THE SHEPHERD AND THE PRINCE

As the flock of sheep, moved towards the greener pasture, eating up the present with eyes on the future, the shepherd hangs back and watches, his staff in his right hand, his rod in his left.

As the Prince stands and surveys his walled city, the masses trade, and live and the hustle and bustle of life reverberates through the monuments of stone, the prince holds a measuring line in his hand, for he must build and build, till there is nothing left to build, for the masses must always book forward to something if not the next monument, it could be revolution, the princes hand tightens on the measuring line.

The Shepherd sleeps amongst the sheep and finds comfort in there soft woolen bodies, he will give his life for his sheep, his sword in his left hand as he sleeps.

The Prince sleeps amongst the soft yielding bodies of newly acquired concubines he cannot sleep and the concubines cannot keep awake he sweats as he prepares for the next day. Dreams unfulfilled.

The Shepherd and the prince are one and the same, the confluence is in the pain of unjust expectations and the pleasure of fulfilled dreams.

THE PARADOX

You can’t have something that you can’t

Otherwise get by being self centered

If you want it by being selfless

You can’t expect another person to do something

Wrong so that right can ultimately come out of it

You can’t build a tower by digging a hole

The deeper you dig the harder it becomes to rise

Above the pit and start the building

You can’t want another to go through the pain of

Loss because you want to experience the joy of gain

Or can you?

SINGLE AGAIN (sometime in 2001)

My heart hurts, I feel it beating against my chest, I feel the soft dull pain of having to let go again, how much of this can I take before I am completely lost, I stand on the beach alone as the cold breeze of my aloneness chills me to my bones, God stands beside me. He knows how I feel, He has been there, to love and not to be loved in return, to see and not be able to claim for your own, to feel and not be able to fulfill your desire.

I read Psalm 22 yesterday and for once I got a glimpse of that God sacrificed to be with us, He let go of His most precious gift to gain another. His only begotten son for His prodigal children, His sacrifice delivered humanity from total destruction. God almighty, where is my own Sarah? Why am I on this journey alone? I am not questioning your will, for I succumb to it entirely, I am just crying out in my pain and aloneness.

I have hope nevertheless, Hope is a good thing and I know that my latter years shall be greater than my former years and so I will wait on this beach, I will stand beside my father in Heaven who patiently waits for His prodigal children He will never leave us nor forsake us and I will never stop hoping.

Even now as my heart beats painfully in my chest, as I lay down numb from the act of letting go again, this one hope I have, that my wounds will cleanse me and as I stand on the beach of waiting, I stand straight, I share in the sacred activity with God Almighty Himself, I share something divine and privileged with my father in Heaven.

TRIBUTE

For all the women in my life, the ones that played with me at my childhood, circled me in my adolescence and walked with me in my manhood, I pay you tribute, you have all helped me form the image of Sarah, though I do not yet know her, she plays with me, circled me and walks with me even now like a nymph from a mythic tale.

MANHOOD CELIBACY IN CHIRST 1

Is it sex; is that the right of passage that we need to pass through to truly become men? If so, then Jesus was not a man, He does not portray manhood…our great example, one Lord and Shepherd, the mark by which God measures our relationship with Him, was not a man! He shed His blood in vain then?

Why is sex (fornication and Adultery) the litmus test for manhood? How did this great deception start?

Why do we feel inadequate as men, because of our lack of sexual experience? What sexual experience did Jesus have!

Yet is He not the Epitome of Manhood? Or is He, it you can’t see Jesus as the Epitome of manhood, how then can you claim Him as Lord over your life…

I believed that Christ-likeness is all about true manhood and I believe manhood is all about:

- Character (consistency)

- Integrity (transparency)

- Strength (mental, emotional, social)

- Courage

- Self sacrifice

- Leadership/followership (a teaching and teachable spirit)

- Righteousness (Right standing with God)

- Love

- Faith

- Hope

Where sex comes into all this is where the Devil has us deceived, God knows that fornicating is a sin against Him and the Body, it is a desecration of a sacred covenant that God Himself set up to glorify Him and symbolize the love relationship between God and man, blood sacrifice that ushers in God’s blessing’s and truly the key to marital bliss and peace in the spirit, should and body, show me a happy man and I will show you a happy home.

The path to manhood is a hard one an the road that God’s to true manhood is in fact the road of Righteousness, our Lord Jesus by His earthly life points us to that road, the difficult terrain of that road makes the superhighway of false manhood through sexual acts look admirable, this Autobahn of sin, is currently shaking the church and threatening to tear every pillar that holds up the Christian faith down.

Faith: How can you truly have faith in God if you are flagrantly disobeying Him in the most terrible manner.

Hope: Your hope, cannot be the Christ like hope that Abraham had, for sexual sin spits in the face of that kind of Hope, your decision to fornicate and pervert the sexual act is an endorsement of the hopelessness the world finds itself.

Love: To truly love a woman, you must give up natural desire to posses her and instead because the facilitator of her walk with God, your Power over her, must be used to allow God to move closer to her. When you posses her through sex, you degrade and downgrade her, for then she belongs to you to the exclusion of God. But when the marriage bed is kept undefiled, she belongs to you with the active involvement of God.

My affirmation of Manhood will go something like this:

To pursue true manhood and a true Go ordained marriage, even if the world mocks me, my sight is set on the goal ahead of me, and Jesus my shepherd and Lord will always be my standard, I will consider all things, insults, insinuations of a lack of manhood, pressures, swearing and the likes as the price I have to pay for my walk with God. He never said it would be easy, but he promised that trough the fires and the deep waters and the howling storms and the dry wilderness and the deep valleys and the high mountains, He would be with me, he will never leave me nor forsake me, He will hide me under the wings of his love and bring me to His expected end.

Don’t compromise, no matter what make a decision in your heart like Daniel not to pollute yourself with what everybody seems to desire, refuse to sin against God like Joseph in Potiphar’s House, and your reward will be sure.

Just had to get that of my Chest……

BEACH BOY’S RHAPSODY

How can I show you I love you

If I cannot take you in my arm

And make you mine?

How do I love you, if I cannot claim you?

Do I love you?

Am I not a man with hot blood

Running through my veins?

But I love you, come walk with me,

Let me show you my dreams,

Let me take you on a journey

Of discovery, let me help you find

Your true self

For me if is a privilege to do so for that way!

I show you that I truly love you, deeply, truly

eternally.

And after you see your destiny

If I am still an integral part of it

Then you will come into my arms

And I will make you mine

But if not, I will let you go

To fulfill your destiny

Even if it hurts to do so.

How can I show you I love you

If I cannot take you into my

Arms and make you mine?

By making you His first.