Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Speak the Word















Do I need some shocking sign--
Carmel-fire from cloven skies
To consume my sacrifice?

Should I beg a moistened fleece
On the ground otherwise dry
Ere I broach the battlefield?

Must the Master still a storm
O’er the sea He trod upon
For my fear to be becalmed?

Is my “little faith” so dim,
It must watch a dead man wake
To at last be reassured?

Must the rocks gush out a stream,
Barren wombs produce a throng,
Lest my heart be petrified?

Once my Lord stepped back, amazed
At a bold centurion’s faith:
“Speak the word...I need not see.”

Speak--you have your servant’s ear;
Breathe your word, on sacred page.
Tell me what you’d have me do...

I’ll believe in what you say--
Words that filled the fruitless void,
Told the dark, “Let there be light!”


MNA 12-31-14

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

A new fantasy tale begins here...

Creatures of the Dawn

Cyril often thought about his past life down in the Mourning Vale, perhaps more often than was good for him. Still, everybody he knew had been born there, many of his friends and kin still dwelt there, and Cyril knew--partly from the voice of the Stones, partly from his own inner voice--that he’d always carry a haunting kind of love for Mourning Vale in his heart.

Especially during the molting season, when his scaly hide was sliding off him and more of his body was being covered with downy white feathers, Cyril pondered the sharp contrast between that old life in the Vale and his new one here on the peaks. Today, for instance, when he woke up under his high sheltering crag on Mount Clement, smelled the clean smell of the rain that had fallen during the night, ate his fill of the sweet moss that sprang up between the rocks, and quenched his thirst from the pool in the cleft just below--today, he reflected on how alone he often felt since he left Mourning Vale. How numerous and natural-feeling his kinships and friendships had been then...before the Neubith had come.

“Good morning, Cyril.” A deep, pleasant voice hailed him from a patch of mist just up the mountain. He looked up toward the voice and smiled. Out of the mist emerged his friend Charisse, her remaining scales glistening with moisture in the brightening dawn, her feathery wings fluttering delicately, shaking her free of the dew. She approached him on thick muscular legs ending in clawed feet that expertly picked their way along the rocky hillside.

“You look well this morning,” she told him as Cyril stretched and swallowed a final mouthful of moss. “Are you ready for our journey today?”

“I suppose so,” Cyril yawned thoughtfully. He humped his back and flexed his own claws so they clicked like centipedes against the ground. Opening his eyes after his yawn, he looked deeply, honestly, into Charisse’s eyes--uncommonly large eyes that were a piercing blue shot with gold.

“Hmm,” she murmured in the soft purr that always made him warm to her. “Someone has been deep in thought already this morning. Aren’t you going to ask me to account for myself? You haven’t noticed I’ve been away?”

“Of course,” Cyril said shaking his head with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Charisse, of course I missed you and you, too, are looking very well, and yes, I’m so looking forward to our journey today. I’ve hardly thought about much else since we planned it!”

“Easy, easy, Friend Cyril, I was only teasing you. You’re a deep thinker and have no reason to apologize for that. It’s one of the many things I enjoy about you.” She grinned as she stood next to him and bumped her wide head against his playfully.

“I...I guess I was thinking again about...about...”

“...about your family down in the Vale?” she prompted.

“Uh-huh,” Cyril admitted. “Last time I visited them, my sister and my father barely would speak to me. Even Mother became impatient when I urged them to begin listening to the Stones up the hillside.”

“Yes,” Charisse nodded sympathetically. “Yes, my family acted the same for many years before Neubith came to them.”

Cyril became animated and began moving about nervously. “Sometimes, Charisse, I just feel so helpless. I just miss them so much I could tear off these wings and go back there and forget that I ever lived on the peaks. Do you think I’m terrible? That I’m crazy? I frighten myself when I have thoughts like that.”

His friend returned to his side and placed a paw lovingly on his. “When I have those feelings, Cyril, I try hard to remember the message of the Stones I heard before I left the Mourning Vale: it said that Neubith was unbelievably wonderful--sweeter and more fulfilling than any dream of the most fanciful Vale-dweller. Yet the Stones also promised bitter memories and dangerous adventures before the final Shaking takes place. Before Daystar rises.”

“I know, I know. And I remember the message, too--at least, while I’m doing my echoing at the canyon. At those times, Daystar just seems so much closer...so much more real.” Cyril sighed a deep, deep sigh in his barrel-like chest and squinted at her comically. “So, you don’t think I’m awfully bonkers or anything?”

She poked him and nearly made him topple as she leapt away. “As bonkers as they come! Daft as a loonie-bird! Come on, slug-a-bed! We have a long way to go today and the sun is shining!” She was in the air with enormous wings unfurled, catching the mountain updrafts and smiling like a rainbow. He craned his neck, following her takeoff with his heart skipping a beat and his mind suddenly casting off its cares.

Cyril shook himself and forsook the crags with a mighty bound, his own wings whipping outward and down, propelling him into the wind. The currents were fetched up into his wings like billowing sails and he swept into a graceful arc in pursuit of his companion, now nearly a league away. Cold bracing air flattened his feathers and scales as it slid past him and tickled his folded limbs with icy joy. Freedom seemed to reach down from above and gather him into an awesome, exhilarating embrace.

Clouds sped up to meet him and just as quickly were left in his wake. The sun blazed on the rim of the world and made the peaks flame with dazzling white. He and Charisse were soaring high above the mountains of their home, leaving doubt and regret behind in the crevices below, now mere etchings in a fabulous, far-off landscape.

They were alone up here, yet together. They were born creatures of the Mourning Vale...but up here, as no place else, they were creatures of Neubith...creatures of Daystar...creatures of the Dawn!

* * *

“I must be crazy...”

Douron groaned and cracked his neck-bones as he began his daily trudge homeward. This shift had been pretty bad. Maybe the worst, he thought. Felt like it anyway.

Working for the Bosses...working in the pits...working long, dark shifts by torchlight...working for less than he was worth...working to put grub on the slab for a thankless family...working.

Some days he just couldn’t think why he put up with this life at all. He must be crazy.

Well, at least there was his secret stash. In a wood west of town, in a hole in the ground, in a box in the hole, Douron had a secret stash of shiny stuff that nobody knew about. Nobody. Not the Bosses, not his friends, not his wife, nor daughter, nor odd-ball son. Not nobody.

Someday, Douron thought. Someday, I’ll have enough shiny stuff saved up, to up and leave this wretched valley and start a new life someplace else on my own! Yeah...someday.

He coughed up some dusty stuff from this windpipe and spat it out by the roadside, beginning to feel his joints loosen up some after the long shift. The dust was the worst, he brooded. It gets everywhere. Sometimes I get so sick of it I could go crazy. He wallowed into the sluggish stream beside the road as it bent off toward the town. Rolling around in the gloomy water got most of the darned dust out from between his scales at least. He ducked his head in the stream and came up spluttering, then splashed and shook his way back to the path.

Crummy dust! he muttered. Why do I put up with work like this? It’s a flippin’ wonder I haven’t keeled over and died of some crummy disease, working like I do. I must be crazy.

He trudged into town as the twilight was lifting and a shadowy light began filtering in between the rough-hewn dwellings of mud and stone. His own small house was overshadowed by some taller buildings and there were still candles glowing in the window facing the road. Naggeril was out on the stoop beating a rug with the branch of a sticker-bush. She raised the branch in  Douron’s direction when she saw him, giving him a half-hearted wave of welcome.

“You almost done beating that thing?” he asked grumpily. “Cuz I just washed in the river and don’t feel like getting all dusty again...Darling,” he added judiciously in answer to her glower, a mixture of hurt and annoyance.

“Just trying my best to give you a decent, clean place to come home to...Sweetie,” she answered, sweeping the dust cloud out of the range of the doorway with her beater. “Go on in and eat something before you go to bed.”

“Rrrrr. Yeah. Thanks, Naggie.” He lumbered through the door, raising his tail up enough to avoid any dust still clinging to the stoop. At least, he mused as he sniffed the aroma coming from the pot near the fire, I’m married to a fair cook. Reaching up with a tentative claw, Douron tipped the pot and deposited some stew into his deep stone dish. Then he slid it across the floor into a corner and lowered his head into to bowl to eat.

Between mouthfuls he inquired, “Cyndi up yet?”

“Early practice today,” Naggeril sang out from the next room. “She was up and out a half-hour ago.” Their daughter was a sludge-skater. This was a new art-form that was catching on with youngsters in the valley. Cyndi had her heart set on getting ‘discovered.’ Douron thought it was a silly waste of time, but at least it got her out of the house.

“Have you watched her doing this sludge-skating thing? I can’t imagine she’s really built for it.” He reached for another bowl and began lapping up the liquid it contained.

“Naw, I haven’t seen her yet, but Mawgeril next door has and she says our Cyndi is doing okay.”

“Well,” he growled, “don’t you let her waste so much time with that that she slacks off her book learning. If she winds up a dummy like some kids these days, we’ll never be rid of her.”

“You just want her out of the house so you don’t have to work as much!” His wife had emerged from the bedroom and was facing him with ‘that look’ that he was not so fond of.

“I just want her to amount to something in this wretched world, Naggs! Oh, forget it. Let’s not fight, I’m too tired. I’m off to dreamland.” He plodded over to the water trough with his dishes and rinsed them off. Then he gave his wife a half-hearted kiss and crossed to the bedroom.

(to be continued...?)


(c) 2014 Mark N. Aikins

Death Wish

A deep desire for death I would embrace--
A separation, keen to mortify
Pathetic forays to obscure the face
Whose very speech created time and space--
Brought into being beings such as I.

I'd glory in magnificence above,
And cast aside the lures and baits below
That so adulterate eternal love,
That tempt to block each Spirit-bidden move
And drown His voice with flesh's dark echo.

My lusts cry out like mewling cats for meat;
They'd feed my ego fat with fawning fare,
While holiness languishes in the heat
Of prideful passions poised to rob and cheat
My Master of the fruits He'd have me bear.

How may self-glory, then, be crucified--
Entombed forever, never to arise?
Can mere devotion suffocate such pride,
All fleshly archers vainly having tried
To cleanse the flocks of folly from my skies?

Alas, no pow'r of mine can drive the stake
Into the vampire-heart that haunts my will;
It stalks me with a thirst no blood can slake,
Save His who left remission in His wake...
One Crucified, raised up, and living still!

Beholding Christ, who stooped to serve the least,
Who hid His godhead gladly in the dust,
Whose ardor for His Father never ceased,
Who welcomes thieves and paupers to His feast...
I'll glory that in Him my soul can trust.


MNA 12-22-14

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Poem about our "Immanuel"


Our God Is With Us
(tune: Finlandia--"Be Still, My Soul")

Our God is with us in His grand creation,
Through which He speaks to rebels lost in sin.
With Adam’s fall, we lost God’s blest relation,
‘Til Christ should come His ransomed ones to win!
The promised One would seek His wayward nation
And in time’s fullness His reign would begin!

Our God is with us by the Word He’s spoken,
His prophets’ voices echoing through time.
Messiah, shown in symbol, type and token,
Fulfilled each one with grace and truth divine!
The Word made flesh was mocked and pierced and broken,
His blood poured out to cleanse this soul of mine!

Our God is with us by a Virgin bearing
The Lord of glory, God, yet fully man!
Veiled in a body low, our weakness daring,
He lived the sinless life none other can!
Now ris’n He lives on high, still dearly caring
For those He saved through God’s eternal plan.

Our God is with us ever by His Spirit,
His grace to give believers in our need.
When we are burdened, He will help us bear it,
As His sweet promises we gladly read!
“I’m with you always, to the end”: we hear it!
Immanuel is “God with us” indeed!

God will be with us as we stand before Him,
To answer for our lives at heaven’s throne.
While hell awaits all those who still abhor Him,
His faithful sheep will there be welcomed home!
Sharing His glory, ever we’ll adore Him--
Immanuel will claim us as His own!


MNA 12-21-14

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Knowledge Is Power?

Empowering people has become one of the chief espoused goals of our age. As conscientious folks look around them at the ills of the world, as they look back in history at the deeds and mis-deeds that haunt the human race, many have concluded that it is lack of power that causes the victimization of so many unfortunate people--les miserables of Hugo’s book, so entitled.

Very often those same conscientious souls will attest that a chief--if not the chief--pathway to the empowerment of the victimized masses is education. People become victimized by those in power over them, primarily because the victims are ignorant; they lack the knowledge that the powerful possess. In point of fact, the primary knowledge lacking for these victims is the knowledge that they are victims...that they are ignorant, and the ones with power over them are in the position of taking advantage of them.

In truth, it is very natural to be impressed by those with superior knowledge. Especially when they use that knowledge in ways designed to impress the ignorant. Think of a skillful magician or illusionist as an example. I can be astounded and entertained and delighted by a magic act precisely because I am ignorant of the bits of knowledge the performer keeps hidden from my notice. I can be amazed at a science fiction movie because I have no idea how the special effects are produced.

And when a teacher speaks with great eloquence and authority on a topic with which I am only marginally acquainted, it can be equally disarming. That teacher could very well use his or her power to free students from the victimhood caused by their ignorance...or use that power in the exact opposite manner.

When it comes to empowering people with knowledge, to educating the ignorant, it must be clearly understood that education itself is a two-edged sword. A magician can use his bag of tricks to entertain a voluntary audience who paid a price for admission...or he might use his power to hoodwink and defraud unsuspecting folk out of their money.

There is a naturalistic school of thought that prevails today in educational circles. This approach to empowering the ignorant has to do with devaluing, denying and dismantling any and all belief in the supernatural and any absolute truths such as transcendent moral laws that are connected with the supernatural. If this approach to educating people doesn’t make you edgy, it should.

Naturalism is the assumption that nothing exists beyond the boundaries of the natural universe; everything is ultimately explainable in humanistic, scientific terms, and no reference to realities such as God or the spiritual realm is necessary or desirable for true knowledge of what is.

Why this should make you nervous is that, apart from a transcendent, eternal Creator, Lawgiver and Judge, there is and cannot be any adequate, ultimate standard for what is good and what is true. And power in the hands of people not guided by such standards is a highly volatile power, one that can ruin and destroy just as easily as it can give pleasure and freedom. Many civilizations have attempted to sustain themselves apart from an ultimate transcendent standard (the God of the Bible)...all of them have crumbled into dust.

Education that claims to be values-neutral, non-judgmental, making no reference to good and evil as absolutes--such “empowerment” is similar to giving a child a stick of TNT in one hand and a lighted match in the other. And this would be the most hopeful metaphor, hopeful that the child would throw the match away or let it burn out before the flame found the fuse.

Right and wrong, good and evil, godly and ungodly, true and false--these concepts are absolutely crucial for the constructive, beneficial application of knowledge. Even with those concepts firmly established, the wayward hearts of fallen people will all too rarely apply their knowledge to such virtuous uses. Without them, the emergence of virtue from such hearts becomes no more than a biochemical crap-shoot!

Leave it up to the learner himself to choose his own right and wrong? Without any reference to what a Creator might be telling him? Hmm. This sounds very familiar to me, and would to anybody who’s read the opening chapters of a book called Genesis. This approach to values choosing might sound very democratic in theory, but history (all-too-recent history, in fact) tells us that naturalistic educators are rarely free of their own preconceived preferences and agendas that are so easily intimated into the hungry minds of their pupils. Sexual values and mores is only the most obvious arena of revolutionary values that leaps to my mind.

Yes, people require power to become victors rather than victims. And knowledge is indeed power. But the same power that can light homes, streets and sports stadiums...can also be used to vaporize all of them in a big mushroom cloud.

Think of knowledge, not as power itself, but as a powerful tool. Wisdom, on the other hand, is the ability and the willingness to use that tool to achieve an ultimate goal that is good, true and beautiful. It is in the revelation of our all-wise Creator that we find the absolute standards for those three criteria.

As we receive that revelation in the pages of His Book, as we apply those standards to what and how we transmit to our students, we can prayerfully equip the ignorant (including ourselves) to avoid becoming the victims of those who wrongfully wield the tool of knowledge, as the serpent did in the Garden of Eden.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Nothing to Worry About

In the arms of my mother I learned I was safe
From the terrors and sounds of the night,
For our bedtime routine silenced all the alarms
Of the dark that so filled me with fright...
Now, the story was read, and my prayers were said,
And all lights but my night-light put out;
I can yet hear her clear whisper next to my ear:
“Love, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Since then, many a teacher and mentor of mine
Has unsettled that confident calm,
For the criminals’ wake and the ripples of war
Flood their lessons and moisten my palm.
O the world, on its face, seemed to me a safe place
‘Til my intellect started to sprout...
But those feral forays seemed, as yet, far away--
There was nothing to worry about.

Well, the warnings keep coming and cannot be stilled
Of the plagues and the hazards awaiting
All the careless and brash who don’t bother to wash,
And the damsels and dudes who are dating.
Scabies, cancer and flu are out gunning for you,
Not to mention heart flutters and gout!
But I’ve lived my life clean (at least, what can be seen),
So, there’s nothing to worry about.

Yes, I’ve made it this far now with nary a scar
And my family fixed and well-fed;
What we’ve saved in the bank armors us like a tank,
Fortified for whatever’s ahead.
Candidates just like me are in office, you see,
So with them, I have plenty of clout...
Long this nation has stood now, so why not for good?
We’ve got nothing to worry about.

Now my mother has gone to a home far beyond
And mortality looms in my eyes...
All her words, just like gold in my mem’ry, unfold
To remind me of life’s greatest prize:
“If I die ere I wake, may my soul the Lord take”
Was the plea meant to shield me from doubt;
But if I had no claim on that kind Savior’s name,
I’d have plenty to worry about!

Many times she would read of our desperate need
For forgiveness and favor with God;
Of His wrath, and the love that sent Christ from above
To be born and up Calvary plod...
There the God-man would die, and for rebels like I,
Earn the favor we can’t die without;
Jesus, You are life’s goal! Take my heart and my soul;
Give me nothing to worry about.


MNA 11.6.14

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Round One

Barry Butterton had always had a weight problem. By the time he entered junior high school, that problem became everybody’s problem.

Chad Pumfrey was the first person to experience this strange phenomenon. He decided at the opening of sixth grade that Barry Butterton would be his own personal target for scorn and ridicule. Chad had transferred in from a neighboring district, so when he learned Barry’s last name, he gleefully began referring to him as “Ton of Butter” along with other less-than-imaginative names. He also poked and pinched and pushed him around whenever he got the chance.

Barry Butterton treated Chad to exactly the kind of reactions Chad anticipated. He was reduced to tears, he shouted back at Chad, he whined and complained to his teachers, he turned and ran away from Chad’s mal-treatments, accompanied by the giggles and guffaws of their classmates.

Halfway through October, something strange began to happen. To everybody’s amazement, Chad’s attempts at humor at Barry’s expense no longer produced any reaction. Barry would simply ignore everything Chad said or did to him. Once in a while, however, after Chad had given up his attack and turned away, Barry would follow him with his eyes and a sinister kind of smile would spread across his overweight face.

Halloween fell on a Friday that year, and as the sixth graders were dismissed to board the buses that day, Chad couldn’t resist a parting shot as Barry walked past him to enter bus number thirteen: “Hey, watch out, everybody! Here comes the Great Pumpkin!” There was a gale of laughter from Chad’s buddies, but Barry’s only reaction was to turn around, look Chad in the eyes with a wicked grin and say in an intense whisper, “Have a great time trick-or-treating tonight, Chad Pumfrey!” Something in the way he said this made the laughter evaporate like a puff of smoke.

Four hours later, Chad and his costumed cronies were crossing the municipal park, making their way to Wood Street, which was well-known as the best trick-or-treating section of town. Their bags were already getting fairly heavy with sugar-laden treasures, but greediness for sweets is a symptom shared by most sixth graders, and this merry band was eager to top off their yearly take with a thorough fleecing of Wood Street’s wealthy warrens.

But suddenly, in the middle of the park, Chad Pumfrey found himself alone. “Buck? Brad? Ollie? Michael? Where...where are you guys? Are you h-h-hiding or something?” There was an eerie, dead silence all around him. Somehow, the lights of the surrounding town had dimmed and the ancient, widely spaced trees of the park stood like foreboding sentinels, each of them casting its own sickly green aura.

Chad felt a rising panic that started in the soles of his Red Ball Jets and surged up into the black pirate bandana swathing his forehead. He continued calling out to his friends, but his words fell dead as they left his throat. He could sense an oppressive Presence in the park--a disembodied, bestial form that was stalking him, toying with him, approaching him from all directions. He wanted to run, but had lost his bearings; he didn’t know which way to turn. He felt paralyzed...rooted to the turf where he stood.

Chad could hear the panting of his own breath, the frantic beating of his laboring heart. But then, faintly at first, but growing slowly louder, he heard the beast approaching. He cast about this way and that, seeking a way of escape, but the rumble of movement was everywhere in all directions, coming toward him through the openings in the garrison of tree-watchers.

Then, staring, dumbfounded, he dimly made out what it was that was encroaching his hapless position. It was a wall of some kind--solid, but uneven and undulating as it moved. A living, pulsating, bulging tide of inward expanding tissue. It was the color of flesh...it was sallow and hairy...it was...

Chad’s eyes bulged in their sockets. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He had to be dreaming. His last piece of candy must’ve been laced with LSD or something worse! The wall of quivering fat was now a ring surrounding him only twenty feet away.

Chad heard the sound of muffled laughter--a voice that was vaguely familiar, though he'd never heard Barry laughing before. The wall was shaking with gelatinous spasms, each of which inched the wall inward. Chad’s panic and fear gave way to something a million times worse...a feeling of impending doom.

He knew that, if he couldn’t escape this nightmare, he was destined to become one dead pirate.

The laughter crescendoed and the adipose wall jiggled ever closer and closer, shrinking his circle of life inch by flabby inch. Chad Pumfrey burst into a fit of rage and leapt forward, trying desperately to attack the wall of fat.

As his fists pummeled it, he could hear echoes of his own taunting voice: “Hey, Ton-of-Butter! Great job in gym class today. You run like a herd of hippos, Fat Boy! Yo! Watch out everybody, there’s a whale in the pool!” On and on the taunting ran, a reverberating record of every unkind word he’d ever hurled at Barry Butterton.

Ploosh! Ploosh! His fists hammered in futility at the fleshy, closing cage. Chad was burning up with sweat, terror, anger: “Butterton, you freak! If you’re behind this, you’ll be sorry! I’ll bust your fat butt, you big jerk!” Ploosh! Ploosh! The wall was now only fifteen feet across. Chad could feel it pushing him backward.

He shot a glance over his shoulder to the rear, raw adrenalin gauging the shrinking circumference of his future. Like a cornered rat, he grabbed handfuls of flab, attempting to scale the fortress of fat. But the greasy slickness of the barricade defeated him and he slid back down into his hole. The enclosure was now ten feet wide.

“Butterton! You let me out of here, you creep! You can’t do this to me!” Ploosh! Ploosh! Ploosh! Eight feet wide. “Barry, c’mon! Enough’s enough, man! I’m warning you, you’re gonna get it when me and my friends...C’mon, Barry, stop this now!!” Ploosh, Ploosh, Ploosh! Five feet.

The laughter intensified and quickened, even as Chad’s breathing became faster and shallower and sweat soaked through his BVD’s and his flashy pirate regalia. “Barry! Barry, please!!” Three feet.

Chad looked up at the tiny patch of night sky remaining above him, vainly hoping for some miraculous way of escape. Several stars shone down with cold indifference to his plight as the inward-swelling blubber encased him in its soft, suffocating embrace.

Buck, Brad, Ollie and Michael found their unconscious friend at the foot of an ageless oak tree near the center of the municipal park. They hadn’t even noticed his absence during their foray of the brightly decorated houses on Wood Street. But after Chad returned to school from his stay at the trauma center, all his friends noticed his marked avoidance of their largest classmate.

From that October on, anyone who dared to ridicule the Round One, lived to regret it.



MNA  October 30, 2014

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Not in Vain

The labor of his lifetime
seemed to vanish like steam,
his preaching and his healing
like an ill-recalled dream
bled away, a guileless victim
of a poorly planned scheme
as his pierced form began to wane...

Two hands that never grappled
or contested for wealth,
that only sought to gather
weary souls to himself,
stretched out to feel the stabbing
on that stony, bleak shelf
where vultures croaked their refrain...

Where were the hungry thousands
whom his kindness had fed,
the grievers and the lepers
who had welcomed their dead
from the realm of dark and terror
by the words that he said?
Could they not cry out to restrain?

Where were the faithful learners
who had sat a his feet
and vouchsafed their allegiance
never dreading the heat?
Had all those years been wasted--
all his hopes a cruel cheat--
as their abandonment now made plain?

A thousand hopes had budded,
but now, where was the bloom?
Those joys, a lifeless body,
were encased in a tomb...
The feast so many craved
had been swallowed by gloom,
not a crumb or a drop to remain...

But, Resurrection Morning,
every hope was re-born!
And from our age of mourning
shrouding curtains were torn!
Yes, Resurrection Morning
freedom for the forlorn
blew a horn all warning,
treating sadness with scorn,
and timeless faith reforming--
yes, Resurrection Morn
means his work, and ours, is not in vain!



MNA 10.26.2014

Friday, October 17, 2014

Made New

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, the new has come" (Corinthians 5:17).

I need to be reminded constantly of the truth referred to in the above verse of Scripture. Becoming a Christian (one who is “in Christ”) is not a simple matter of making a mere human choice such as I might do on New Year’s Day when I “turn over a new leaf.” Rather, the Bible tells me that becoming a child of God requires a profound, invisible, supernatural transformation that requires a direct, divine miracle to make it happen.

Paul, the great Apostle, describes conversion as a resurrection--a creation of life in a soul that once harbored only death. “You once were dead in your trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1), he tells me. But now, because God had mercy on me, through Christ I have been made alive (Eph. 2:4-5). Alive to my desperate need for grace, alive to the power and forgiveness of the risen Christ, alive to the truth that He will save all who trust and embrace and follow Him.

Just think of a closed tomb containing a deep, dark nothingness...cold...lifeless... hopeless of any light or warmth penetrating its thick stony walls. This was my heart when it came to the God who made me. I wanted nothing to do with Him or His law or His love or His truth. Oh, I might have made a pretense of religion for the sake of appearances or to placate my own conscience. But God’s supreme act of love--sending His only Son to die in the place of lost sinners--this love found my heart stony and unresponsive as a tomb.

But, in the words of a great old hymn: “Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke; the dungeon flamed with light! My chains fell off, my heart was free; I rose, went forth, and followed Thee!” When God spoke into the lifeless void, “Let there be light,” behold, there WAS light. He spoke and an entire universe came into being at His command. Similarly, when this same God gave the word over my dark, dead soul, life was generated that was absent before.

And newness was the result: new hope, that a lost sinner like I could reach out and trust in Jesus Christ the God-man to forgive and free me from my guilt and shame. New understanding, that all God had told me in His word was true and that truth would set me free from my own pride and worldly wisdom. New desires, for the beauty, truth and goodness of the triune God who chose and called and re-created me; for deeper and deeper fellowship with Him and with His people. New freedom to follow those new desires and say “no” to those sinful choices that had infested my old nature.

Sometimes Jesus performed His miracles in a big way, such as the feeding of the five thousand with a small boy’s lunch. Other times He healed people privately, as when He told the centurion that he should return home because His servant would live. Likewise, there are many accounts of conversions to Christ that are grand and stupendous, written about in books and broadcast in the mass media to make a worldwide impact. But there are also quiet conversions that no one ever hears about, as when a little child slowly begins to understand the Gospel and one day begins to believe it for herself.

But don’t be fooled. It is a miracle of God that creates His new life in the hearts of ALL His people. And the result is always newness. New hope, new understanding, new desires, new freedom--a new path of living that leads my soul to heavenly joys now...and a heavenly new world to come!



Sunday, October 12, 2014

Deserted

(Suggested by Psalm 88)

Within this darkened hold I languish long,
As waves without beat hard upon the hull,
And shrieking gales rehearse what nature’s flung
To stifle chanties I’d perhaps have sung
If trapped I’d never been inside this shell...

But thousand miles’ aloneness lies between
All safety and this dungeon on the waves.
I cannot see...indeed, I’ve never seen
The One who promised streams and pastures green--
The Rescuer who sees and cares and saves.

What doubts those waves now dash upon my mind!
What fears accompany the blasting mist,
Pelting my heart with taunts that faith is blind--
And Providence capricious and unkind!
Suspicion whispers God does not exist!

The Dark, the Dark creeps into every pore;
It makes all luminosity a dream...
And I lie quaking--shaken to the core--
Close to denying all I knew before,
Extinguishing faith’s faintest, faltering gleam.

The Cry, the Cry of “why?” is in my throat,
For of a Fount of Life I’m now bereft...
Gone now the joys of which I used to gloat;
All pleasant recollections now remote,
Now but a man-shaped chasm all that’s left...

But suddenly that shape assumes a form
That memory drags up from dungeons deep:
A bitterer bereavement...sterner storm...
Far deadlier desertion...heaviest harm
That ever caused a mortal will to weep.

That man-shape horror dared a poisoned cup
Full-brimming with a billion acts of crime,
And calls me from that chalice now to sup--
Identify with Him who drank it up
To rectify my guilt for all of time!

Because of Him, my storm will soon abate,
Imprisonment will hardly seem an hour
Until the Dark is drowned from Heaven’s gate
Whence floods the light all faithful ones await--
The Light, the King, the Christ who comes in power!


MNA  October 12, 2014



Sunday, September 21, 2014

The Fox and the Commander

“Greetings, Commander!” Frederick told the reclining man leaning against the big round boulder at the top of the hill.

“Hello, Freddy,” the man replied to the fox who had just hailed him. The reddish brown creature  flicked his bushy brush of a tail from side to side and curled up contentedly in the shade of a neighboring crag of stone, close enough to the knoll’s edge that he could gaze down on the scene his humanoid friend was watching with interest.

“You are still here, I see,” Frederick said lazily, glad to be out of the noonday sunshine. He had been in pursuit of an all-too-skinny quail cock who proved too fast for him. Later he would track the troublesome bird to his nest and obtain supper for himself and his family, whose tummies would be growling by then, no doubt. “Are the nomads still at it down below?” he asked.

“You know very well they are!” the man chided. “Since they set up their camp a week ago, you’ve been doing your best to pilfer whatever straying chicks you could from them, sneaking about and striking from the shadows.” He clucked his tongue good-naturedly. “If you don’t cut that out, I may decide to un-shade the sentries’ eyes and let them send an arrow in your direction!”

“All right, all right...I admit it,” the fox said with very little remorse. “But you can’t blame me for trying to snag an easy meal once in a while, can you? These tribes of yours might be your special favorites...though, for the life of me, I can’t imagine why...but you might spare an effortless morsel now and then for those of us who have to chase our dinner.”

“Oh, you poor, poor fox-ling! You have it so hard, don’t you, poor Freddy?”

“And sarcasm hardly befits you, Commander, sir!” the fox huffed half-heartedly. He squinted toward the rows of tents down on the plain below them, where women and children were awaiting the return of their menfolk. “But you are right...I watched the army set out earlier with all their strange stuff. To tell you the truth, sir, they didn’t really look very dangerous. Rumors have been circulating that they’ve defeated nation after nation, king after king, tribe after tribe. But you certainly couldn’t prove it by looking at them.”

“Frederick, what have I always told you about judging a scroll by its cover? Oh, their army is strong, alright. But it is a strength that doesn’t always show on the surface. You’ve seen rattlesnakes before. They don’t look very frightening on the outside, do they? But if one of them bites you, you’d be one sorry little fox-ling!”

“So, are you telling me that this nomad army is going to bite and poison their enemies to death, O mighty warrior?” Frederick snickered.

“Not exactly. But this hidden strength I’m talking about will win them the victory all the same. Did you see the fellow who’s giving them their marching orders?”

“Uh...you mean the one with the short beard and the fancy helmet? Always fingering his sword?”

“Right. Well, right after they set up their camp, I arranged a meeting with him and gave him the battle plan that will get them into the enemy’s stronghold. I assured him that if they obey my instructions exactly, then defeating the city would be like shooting ducks in a barrel!”

“Okay...so this daily march around the walls of the town is part of the plan, is it?”

“Yes. Once around the city each day for six days, carrying the ark and blowing the trumpets.”

“Oh. That explains all the noise. And the noise explains why all the birds I’ve been chasing have been so fidgety all week long...”

“Let’s not start on that again, Freddy...”

“Sorry. Anyway, how do you figure that marching and carrying the chest and blowing the horns is going to win any battles?”

“I told you. Doing this for six days will build up this inner strength I mentioned. Usually this strength can only be built up by giving people instructions to follow that are hard for them to understand.”

“Well, okay...those orders you gave them certainly qualify as hard to fathom! Now, after the six days, what will happen? The enemies will just give up and open the gates and surrender?”

“No, the city-dwellers will probably just laugh at them and throw things...”

“So, when do the nomads use all this inner strength they’re building up?”

“On the seventh day.”

“Ooohhh...what happens then? More marching, I suppose?”

“Yes, quite a bit more. On the seventh day they will circle the city seven times. Then all the people in the army will give a mighty shout!”

“...And?”

“That’s it. Then, the army gets to go on in and capture the city and destroy it.”

“Uh...did I miss something?”

“What do you mean, Freddy?”

“What do you mean, ‘what do you mean?’? The wall, man! There’s a big, thick, tall, impenetrable wall around the city!”

“No, no, no, my little friend. The wall won’t be there any more. The power I told you about will just obliterate it.”

“What? No battering rams?”

“No.”

“No black powder?”

“Uh-uh.”

“No earthquakes or tornadoes?”

“Nope. Just their faith, Frederick. Faith will give them the victory.”

“I...I...can’t believe it!”

“Believe me, Freddy, they do. They believe it. That’s why they are marching...why they’re following all my instructions, word for word.

“And when anyone believes me enough to obey me completely, there is nothing their faith cannot accomplish.

“Walls turn into piles of ash...

“Waters divide in two and dry up...

“Giants are killed with a stone and a sling...

“Tens of thousands are slain by a handful of men...

“And,” the man said with a knowing glint in his eye, “little foxes are allowed to catch up with quick quails!”

“Okay, I can take a hint,” Frederick said, springing up. He trotted down the hill with one backward glance. “But I’ll be back tomorrow...day seven, right? I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”


(1,057 words)

Saturday, September 20, 2014

A Man Upstairs

There is a man upstairs...
a man who labored with sweat and strain--
agonized through a hell of pain
long years for his family.

There is a man, I know, up there...
one who said farewell to ease--
tasked himself like Hercules
for sisters and for brothers,
for weakened, wayward mothers
and the fathers who abused
their blessings, lost...confused.

There is a godly man upstairs.
I know his name--not yet his face...
He’s earned his rest--none more,
but he’s working still;
he’ll build until
my home is all prepared...
for once my heart had dared
to trust this workman’s skill,
I knew his work, in me, he’d fulfill.

There is a man like me up there
who could have saved himself
from slave’s humiliation, loss
of privilege and the bitter cross...
But no reward awaited him
downstairs--here where dragons roam
and drudgery finds its wretched home,
where his very kin berated him
and a felon’s treatment fated him
and a father to Hades traded him...

There is a re-born man upstairs...
one whose work could not be cursed
or ever undone or reversed,
but ever counts for me,
when all of mine, disqualified,
lies burned to ash...all swept aside.
This workman took a throne
upstairs where he, second to none,
works all things for my good,
hears my complaints and writes in blood
the notes that buy me free
and pledges me the golden key
to enter in and live with him...upstairs.





Sunday, September 14, 2014

The Work God's Doing

The Work God Is Doing

I live in a very busy world. If I assume that our country, for example, has around 5% unemployment, that means that 95 percent of all the folks around me are gainfully employed and engaged in some kind of mental and/or physical labor for a sizable portion of their lives. This, combined with the other activity we engage in like housework, yard work, chauffeuring people to and fro, working out at the gym, sports and music practices, etc., I’d have to say that busy-ness is a definite constant in most of our lives.

But are most of us really enjoying this frenetic factor of over-occupation that we face every day of our week? Do we truly enter into these activities, this busy-ness, with a feeling of purpose and pleasure and joyful accomplishment? Am I ultimately satisfied with my vocation, my calling in life? Or do I see my jobs and duties as a dreaded drudgery?

Today I am considering the work performed by the absolutely BUSIEST Being in all the universe: God.

Think that building your deck or planning your last picnic was hard? God planned and designed and built an entire cosmos (earth, heaven, galaxies, the water cycle, subatomic particles, electro-magnetism, elephants, walruses and weasels all included) in a period of six days (see Genesis 1). Of course, He rested on day 7, but purely as an example for workaholic human beings who need to slow down a bit each week for worship and contemplation.

The Bible suggests that all three Persons of the Trinity, or Godhead, were involved in the creation of all that is. Paul’s New Testament letter to the Colossians tells us: “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible...all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:15-16). The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all involved in the work.

So, after the seventh day, did the Trinity merely stop working and take a permanent siesta, leaving the newly created universe to operate and run down like a cumbersome clock? Uh...no. Paul goes on to write about Christ that: “he is before all things, and in him all things hold  together” (verse 17). Think of it like the little Dutch boy with his finger stuck in the hole in the dike. If he were to remove his finger from that hole, the sea would cause the entire dike to collapse and the town would be destroyed. God the Son--the Lord Jesus Christ--is the very person we can thank for not only creating all that is, but for sustaining all that is (including our very selves) by the force of his powerful will and word.

This work of sustaining the very fabric of the cosmos is a work that is never over and God is engaged in it at all times. If by some whim he were to take a nap or a vacation, there would be no universe left when he got back on the job! God is the one who thought up the laws of motion and gravity and magnetism that keep planets and stars and molecules from flying apart...He got everything together and set them on their courses. He determines that they will continue to stay together and for how long. And, when it pleases Him, He will say the word and just as easily those things will pass away. “They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded” (Psalm 102:26).

So, knowing that God’s work is so awesome and powerful, knowing that nothing can ever thwart Him (Job 42:2), what kind of relationship should I desire to have with this very busy supreme Being who controls and sustains all things? Hopefully, I ought to seek a relationship of love, trust and obedience. But, if He is so great, and I’m so tiny and insignificant, how can my hope be realized? Many religions in the world teach that the best I can hope for is to cower in fear of my creator and just do my best to try and please him for the outside chance that he might at last accept me into his presence after I exit this life.

The testimony of the Bible, though, is so much better news than that! The gospel, the “good news” of Christianity, is that God Himself took the initiative to reach out to ungrateful creatures like me who actually did our best to ignore, reject and, in fact, despise our good and wise Creator. God the Son, the second Person of the Godhead Himself, took on a human nature just like mine, lived a life on this very planet during which He perfectly obeyed His Father’s moral demands, offered his life up as a substitution for sinners on Calvary’s cross, suffered the wrath of God my own guilt and rebellion had earned, died on that cross and was buried, rose triumphantly from the tomb in a glorified physical body, and returned to God the Father’s right hand in heaven. What a glorious work of love that was!

And did Jesus Christ end His work after He ascended to heaven? By no means! There is an activity of God called Providence that gets very little press in our day. Paul describes it in the book of Romans: “And God causes all things to work for the good of those who love Him, those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). It’s amazing, but true...those who love God and have found forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ--trusting in Him and His work alone to save them--receive this stunning promise that ALL things are being controlled by our Lord and Savior so as to lead ultimately to our good, our blessing. And it is His purpose--His good pleasure--to do this!

Philippians 1:6 tells me that God, “who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” When God begins to save a soul by His grace, He never leaves the job half done (as I so often do), or fails to complete it. He always sees it through. God is the consummate Workman. And even now, as I am learning to walk in His holy ways more and more each day of my Christian life, “it is God who is at work in [me] to will and to do according to His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

The physical and spiritual work God is engaged in moment by moment, day by day, year by year, century by century, is awesome to contemplate and ought to inspire our hearts to greater and greater heights of praise, devotion, affection and obedience. He is never inactive, yet He is ever purposeful and joyful in His work. And the most amazing thing of all is that our Lord invites you and me, sinners He chooses to redeem and glorify, to enter into His work along with Him! Like a little child learning to drive a tractor while sitting on his daddy’s lap, I am called to “work out [my] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12), and to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).

Now that’s a kind of busy-ness that a forgiven rebel like me can find ultimate pleasure in...how about you?

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Choosing...to Choose

Choosing...to Choose

Jeffries found himself in the midst of a maddening struggle--with himself. He couldn’t decide whether or not to marry Lisa, the love of his life. In his own words, Lisa was “too perfect...she’s too smart, too talented, too sophisticated, too everything but what I want.” What did Jeff want? A woman who could “go anywhere, and do anything, and love it!”

Convinced that Lisa would be unhappy sharing his life of world travel and rough-and-tumble adventure, and that he would be equally miserable sharing her tame, New York society lifestyle, Jeff risked losing Lisa by refusing to choose. Instead, he suggested to his beloved that they could “just keep things status quo.” In other words, maintain their dating relationship indefinitely.

In a sense, I believe this is what countless people are doing in terms of their spiritual lives and their eternal destiny. Like those two protagonists in the Hitchcock film Rear Window, a vast legion of people are riding the fence between two worlds, keeping their options open, maintaining the status quo...refusing to choose.

The Bible tells of an ultimate showdown between the power of Jehovah and the power of the false god Baal, which took place on Mount Carmel centuries before Christ was born. At that time Elijah, the true God’s spokesman, challenged the indecision and apathy of the crowds that had gathered for this battle of the gods: “How long will you waver between two opinions?” he asked them. “If Baal is God, then serve him; if Jehovah is God, then serve Him!” But the Scriptures report that “the people answered him not a word.”

Because of the spiritual backsliding of their nation, perhaps because of peer pressure or the awareness that the nation’s royalty was supportive of Baal-worship, the Israelites were unwilling to choose sides in this face-off. It actually took a supernatural sign in the form of fire falling from heaven and consuming a bull, a stone altar, and a trench full of water, to convince these wayward worshipers that Baal was a fraud (1 Kings 18:16-40). This account makes it plain to me that even the most privileged, well-informed, spiritually blessed people can regress in their resolutions to follow after the one true God of heaven and earth.

It occurs to me that the willingness to choose often takes extraordinary courage. And that courage is exactly what is in short supply in our own day. I have heard and read of many a young woman who is at wit’s end bemoaning the lack of willingness to commit in the young men they know. Typically, young women wish to find mates who will happily and eagerly choose them and commit to them for a lifetime. But it seems that the number of guys who are willing to leave their other options behind and forge ahead with a permanent choice is decreasing year by year. Even Christian fellows too often seem to be spinning their wheels, unable or unwilling to choose.

No, we certainly ought not jump into important life choices without due consideration of the pros and cons. But it seems to me that a real man or a real woman is one who has come to know him/herself well enough to make a firm, final decision when the occasion calls for one. And, after making that choice, follow through with it without looking back.

Moses was such a man. A man of decision and a man of faith.

The book of Hebrews in the New Testament, chapter 11 and verses 24-26, describes Moses as one who chose by faith to follow an extraordinary path, led by an extraordinary God, to do extraordinary things. Moses left status, fortune, pleasures and popularity behind in order to identify himself with a nation of slaves who had nothing but the promises of an unseen God to cling to. Why? Because by faith he looked ahead to the final reward.

What reward do we as believers in Christ look forward to? An eternity of joyful fellowship with our Creator/Redeemer, the Lover of our souls, who paid the price to deliver us from the unending wrath and punishment our sins deserved.

And what reward awaits those who refuse to choose Christ? Those who keep their options open so that they can “enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:25)? The ones who make the easy choice of falling in with the status-seekers, wealth-wanters, pleasure-panderers of this world? They have, by that wretched choice, or by choosing not to choose, condemned themselves to an eternity of misery and torment at the hands of a God of infinite justice.

By our consciences, by our instincts, and by the revelation of God Himself, we all know that our choices matter. We know that we are meant and called to choose following Christ over following the course of the godless world around us. By faith, the gift of our Lord and Maker, may we have the courage to make that choice.

Choose Christ. Follow Him today. Leave the world behind. Never look back, except to invite others. He alone is worthy of our worship...our trust...our choice.

Friday, August 1, 2014

2006 poem I'd long forgotten about...

Proper Hatreds, Lesser Loves

Lesser loves and proper hatreds
hail us from the sacred page,
radiating, from the Holy,
on His scroll with secret whisper,
rays of passion, beams of rage;

Children of the adversary
hate alike the flaming truth,
and the fiery fists that clutched it
with a glory they can’t fathom,
since the years of Satan's youth.

Choking on the smoke of molten
metal -- chains of after-death,
hearts that waste in rebel wonder
in vile joy still choose to challenge
realms above, from realms beneath.

Loving whom he should have hated,
trading paradise for pain,
men their freedom blindly bartered;
Eve-deceived and Adam-slaughtered,
Abel paid the price for Cain. . .

Mankind’s hatred missed the target,
shedding blood six oceans deep;
shame-filled lives are not worth living!
Who can counteract such carnage--
surely no slain race of sheep?

Noah left respect for laughter. . .
Abraham’s faith risked a son. . .
Jacob fought and dreamt of angels. . .
Joseph traded dreams for slavery. . .
Moses, royal rights for none. . .

Then, a suffering Rabbi taught us
how to love and whom to hate:
“Come back to the patient Father!
Sin and self forsake forever!
Kiss the Son, for time is late!"

Turn and in His pow’r resist
the undertow from "things above";
heaven waits and hell is burning.
In the light of Scripture, learn
each proper hatred, lesser love.


MNA 2006


Sunday, July 13, 2014

...a poem contemplating what is over my head

Above

O edgeless sky
so blue in day, so black at night,
your wonders fly above my head...
I want to cry
in savage tongues, in learnéd tongues,
beholding you with swelling heart,
watching your vast containment,
crying out in joy
and dread.

O weightless clouds
in looming march, in mystic march,
you meet and scatter at your whim...
Your flight confounds
my wayward mind, my tiny mind,
beholding you with drifting cares,
wanting your grace and freedom,
tempted to compose
a hymn.

O crystal stars
all beacon flames, all known by names,
beyond all sanity you spin...
How tame you are!
for with your power, I’d be a horror;
but there you burn, there you turn,
brilliant, obedient watchers
singing agelong songs
for Him.

Mark N. Aikins
July 10, 2014

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Of Rabbits and Dreams

Leonard Starski pedaled his old Schwin bike down the path that bordered his farm, a wide grin on his childlike face. George had promised him a big surprise for his birthday, and the day had finally arrived, and George had never, ever, broken a promise.

He loved riding his Schwin around their property--really loved it!--loved it almost as much as petting the rabbits. And, of course, the best part of the ride was when he stopped at the front gate and got to admire the sign one more time. Lenny was as “dumb as a fence post,” as George was fond of telling him, and couldn’t read or write. But George had learnt him by heart what was on that there sign:

HAPPY HUTCH PET FARM...GEORGE HUTCHINS & LENNY STARSKI, PROPRIETORS

Lenny got off the bike and gaped at the fancy black lettering with pleasure. He read it slowly, out loud, holding his outstretched pointer finger close to his eye and moving it back and forth as he pronounced each word. He had to start the last word three times before he got it right. Big words like that one were hard to learn by heart, but George told him it was better than putting OWNERS on the sign because fancy words made them more respectable. Respectable meant important, and their farm had to be important so that the government men would come and buy the special rabbits in the metal barn where Lenny wasn’t allowed to go in.

Lenny frowned for a minute. He didn’t like the government men much, and he resented the metal barn he wasn’t allowed to enter. No matter how many times--maybe a thousand times--he asked George why, George wouldn’t say. That was the one subject that put George in a bad mood. Once Lenny had asked, “George, when are you gonna tell me why them metal barn rabbits is so special?” George got in a bad mood and said, “Someday when pigs fly to the moon, you big ox! Now, quit asking me about them!”

Lenny didn’t mind when George called him “big ox” or “meathead” or “dumb as a fence post,” ‘cause later George would feel bad and would give Lenny extra fun chores to do around the farm to make up for calling him names. Lenny was a hard worker--always had been--even on all the farms he and George worked on during Depression. He couldn’t remember much of that...just the misty memories of walking long roads, working long days, stoking soft little creatures...and, of course, George’s sweet, shining promises that one day they’d have a place of their own.

It was only after the operation that Lenny’s memory became clearer. He’d woken up in a hospital filled with strange people, funny smells, and scary gadgets that buzzed and chirped and coughed and wheezed. He thought he was having a bad dream until George came in with a pretty lady in a yellow sweater. When he saw them, he stopped shaking and yelling and trying to break the straps that were holding him onto the hospital bed.

George acted kind of funny that first day Lenny woke up from the operation. He looked different, too, all dressed up like for church or a special party. But when he saw Lenny was calming down and smiling at him, George smiled back and pretty soon they were talking back and forth like old times.

The lady in the yellow sweater said her name was Agnes and that she wanted to ask Lenny some questions. He was nervous at first, ‘cause maybe he wouldn’t know the answers like in school when other kids would laugh at how dumb he was. But the lady, Agnes, she was so pretty that he didn’t mind talking to her. She sat right up close and talked to him soft and her voice was like a gentle song that Lenny remembered from when he was sleeping and dreaming. Lenny told Agnes this and she said, “How sweet!” Lenny didn’t tell her that she smelled as pretty as a big flower shop, though; he was too bashful to tell Agnes that.

The questions she asked him weren’t hard--just ones he could answer yes or no, like did Lenny remember this or that name, or this or that farm they’d worked on, or what happened that caused him to need an operation. Lenny felt bad that he could remember only a few things from before the operation, but Agnes said it was normal that he forgot things from before.

Lenny liked Agnes a whole lot. She was the only person who’d ever called him “normal.” Lenny had nice dreams about her but that was the only time he’d gotten to see her. When he asked George later about seeing her again, he told him she’d gone away somewhere, he didn’t know where, and she was awful busy helping other people having other operations.

That first day after the operation was a new beginning for Lenny and George. George said they’d been paid a lot of money by the government because Lenny’s operation was special--it was “sparrow-mental.” Lenny didn’t know what that meant, but because he woke up and was okay, the government would be able to help lots of other people who’d been hurt and maybe would die without the operation. Lenny asked George, “Will Agnes be with them other people when they woke up, like she was with me?” George said he didn’t know. But Lenny kept imagining Agnes being there with the others and wished he could be there with her too someday.

Those days since waking up in the hospital were one exciting day after another.  First they cashed the big check the government gave them and bought Lenny a bunch of new clothes. Then they stayed in a fancy hotel for days and days and ate like kings on a holiday. While they were at the hotel George got some special papers that they both signed to change their last names to Starski and Hutchins. George said that was so they could move to a new area that only the g-men would know about and bad people from before that operation couldn’t find them and make no trouble. Then they rode on a train and got to eat in a club car and sleep in a Pullman car and the engineer even let Lenny blow the super-loud train whistle when they came to their new town.

Back on his Schwin and wearing his wide grin once again, he let out a piercing “woo-woooo!” as the wind whipped by him on his way up the drive to the farmhouse. It was Sunday and soon George and Mrs. Baker would be coming home from church. He would sit in the parlor with the Sunday paper and she would go to the kitchen and fix their lunch. She’d keep on her good dress with the purple flowers, but put on an extra big bib apron to keep it from getting messed on.  George would be quiet all day and take a nap in his ratty old armchair. Then after sundown they’d listen to Lone Ranger and Fibber and Molly in the rec room.

Lenny didn’t like church much and almost never went. He enjoyed the musical part but George wouldn’t let him sing along ‘cause he said Lenny had a tin ear. Anyway, most of the talking and reading parts were too hard to understand, and lots of the folks there would look at Lenny in a funny way, like they were afraid he might blow up or something.

“George, you go to church every Sunday,” Lenny said once. “You sure must like it, huh?”

George took a deep breath and smiled a sad kind of smile. “I go ‘cause I need it, Lenny. Not ‘cause I enjoy it.” Lenny cocked his head and blinked at him.

“Look at it this way,” George went on. “You had to learn a bunch of things about farms and rabbits and all, so you’d be ready when your dream came true, right?”

Lenny nodded. “Yeah. I learned real good about them rabbits.”

“Well, said George, “there are things people like me need to know--things to learn about another place we dream about. We learn those things in church so we’re ready to go there.”

“What things, George? What dream place you talking about?”

George reached up and mussed Lenny’s hair. “Don’t worry about those things, Len. Believe me, you already know all you need to know.” Lenny just walked away scratching his head. How could it be he knew things those people in church didn’t? He sure wished he knew what those things were.

He hurried through the house to the rear porch where the pet hutches were attached. On the way he grabbed a couple carrots from the vegetable bin near the back door. Popping the cardboard lid off the barrel of rabbit feed, he filled the pouches of the cloth feed belt he wore around his waist, and stooped down low to enter the first hutch. Calling the rabbits by name, cuddling and caressing them, rewarding the most eager ones with a piece of carrot, scolding them gently when they refused their food, humming and crooning to them with his booming monotone--these were the moments Lenny cherished. He was in Paradise...living his dream. Methodically moving from hutch to hutch, he repeated the ritual a dozen times, finally unfastening the feed belt to hang it on the hook by the back door...

And then he heard a scream. High, shrill, piercing like a jagged blade...a rabbit scream.

“Lenny, stop! Lenny, dear, wait!” a voice chased him as he leapt from the porch in the direction of the metal barn. Mrs. Baker’s voice. She and George had returned. Lenny didn’t stop or look back. George’s blue pickup was parked by the barn next to a large black van with a long green stripe: the government men were here. They never came on Sunday.

Lenny stopped short at the metal barn’s side door, hesitating. He wasn’t allowed in here and didn’t want to break any rules on his birthday. But that scream...and he could hear voices arguing inside...and one of them was George’s. Lenny couldn’t make out what they were saying. He cracked the door open and put his ear to the crack. He smelled a sudden aroma...one that reminded him of music. His eyes widened and he almost called out her name. But the voices were clearer now and he forced himself to listen, still unwilling to enter the forbidden barn.

A voice he didn’t recognize said, “Relax, Hutchens, there’s no need for him to know...as long as we’re all willing to be reasonable.”

“Cut the crap, Billings.” George’s voice. “The point is, I would know. Our agreement was for medical specimens. Medical. We’re interested in finding cures...saving lives. Not improving baby food and beauty products.”

“They’re dumb animals, Hutchens...they don’t know what the experiments are for. You think they care why they’re being killed?”

“I care...We care--Lenny and me. This kind of research...it saved his life. When we thought he was a goner....”

“Right--when YOU pulled that trigger after he killed that woman--”

“Shut up, you bastard!”

“Hey, take it easy, Hutchens! Like I said, no need for anyone to find out about you two. That was the deal, right?”

“Right. But this order...it’s outrageous!”

“Why? The little brutes multiply fast enough, don’t they? You’ll recoup your numbers in no time.”

“But...what’ll I tell Lenny?”

Another voice, a woman’s: “You’ll have to tell him something. He’s been listening at the door.”

This was too much. Lenny opened the door wider and shuffled into the barn for the first time.

“Agnes,” he said, looking around and trying to smile, “are you my birthday surprise?” The barn was lit with bright overhead lights that buzzed like swarms of angry bees. The walls were lined with shiny wire cages, each cage with its own rabbit. There were shiny metal tables and cabinets here and there. It smelled a little like the hospital where Lenny had his operation.

“You shouldn’t be in here, Lenny,” George said, but he was staring at the floor.

“I know, George. But I heard one of them rabbits screaming and...”

“Go on, now. Go back to the house.”

“No. No, George. I been listening. I been hearing what you and the g-man been saying. And I been thinking about this here special barn...and them special rabbits. I think I know some secrets about them. I think they’re like me...sparrow-mental. Agnes is right, George. I wanna...I gotta...

“You have got to tell me the truth. I want to know...what you know, George.”

“Lenny...” George slowly raised his eyes to fasten them on his friend. The g-man turned away shaking his head and began looking at some papers on one of the shiny tables. Agnes was looking on with a sympathetic frown, her yellow sweater seeming to glow in the bright lighting.

“Lenny...” George began again, taking a step toward him, “remember when I told you that you know all you need to know about that other dream place--the place the church people dream about?”

Lenny nodded.

“Well all those church people are scared, Lenny. They’re scared they’ll never make it to that dream place because of things that they’ve done...bad, wicked, despicable things. They go to  church to get rid of those things. They go there to get washed...to get cleaned up. Otherwise God might not let them into that special place...you understand?”

“But, George...why do YOU go there? YOU ain’t done none of those bad things...right, George?”

George looked like he was about to go on talking, but Agnes walked up and took his arm, stopping him.

“Lenny, it’s really good to see you again.” Her eyes were glimmering with moisture like dew on morning grass. “It’s been three years since your operation and I’ve been checking up on you during those three years, even though you never knew about it.”

Lenny frowned and reached up to scratch his head. “But, Agnes...George said...he told me you was gone away somewheres else and--”

“George was telling you what I told him to say, Lenny. You see, you are such a special person, and the operation was so new and special, that someone had to follow up and observe you to make sure that nothing went wrong--to make sure you didn’t get sick or...”

“...or die?” Lenny squinted at her and quit scratching. He stuck both hands in his pockets and shuffled his feet.

“...or die,” she agreed. “Lenny, you had to be protected in a way that you wouldn’t know about. That was why I couldn’t visit you or let you know where I was. George had to tell you some lies so that you’d never suspect that you were being observed. If you knew you were being watched, you would have behaved differently and my observations wouldn’t have been worth as much.”

“So, now that I know you been watchin’...now...you can’t watch me no more?”

“Well, we’ll have to see about that. It’s been three years and nothing has gone wrong yet. My employers will have to determine whether or not to continue the observations, with or without my involvement. But...if they leave it up to me, I would want to be allowed to follow up your case personally, with your knowledge and permission. I would want to be your friend, Lenny.”

“That’s what...Wow! That’s what I’d want move than anything, Agnes. That’s my birthday wish...my biggest birthday wish ever!”

Then Lenny frowned and glanced around. “But...George...Agnes...I wanna know why that there rabbit was screaming. I don’t want any of them rabbits getting hurt none, George.”

“That was my fault.” Suddenly the g-man--the man George called ‘Billings’--spoke up. George and Agnes turned and looked at him nervously. “I can see I had the wrong idea about the nature of this place. Of this farm. I accidentally hurt one of the speci---er, one of the rabbits, that is. I’m sorry, uh, Mr. Starski...it won’t happen again.” He sidled up to George and whispered something to him Lenny couldn’t catch. George nodded and turned a smile back in Lenny’s direction.

“You...you gonna make sure nobody hurts none of them special rabbits no more, George?”

“Sure. Sure, Lenny. You can count on me. You don’t have to worry about them.”

“Right! And Agnes...Agnes is making sure that I’m okay from that sparrow-mental operation...”

Agnes and George nodded and glanced at each other, smiling.

“And me...” Lenny continued, his happy spirit returning, “I’ll keep on taking care of all them pet rabbits. So now we all know everything we needs to know.”

Saturday, May 17, 2014

God's Will Made Simple

Knowing God’s Will

The problem with approaching theological issues as a fallen human being is really pretty simple: as a fallen human being, my default mental setting is always, "it is all about ME."

Take God’s will as an example.

Whenever I start thinking about finding God’s will, I automatically focus on such questions as “Which person should I marry?” or “What job should I apply for?” or “Where should I go to college?”.

Those are all crucial questions in my life. Why? For many reasons, but chiefly because they all deal with my personal happiness, fulfillment and success in life. To be fair, people do ask such questions because they are concerned about knowing God’s “perfect plan” for their lives. But there is a deeper issue here.

Desiring to know God’s will for a specific person (myself included) is a time-honored, traditional desire among Bible-believing Christians. But...it is a desire that has no Biblical basis. 

You read that right: wanting to know God’s individual will for your individual life is not a Biblical idea, and it never has been.

The “traditional” and faulty view I’m talking about is that which assumes that God has a perfect plan for every person--a plan that is possible to discover for oneself by spiritual and/or experimental means such as reading “signs,” claiming Bible promises, seeking godly advice and analyzing one’s own personal desires. This perfect plan is also one that it’s possible to miss out on by making the wrong decisions along the way: marrying the wrong person...attending the wrong college...choosing the wrong career path, etc.

The two things in the previous paragraph that make the view a faulty one are these:

1. God’s perfect plan can be discovered for oneself, and

2. God’s perfect plan can be missed out on or thwarted by one’s own choices.

I was brought up on this traditional view; in fact, this approach was often used as an incentive for me to make the “wisest choices” possible, so as to not miss God’s best plan for my life. The problem was not the need to make wise choices, but the idea of being able to thwart God’s best plan. Eventually, it became clear to me that the picture the Bible paints is far less ME-centered and far more GOD-centered than I had imagined.

Does God indeed have a perfect plan for every person’s life? Yes. Our God is the sovereign Ruler of the universe; He has complete control over His entire creation, ruling perfectly over all of His creatures and all of their actions, all of the time. That is what it means to be God. We are all the beneficiaries of His kind, benevolent rule, and ought to be supremely thankful to be so.

Does God instruct me to know what His individual plan for my life is in advance and stick to that plan by making the correct life choices? No. That is an idea that is foreign to the teaching of the Scriptures. When God revealed his individual will to individuals written about in the Bible, He did so by audible, verbal, extraordinary methods such as visions, dreams, angelic announcements and words from heaven. Such methods were limited to times and situations where God’s word was being delivered or authenticated. They were never used to give directions for believers’ individual life choices unless those believers were advancing God’s revelation or His redemption. And whenever those situations occurred, it was God, not the individuals, who took the initiative of revealing His will. The believers never took it upon themselves to discover it.

In fact, we are warned in the Scriptures not to try and discover God’s secret plans for our future. Deuteronomy 29:29 reminds us, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” When King Saul went to the witch of Endor and attempted to receive direction by consulting the dead, he was violating God’s will and was disciplined accordingly. When Peter asked Jesus about the future plans God had for the Apostle John, Jesus, in effect, answered, “Peter, that is none of your business. You must follow Me” (John 21:22).

There are things about our future--most things--that God has planned out, but which it is none of our business to know in advance. People who assume that they can discover that secret will of the Father for their lives are playing a dangerous game. At best, they are hankering after signs and other extraordinary revelations apart from the perfect revelation of Scripture. At worst, they are delving into mysteries similar to those sought by sorcerers and soothsayers.

So, what HAS our God permitted us to know regarding his will for us?

Even more important than that question is this one: What reason does God give us for knowing His will for us? Is it to satisfy our own curiosity? To assure us of our own security, fulfillment, happiness, success?

God’s will for us is to “be filled with the knowledge of His will” (Colossians 1:9b) so that we will grow into the likeness of His Son. In other words, He gave us His word to instruct us in the ways of holiness--to teach us to obey Him in the same way Jesus did. God saves us. He gives us new hearts to believe and obey His gospel so that we are justified by the work of Christ. And once we are justified, His will is for us to be sanctified--made over in Christ’s likeness as obedient servants of the King.

And if you are not yet saved by God’s grace through Jesus Christ, it is God’s will that you repent and believe the good news. Turn from your sins and surrender your life to the Lord Jesus, your King and your God. Begin your life anew with Jesus as your Master, His word as your instruction manual, and Heaven as your ultimate destination.

That pretty much sums up all of God’s plan that He means for us to know. If we are living our lives in obedience to His word, by faith in His promises and His power, then believe me, none of our choices will ever depart from His perfect plan for us.

May He bless you all abundantly this coming week!




Thursday, May 1, 2014

A Poem in the Style of Lewis Carroll

The Bopple of Kelly and Quinge

The frontier of Denck was bosso that day
when the prisoners of Pewn were released...
for the sun was as hot as a Hockafool’s pot
after all of her floogs have been fleeced.

The Choon moon was rising, so it wasn’t surprising
that Kelly Tacktelly came forth
from his lodge at Blue Blenck and flew down to Denck
to cross sabres with Quinge of the North.

It was well-known that Quinge used to poach and impinge
on Tacktelly’s rectigulous land
and had made off, it’s true, with a pluckwuck or two,
which had cost Kelly T. half a grand!

So, with sidge sabres drawn, the bopple was on
as the other Pewn cell-mates were scattered;
how they jeered! how they jooted! They huckered and hooted
as their humbusky heroes got battered!
(Who would win? To them it hardly mattered.)

Just then like a shroud came a cunimjus cloud
that just snawffled the sun quick as thought...
so the bopplers peered ups as the rain came in cups,
maybe leaving their flay-fest half-fought.

Still they hated to scrawn with their mates looking on,
so they plunged one more lunge at each udder;
but the sabres bedewed by the rain went askewed
and the heroes got schnocked in the mudder!

Tacktelly and Quingie were dopey and dingy
when suddenly Sun shined again...
and their sabres were senck in the hard earth of Denck
so they both of them counted to ten...

“Maybe that was a sign,” growled the Quinge, with a kind
of regrievulous glower on his phizz.
“I agree,” grunted Kelly. “And although you’re still smelly,
guess it’s best to leave things as they is.”

Now, the Choon moon has set since the two bopplers met
on that plain where two sabres are stuck,
telling all: “Wars shall cease, and in Denck there’ll be peace
long as Kelly and Quinge mind the muck!



Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The Prince of Peace

Do we not yet know what will calm the waves--
What will make the wind's howling cease?
His head is on a pillow in the bow of the boat,
Or He may be approaching,
Through the whitecaps walking;
And He calls for courage as He wakes, as He walks,
Courage given by the Prince of Peace.

Do we yet ask 'why?' when the storms are fierce,
Even longing for death's release?
Our Master weathered tempests mightier than hell,
Thorns of man enduring,
Demons' dance defying;
And He shows His wounds ever open, never healed,
Wounds of mercy in the Prince of Peace.

Do we cry 'how long?' when the wars rage on,
Ever hungering for victory's feast?
Our Victor sits enthroned far above any strife,
And He left His promise
He will soon come for us
With all those who died dressed in white by His side,
Bright companions of the Prince of Peace.


4.29.14
MNA

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Flash Fiction (stories of exactly 25 words)





Love Larceny  by Mark Aikins

I only found Camille’s headstone,
having tracked the little thief to Athens
--not for my wallet...for my heart.
Another lover had found her first.





Day of Vengeance  by Mark Aikins

Hovering spectres crowded Cutter’s Glen,
gleeful over the blood-soaked ground.
Lightning, not tomahawks, had ended
the hundredth anniversary picnic of
the Indian War Victory Society.





Shore Leave Interruptus  by Mark Aikins

Communicator now slick as his palm,
“Enterprise!” he shouted, “report!!”
“Klingons disabled,” Chekov panted.
“Thirty casualties...torpedoes depleted...shields open.”
“Beam me aboard,” Kirk whispered.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

At Long Last - short fiction

Dreams are funny things, he thought. Dreams are funny, tantalizing, tragic, magical, maddening things. They’d kept him going for a long time--longer than he cared to remember. Dreams of other places, of moving out, up and away. Dreams of doing more, better, greater. Dreams of being someone other than ordinary.


He looked down at Mary’s sweet, sleeping face, wisps of dark honey hair veiling one prettily lashed eyelid. Through the curtained full-length windows of their suite he could make out the muted, unending thunder of the Falls. Finally they’d made it to one of the picture postcard places he’d been reading about all his life. Finally he’d lassoed a honeymoon.

Oh, not all by himself, he’d have to admit. And that in and of itself roped one of his dreams and dragged it down to earth. Always the fierce advocate for neighbors helping neighbors, at least when it came to the calamities others were facing, when it came to his own crises, accepting outside help had always seemed an admission of defeat. Until that crazy Christmas Eve when the unimaginable had happened.

Harry’s medal ... the whole county decked out and poised to honor the Bailey name ... Uncle Billy’s memory lapse ... the missing money ... the bank examiner ... the frantic search ... the meltdown at home ... the fear in the faces of the ones he loved ... the insurance policy ... the river...

Help was certainly there when he needed it that night. The night he ceased to exist and his whole world changed.

“‘Morning, George.” The music of Mary’s voice drifted to him on the fog of memory and stirred a warm pool at the base of George’s spine, sending misty rivulets throughout his lanky frame.

During the last six months he’d spent more time with his wife than usual, watching her work, learning her ways, her habits, her likes and dislikes--studying her closely. She’d asked him why all the fuss once or twice, eventually getting used to his hovering around her.

“‘Morning, Mary.” He joined her on the bed already in his corduroys, sport shirt and tennis shoes, reached over and gently smoothed back the stray locks of hair out of her eyes, eliciting a contented “mmm” sound. “This place has a coffee pot in the corner nook; I made you some.”

“You can make coffee?” she teased. He rubbed her shoulder and she began stretching out her limbs under the covers.

“Yes, and you missed that feat of culinary prowess by sleeping half the day away.”

“Oh come on, when do I ever get to sleep in at home?”

George chuckled. “Never. You stay right where you are and I’ll bring you a cup.”

“Nonsense. I’m wide awake now. Hand me my robe--”

When she said that, a funny recollection struck both of them simultaneously. Their eyes met and the unspoken joke about locker room clothes, broken glass wishes and hydrangea bushes rushed up to their faces in wide mirrored grins.

“I should’ve grabbed you then and there and kissed the daylights out of you.”

“Would it really have put hair on that poor man’s head?”

George laughed explosively. “Ha! Maybe so...he certainly was askin’ for it!”

Their mirth settled like dream-dust around them as his memory continued on to later developments. Giving his wife a gentle pat, he rose, crossed to the sunken closet in three long strides, returned with the terry-cloth robe and held it open for her. Mary emerged naked from the covers and wrapped her body up in one fluid movement.

George encircled her shoulders with both arms from behind. “I sure do miss him.” He said it simply and sadly. He felt her hands on his arms squeezing and her head turning to press her cheek to his chest, giving him her support.

“Somehow, I’m sure he misses you, too, Darling.”

“Never knew his grandkids...never knew what a dynamite daughter-in-law he was getting.”

There was a long, lingering pause.

“Coffee smells good,” she said.

That was it for the stroll down memory lane, at least for that day. Sam Wainwright, Mr. Gower and Harry had all conspired to cover George’s duties at the Building and Loan, and over at Bailey Park housing development, so that he and Mary could get away. And after weeks of hemming, hawing and protests, George had finally admitted that the world could get along without him for a week or so. Harry’s wife Ruth, and Marty and Doris, were all looking after the kids--that is, when Mother Bailey and Mother Hatch could be pried away from them.

Up in Heaven, Peter Bailey was enjoying long talks with his new friend Clarence, who was very happy with his shiny new wings.

Friday, March 28, 2014

Movie Review: God's Not Dead

Two movies of interest for Christian viewers are being touted and critiqued these days. Rather than attend the blockbuster about the big boat that saved the animals from all the evil humans with the help of the mythical rock monsters, I took the wife to see God's Not Dead, a well-produced evangelistic film that touches on a variety of themes close to the hearts of both churched and un-churched moviegoers.

Jeff Wheaton, the protagonist of the picture, wants to major in pre-law at a prestigious college. His parents and his highly-charged girlfriend have ambitious plans for his future. But danger looms for Jeff the T-shirt wearing Christian when he enters his Intro to Philosophy class: the professor throws down the gauntlet to the entire class when he more or less requires everyone to "officially" deny God's existence by handing in a signed piece of paper with the words "God is dead." The prof does this so that by consensus the class can forego the tiresome debate about the theism question at the outset and get on with the more important parts of philosophy (whatever they are?).

Much to the teacher's chagrin (as well as that of his hot girlfriend and his ambitious parents), Jeff decides that he will refuse to follow the crowd and deny his own personal faith in God. "I can't sign that...I'm a Christian," he whispers to the prof, to which the prof replies, "Fine. Go ahead and pray and follow your Jesus on your own time. But for the purposes of this class, either sign the statement or I will make your life miserable and fail you for one third of your grade in my class" (or words to that effect).

Jeff insists that he can't sign, so the teacher challenges him to lecture the class for twenty minutes at the end of the next three class sessions concerning why he is sure God exists. As Jeff feverishly prepares his arguments and deals with the fallout of his decision with both parents and girlfriend...

Several related dramas are taking place:

1. A young woman (later revealed as the professor's former student/significant other) is desperately dealing with her dementia-stricken mother;
2. The young woman's brother (who seems too preoccupied with his career to care about their mom) is planning to marry a well-known journalist who is planning a "hit" piece on one of the Duck Dynasty family members;
3. This journalist finds out that she is dying of cancer, and the news causes her fiancé to split up with her;
4. A young middle-eastern college woman is hiding her Christian faith from her family members, and she overhears Jeff and his girlfriend arguing about his convictions and upcoming debate;
5. Another student, this one from mainland China, expresses his own interest in the reasons Jeff would not sign the statement of denial. This student's father insists that the professor's beliefs should have ended the matter.
6. A local church pastor is trying to leave on a Florida vacation with a visiting missionary from Africa, but none of the cars they are seeking to leave in are willing to start, for some mysterious reason that seems very "providential," as several of the above people keep showing up in the pastor's study for counseling help.

These various vignettes unfold along with Jeff's dilemma in the classroom, all of them challenging the people involved to confront their weaknesses and their need to trust in Christ, or at least to look for answers outside of themselves.

Each of the characters lives out a gripping scenario in his or her own right, several of them experiencing painful rejection, two of them hearing haunting messages from the past, some of them experiencing the crucible of faith's refining fire, and one of them experiencing a deathbed conversion.

Although God Isn't Dead has been critiqued and ridiculed as predictable and simplistic, I found it rewarding on several fronts. For one thing, the general mood of the academic world was, I think, realistically portrayed as knowingly dismissive of people of faith, maintaining the assumption that God is (or might just as well be) dead. Jeff's encounter with his atheistic teacher left the strong point behind that there are strong-minded Christian thinkers out there, whose viewpoints deserve consideration in an academic setting.

I appreciated the fact that the Christian world was portrayed as one that transcends nationality and culture: Middle-easterners, Chinese, Africans, etc. were included with skill and sensitivity. I also enjoyed the unifying force provided by the culminating Newsboys concert toward the end of the film. Rather than leave the band purely in the fantasy realm of pop-Christian superstars, they were integral to helping tie up several of the story's loose ends, providing much-needed spiritual support.

Finally, the gospel was, I believe, as fairly and fully presented as I have witnessed in a religious film for some time. In addition, the cost of discipleship was belabored several times, as well as the warning that we risk our Lord denying us before His Father in heaven, if we choose to deny Him here on earth.

Here is another viewpoint about the movie:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/03/25/gods-not-dead-producer-answers-critics-who-say-film-is-too-over-the-top/