dung upon the face of the land." (Mormon 2:15)
So, I choose to express my condolences to Jimmy Carter and to all those of the same ignoble ilk who have surrendered their higher freedoms and principles for the lowering chains of ignorance.
Long live the fighters
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