Have you ever walked down the sidewalk, determined to be friendly and cheerful that particular day, and looked up to see someone coming toward you, but you couldn’t figure out whether to say, “Good morning, sir” or Good morning, miss?”
Yes, Jimmy B. was special, no doubt. But he became the man he was because he was smart enough to lean on his faith. He leaned on a God that he recognized as being a lot more able than himself.
Do. Not. Give. Up. Giving up creates hopelessness. And hopelessness creates a huge black hole of depression and deadness in you. When you quit caring about anything in life, you stop living, even though your heart continues beating.
Many people find this particular holiday season to be full of heartache, or a nameless void. They can feel a myriad of unwelcome emotions that threaten to overwhelm and sink them into a black hole.
This time I choose to tell a very different truth, one that I fear smacks way too many folks right in their face. That truth? Thanksgiving Day means Christmas Day is only 27 panicky, stressful days away!
Everyone else is also observing your life and choosing to believe what they want to believe. No matter whether they have checked the story with you or not. I imagine you would appreciate those around you holding their tongue until they hear the truth from the horse’s mouth. Instead of choosing to believe the worst.
A grizzled old man observed with trained eyes and alert ears as the novice young man did his best to hold his own at a table filled with experienced, skillful gamblers and crooked card sharks. Needless to say, things were going from bad to worse.
I am not going to write about naked bodies and the image that phrase seems to conjure up to people. The focus of this column, the nakedness I am writing about? Your future. The naked, unvarnished truth straight out of the Bible, about your eternity.
Forcing myself out of bed, I have a choice of things to worry about from a buffet of disasters; the people ravaged by Hurricane Helene, the entire state of Florida that, even as I am writing, face Milton the Monster, and a presidential election that is threatening to engulf our entire nation in an internal war against ourselves.
You stepped out there and thoroughly blew it, and you knew it. All you could do was apologize. Knowing you were wrong you went ahead…you said “I’m sorry.”