Faint grows the glass
And fainter still
This glass will come to see,
Until that day
He only knows
When I will cease to be.
Thought of that day
Serves to inspire
I tremble at the moment,
In gentleness
My Only Hope
Learned upon His summit.
I’d not suppose
Absent regret
My eyes to close in slumber,
Yet know as sure
On His return
I’ll open them in wonder.
Copyright 2016. L.L. Shelton.
(A clumsy attempt at gratitude)
Forged by Mattie Louise:
To squarely accept a challenge.
Forged by Beatrice:
To kneel before serving.
Forged by Lolita:
To celebrate,
To appreciate beauty,
To enjoy the exquisite.
By Henrilu:
To teach,
To be grateful for the good,
To appreciate both the banality and the significance of life.
By Mother:
To share,
To persevere,
To come to terms with being here.
By Ouida:
To be modest,
To maintain dignity,
To attend to personal growth.
By Betty:
To be quiet,
To be tolerant,
To be forgiving.
By Claire:
To be myself,
To accept myself,
To exist honestly, and without apology.
By Rita:
To be charitable,
To be cooperative,
To be observant, without obvious opinion.
By Turner:
To make note of useful information,
To keep the intimation in a safe place.
By Mrs. David:
To enjoy one-on-one conversation.
By Mrs. Auderson:
To love story.
By Mrs. Meyers:
To be thankful for governance.
By Mrs. Nuckols:
To find pleasure in reading to others.
By Mrs. Donovan:
To appreciate myth and metaphor,
To enjoy performing the written word.
By Miss Gregory (a.k.a. Mrs. Housholder):
To know The Bible as a real book of true things,
To hide those true things in my heart.
By Patty Mikkelsen:
To keep a sense of humor,
To commemorate the moment.
By Holly Elliff:
To be conscious of my position,
To be aware of my influence,
To be careful with my power.
By Marilyn Simmons:
To actively love,
To celebrate fellowship in Christ,
To celebrate marriage and family as an extension.
By Mary Maude Shafer
To be lovely,
To be gracious,
To be prayerful.
By Caffy Whitney:
To embrace the God ordained propensity to be creative.
By Pam Elliff:
To be the beautiful strength in the shadows.
By His Grace, I am forged for freedom.
Copyright 2016, L.L. Shelton
I know how it feels to slowly fade
Quietly letting go of tomorrow’s pain
All due to one slip of the blade
Grief slips away through the drain…
Greatly burdened for one so young,
Pressed flat in that bright cold place,
Hearing heart heavy upon my tongue,
She bent her ear low to my face.
Poised her self most near to my lips,
Listened intently to jumbles confessed.
Knowing loose thoughts often sink ships,
Helped me to order my address.
Graciously inclined her capable heart,
Assured I should be granted a stay.
Consciousness quickly breaking apart,
Still I regretted that day.
Yet, while the gray turned into black
I pronounced her surely right.
No matter, should I not come back,
God has forgiven us in our plight.
L.L. Shelton, Copyright 2015
The wildly obedient heart
Flutters within its confines
Sculpted of clay,
Cognizant of its destiny,
Yearning toward Him,
Ever struggling out of darkness,
In part bound and gagged still,
Squirming toward the light
With one good eye,
Leaning in for strength,
Practicing courage,
Longing toward home…
They chose humiliation.
You chose exhortation.
L.L. Shelton, Copyright 2015
(An Addendum to, Brief Thoughts of Love)
My Young Friend,
Each of us is composed of both physicality- our body and the stuff therein, and of a soul or spirit- the eternal self; that was a thought in the mind of God before our physical existence and destined to continue long after our body has perished. We are each in possession of a mind- emotion and intellect (albeit there are varying degrees of functionality among them) and along life’s way we each develop a personality and a sexuality, both a reflection of a deeper development- that of character. Character is the essence of who you are; it is your nature. These things are inextricably intertwined until the day of physical death. Until then, one can not function apart from the other and each is connected to and affected by the other. This is a terrifically complicated and marvelous design.
God has created our sexuality specifically to allow for and to encourage the most intimate level of communication in relationship that two people and their Heavenly Father can together experience. He designed this aspect of the system to lend us the ability to procreate and to grant us the capability of relating in a way that is illustrative of that way in which The Trinity relates, and of the way in which God in Christ relates to His people. Also, it is to be a reward unique to the covenant marriage of a man and a woman in the Presence of God. It may be startling to consider that God is a part of the expression of one’s sexuality, and yet it should be obvious. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere at once. As Christians, we are promised that His Holy Spirit lives in us- all the time. Our God does not slumber or sleep, rather He carefully watches over us continually.
However, because we are living in the contaminated environments of the earth and of our own fleshly bodies, we are apt to the perversion of our sexualities. Though there are myriad natural consequences as a result of expressing one’s sexuality outside of the one relationship for which it was designed, and those consequences are always spiritually degrading, often emotionally detrimental, and many times physically debilitating; still we are highly likely to misuse this aspect of ourselves, and yet Christ insists that we are to strive for sexual purity.
Interestingly, Christ is apparently unconcerned with the technicalities of things surrounding human sexuality; things such as whether or not a person should date at this age or that, whether a kiss is sexual or not, or that a person refrain from intercourse until marriage. It is possible that I have, again, startled you. I mean to convey that Christ’s concern is for something infinitely greater- our sexual purity; and sexual purity has its roots in the imagination. It is in our imaginations that He desires to reign supreme. Pure sexuality begins in the thought life and can never be achieved apart from it.
Sexual purity is maintained through the constant effort to view God, ourselves, and others appropriately, as living beings valued beyond price, worthy of sacrificial love; as opposed to objects to be used and abused according to our whims or our erroneous desires.
In God’s economy, there is truly no need for such deliberations as whether or not to hold hands on the first date; as He has in Christ surely freed us from endless and rigorous contemplations of the nature of “angels on the head of a pin” rather, God has allowed for us to be (in Him) all that we can be!
In His Love,
An Old Friend
See Psalm 51, Matthew 19, Mark 7
Copyright, 2012. L.L. Shelton
In the tomb my savior lay
Cold and thankless lifeless days,
Then on the morrow, shed his sorrow,
Rolled the massive stone away,
Arose and journeyed round the town
To tell them all no longer bound
By death’s dark grievous haughty night
To sing out loud all earth’s delight!
Copyright 2016, L.L. Shelton
My Young Friend,
Love has been tragically misrepresented and misunderstood. Love both requires of you and insists that you require of yourself; it is both a proper noun and a verb. It requires of itself what is best for another and gives it without reservation. Love demands sacrifice and sacrifice usually stings a bit. Often it is genuinely painful, at times even debilitating. Any one who has truly loved has felt both the joy and the bite of it. The idea that love is all pleasant and ever delightful is a gross adulteration.
I hear a great deal these days about fear of commitment, about lack of commitment, and inability to commit. I listen to tales of lack of intimacy and emotional distance in family relationships and in marriage. I am often told of loneliness, and the death of community. I believe these things are symptoms of a lack of love, and I do not believe it is commitment we are so afraid of, rather it is sacrifice that we fear.
Most of us have felt the confusion resulting from a person’s declaration of love for us followed by an expression of our sexuality, only to realize rejection at a later date. Some of us have felt the terrible vexation that comes when a parent who has claimed love for us has then neglected or abused us (or our other parent or sibling) and maybe even abandoned us or left the home. Each of us has been puzzled at one point or another by the expression of love and insult from the same mouth. Each of us has brandished both affection and grief with one tongue.
People are imperfect. We are incapable of either loving or hating perfectly. This is why we are taught to strive always to become perfect in love and to avoid hate altogether. We’re instructed to leave the hating to God. We are taught to learn of repentance and forgiveness and to become experts at both, and there is a Way.
Another method by which love has been horribly distorted is by the idea that love and sexuality can be one in the same. The two are never one. Human sexuality is and has always been one way in a million of expressing love. Obviously, it is often used in a perverse manner to express things that do not resemble love in the slightest.
For many reasons, one being to set the relationship above and apart from all others, and some that are mysterious and still known only to God Himself, we are told that His system is designed to function optimally for us (for all of us individually and as a corporate whole) when each of us limit the expression of our sexuality to one relationship with one person of the opposite sex (gender) for the entirity of our lives. Yet, we are encouraged by God to express our LOVE for everyone all the time!
My third and final offering concerning the misrepresentation of love is this: God is love, but love is not God. According to His Word, God is many things and love is ever a part of Him; His perfect Love motivating him continually. Love is only itself. Love is one of the many attributes of God and is nonetheless the epitome of holiness and the greatest thing. Love is perfect. God Himself is love, but love is not God. Therefore, we in our love are not God. God is bigger.
Lastly, in love I offer this truth from God’s Word. It is an expression of my love for you. May it allow you some clarity and grant you a bit of peace on earth.
An Old Friend
(Please see 1 John 3:16, John 13, 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13)
Copyright 2016, L.L. Shelton
So long Britney!
We bid you adieu.
Farewell Justin!
We’re all through with you.
We’ve had you atop,
We’ve had you on bottom,
In all manner of speaking-
You we’ve forgotten.
What’s that you said?
You’re feeling quite rotten?
That’s really too bad,
But it isn’t our problem.
I think maybe it is,
States a voice in the crowd.
I know it’s hard now to hear,
So I’ll shout it out loud!
There is One who may help,
For with you He’s besotted!
Since His first thought of you,
He has never forgotten.
You have been His to save!
He loves you that Way.
Return to Him now
And be His past the grave.
Copyright 2016, L.L. Shelton
Muslims are not the problem.
Jews are not the problem.
Christians are not the problem.
Republicans are not the problem.
Democrats are not the problem.
Capitalism is not the problem
Nor is communism the problem.
Blacks are not the problem.
Whites are not the problem.
Yellows are not the problem.
Neither Reds
Nor Browns are the problem.
Women are not the problem.
Men are not the problem.
Gays are not the problem.
Zombies are not the problem.
Foolishness is the problem.
Dishonesty is the problem.
Self-centeredness is the problem.
Pride is the problem.
Both greed and vanity,
The problems.
Complacency is the problem.
Apathy is the problem.
Disregard for life is the problem.
Desire for death is the problem.
Godlessness and idolatry,
The problems.
Lack of Love is the problem.
Those are the problems.
They are big problems.
They are real problems.
They are our problems.
The struggle is our own.
The battle is for each of us,
And the war belongs to all.
The problems are
Crouching at the door
Waiting to have us;
Each of us,
And all of us.
My human family,
It is past time
To get well.
Copyright, 2016. L.L. Shelton
As a Biblical counselor, I hear these and other words of the same meaning quite often: The church is suffering from lack of community. Our marriage is in trouble due to lack of intimacy. My response: How bad do ya’ want it?
Community and intimacy are alike in that they are the result of a cyclical pass through vulnerability. Most of us prefer anywhere to there. Community and intimacy are the continual culmination of transparency, and accountability. These things require the practice of genuine love and authentic faith. These things mandate that our love be abundantly evident that we may expose ourselves without fear, and that we will welcome critical examination in our effort to be the best we can be for the other- and doing anything without fear requires faith.
What is faith? It is the evidence of things hoped for and the belief in things not yet realized. Do we have it? Faith in God? Faith in ourselves, with God? Faith in one another? Do we believe that all things are possible with God? Do we believe that we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength? Do we believe that we can trust God to make out of each of us, fallen as we are, something beautiful? Something resembling Himself? Can we patiently suffer one another- forgiving, seeking forgiveness, receiving grace, offering grace, guiding, allowing ourselves to be guided, being consistent as well as realistic in our expectations of one another as we wait for Him to do this in His time and in His way, both individually and in a corporate sense?
May I submit to you that this is what must be if we desire community with others, if we yearn for intimacy with another? It will not be easy. It will be difficult to achieve and to maintain- and it will be the place where our joy may be made complete. Therefore, absolutely without a doubt, worth it.
How bad do ya’ want it?
Copyright, 2015, L. L. Shelton