#god not even beasts can make a man tremble like the judgmental eyes of the father of the woman he loves

[domeniudulce]

The idea that Gascoigne and Henryk were hunting partners (presumably with Henryk being Gascoigne's elder and mentor) and that Viola was Henryk's daughter is the funniest shit. Like how do you think that went over.

[spoondrifts]

a quick charity tsv character study, because oh how she intrigues me <3 full fic under the cut, reblogs appreciated :)

Every name in this world has two meanings, one buried. Charity keeps her name’s first meaning on the tip of her tongue, wrapping herself in it like a fine cloth: kindness and tolerance in judgment. It is the first thing people think when she introduces herself, her first impression. In Marcel’s Crossing, when they venture into town on those rare occasions that they need something the forest cannot provide, the clerks and cashiers and vendors would smile warmly at the rosy-cheeked young thing who proudly named herself Charity, cooing sweetly, saying, “A pretty name for a pretty little girl”, and her parents would also smile, knowing.

Charity grows and learns the forest like her own skin, lives within it much the same. By the time she’s ten years old, she can navigate Penda’s Slake alone and mapless, sensing her way by the shudder of the birch trees and the crackling of the brush beneath small, pattering feet. The snare-dogs slither white and sinuous in the corner of her eyes, jaws splitting, snapping, protecting her.

The god of the Slake cradles her, its budding, blooming hunter.

* * *

The chapel in the woods is rotted and abandoned, but it hums with holiness. Her parents take her there every day and teach her to scrawl the hallway’s prayer marks, never entering, never risking their own hallowing, but instructing from safety, from a distance.

Her mother tells the same story, every time they go. “My grandfather found our god here, at Penda’s Slake,” she says in low, lyrical tones. The name of the forest always rang sweetest in her mouth. “A god of leading and chasing. Of hunting, and being hunted. A god that was both predator and prey.” She shifts Charity in her arms, encouraging her to look up at the collapsed chapel. “My grandfather learned those prayer marks from hunting here.”

“What did he hunt?” Charity asks.

“Rabbit, elk, deer, anything that fled. And when he split them open, their blood soaked the soil and grew beautiful flowers, and inside these flowers he read the words of our god’s hymns.”

Then Charity follows her father’s steady hands as he practices the marks in the grass, drawing with thick whorls of elk’s blood dipped from a glass jar. The snare-dogs loll about in the clearing around the three of them, rolling in the rustling grass and panting in the evening summer heat. Loyal beasts, when they were sated.

“Here,” her father says, guiding her small fingers into the cooled blood. “Go on.”

Charity traces the prayer marks dutifully. Her parents’ pride warbles between them like a livewire, hot and comforting. Globs of shining red cling to her fingertips and slick down her hand, dripping onto her pale wrist. She thinks about putting her tongue to it and lapping it up.

* * *

The sacrifices usually struggle; not because they don’t understand what’s happening to them, but because they do.

Charity is fifteen. This is her first sacrifice alone, her first gift to her god that is truly hers. The man whimpers and trembles under his sackcloth, moaning senselessly in agony; his wrists are bound with barbed wire, seeping blood, his ankles chained together with wrought iron.

He staggers, nearly tripping, but she yanks him back upright. She’s strong and fit from hours of racing through the trees alongside the snare-dogs, dodging their drooling fangs when they got too zealous and began nipping at her ankles, from hours of clambering up swaying birches, hugging the trees with her whole body, listening to the shrill cicada-song in the eaves of the world.

“Please, please,” the sacrifice cries, voice muffled and quashed by the sackcloth. His fear sweetens the air like a fragrant perfume, makes her shiver with anticipation.

She shushes him. Penda’s Slake is still and silent. Waiting. Hungry. She opens herself up to the nearing chase, its thrilling heat settling like gnawing teeth around her throat, and begins to sing her favorite hymn: “We will bring you terror, and you will bring us meat. You will make me savage, we will make you fleet...”

The sacrifice cries out and starts to struggle in earnest now, but it doesn’t matter—they’ve arrived at the chapel.

The hunt begins.

* * *

Charity is eighteen and her parents are weakening, growing ill and lame. Her mother struggles up and down the front porch stairs on ailing legs; her father’s hands spasm uncontrollably when he winds his traps. There comes a day when they sit her down in their living room, hands clasped, and tell her what must be done.

And because she has a responsibility, she does it.

The snare-dogs, when they finally catch her mother and her father, rend their transfigured bodies with razor teeth, spilling the meat of them into the grass and howling with twinned mourning and rapture, jaws gaping and glistening crimson. Charity is crying when she gets down on her hands and knees, wild, chasing, euphoric, and her face unfurls like a brilliant red flower as she sinks her new spooling jaws into her mother’s elk-boned throat.

* * *

Charity’s god has a thirst that must be quenched.

The people of Marcel’s Crossing are too jaded, too suspicious to follow her into the woods any longer; she sets her sights on the larger towns to the north, where the people know nothing of true woodland and even less of true divinity.

She packs her bags like a naive young woman might, with moleskin journals and soft, colorful dresses and big round glasses that make her look cross-eyed and gently bewildered at all times. She leaves her hunting rifle, her sleek steel knives, her book of hymns. She practices a smile in the mirror that is stupid instead of feral.

She wanders for three days in the town of Vanderwelt. She spends three irritating days asking stupid passersby for directions, taking meaningless tours of dull museums, and chewing on tasteless croissants on street corners before a man named Gareth buys her a coffee one morning and she knows she’s struck gold.

Gareth is perfect. He falls for her hair-twirling, forgetful mask like a gormless rodent stepping right into the maw of a greater beast. She looks up his name’s first meaning when he isn’t around and has to laugh. Chivalrous. Modest. Gentle. He would certainly like to see himself that way. The librarian has to ask her to be quiet or leave.

When he asks her to move in with him, she acquiesces with fluttering lashes and a carefully-curated grateful stammer. She polishes the art of “forgetting” her glasses in his flat so that he feels competent when he guides her from place to place, pointing out treacherous curbs or rising steps that she cannot see. They have dates in the shittiest little diners, eating food that’s always rubbery and bland because he likes to share, to feel like he’s providing for her, and he prefers his steaks well done. Charity bears this indignity with twisty little smiles that Gareth can interpret any way he wants.

He’s terrible in bed.

She hums the melodies of her hymns as she combs her fingers through his hair. He tilts his head, raising a curious eyebrow.

“That’s a pretty tune. What’s that from?”

Charity pets the side of his soft face and imagines what he might look like with birch-white flesh. “Oh, I don’t know. I must have heard it on the radio.”

* * *

She mentions Penda’s Slake only in passing, enough to seed intrigue without forcing the issue. And, predictably, Gareth pretends as though it’s his idea to visit her childhood home, his idea to take a hiking trip through her sacred woods, his idea to map a loop to the freshwater springs that stem from the White Gull River.

Charity pretends to be charmed to hide her slavering hunger.

* * *

That woman—that desecrating, defiling, disrespectful bitch—perches on the roof of Charity’s chapel like a greasy crow, orange flames welling up beneath and behind her as the blaze swallows up sacred ground like so much kindling. Charity’s heart fractures in her chest and she feels the raw sting of loss like the gore of a stag’s antlers, the snare-dogs howling all around her in abject grief, wretched, distraught—she turns and plunges back into the darkness of the treeline, vanishing from the desecrator’s sight.

She won’t let this violation be a painless one. She can feel herself changing, growing wild with fury, eyes sharpening in the gloom, buckling to her hands and knees, teeth itching. Her god wails inside her skull and she wails back in the thin, shrieking tones of the elks of birch and bone.

When the blasphemer tries to scramble for the car, that metal monstrosity in the midst of her lovely woods, Charity lunges and closes her splayed jaws around the bitch’s ankle. She screams and Charity is dizzy with the taste of her blood, fangs clamped like vices in yielding flesh, ready to jerk her head and drag the squalling prey into the dirt, ready to rend the soft flesh of its stomach into the open air with her hands and bare its steaming, soupy insides to the watchful trees, ready to chase and claw and kill and KILL—

The heel of a boot slams into Charity’s vulnerable throat with a lash of sharp pain and throws her backwards into the grass. She chokes, splutters, jaws closing and working helplessly around the taste of mud and silt, and in her moment of disorientation the car roars and accelerates into the dark, past the flaming chapel, vanishing back out onto the road.

Charity writhes in the grass, gasping for breath. The snare-dogs whine in a chorus of splitting wood, a thousand felled trees; the sonorous groan of the chapel collapsing into ashes rings in her ears in a terrible cacophony.

“My god, my god,” she moans to the open air. Beseeching. Apologizing. The agony of her god’s displeasure lances through her like a physical wound. Terror sings in her bones. “Please. Please.”

The snare-dogs have begun to snarl menacingly all around her. They have been denied something tonight, and they will have their fill.

Charity shuts her eyes. Feels the roles shifting. There’s them that lead and there’s them that chase. She has failed to chase. The Slake begs for a recasting in its time-honored performance.

Panting, sobbing breathlessly, she climbs to her feet. The snare-dogs rumble with primal excitement.

There’s them that lead, and there’s them that chase.

Charity races into the trees.

She leads.

[owlespresso]

Tremble, Duck & Weave . V

At last. Also on my ao3, which can be found here. If you’re interested in supporting my work or ordering your own, my commission terms can be found here and my ko-fi is here. Before we begin, please make sure all cellular devices are off. Thank you, and enjoy the show.

If Aymeric were to afford his late father one compliment, it would be his impeccable organizational skills. The perfection of each neat, abet packed drawer and cabinet makes it much easier to toss out items and documents he has no use for. He disposes of letters and paperwork and gauche items that only serve to take up space, skimming through texts and wrinkling his nose at every lie he sees. If nothing else, the archbishop kept his story straight, consistently assuring local leaders of his virtue and desires for a simple peace.

Never does he betray his wretched greed, nor does he betray earthly desires, nor does he disclose the truth of his earthly relationships.

“Never would I forsake my sacred oath for the sake of such petty indulgences,” one letter insists. Aymeric, without even processing it, reads it in his fathers voice and hears every lofty intonation, feels the faux passion oozing from every word. “The Scion of the de Borel family is not my flesh and blood.”

Aymeric’s lips curl into a deep frown, cold fingers tensed on the parchment. Another fruitless attempt to deny him of his true heritage, another desperate attempt for the archbishop to preserve his saintly image. Aymeric doesn’t know what’s more pitiful, the ceaselessness of his father’s denial or the fact that he had to interact with this man every day.

A loveless man, Aymeric thinks, crinkling the paper. There’s no reason to linger on a man long dead, not when he’s already resolved to be different, to be better.

His brows pinch into a firm scowl, lips pursed in a deep frown. His tumultuous thoughts near split his head, every letter and possession an unfortunate reminder—

A knock breaks the stifling quiet and forces his spine rigid. As with every spontaneous visit he receives, he schools his demeanor into something friendly and relaxed, something unemotional and civil.

“Come in,” he calls mere moments later.

The tall, dark doors open. Zephirin’s form, adorned in rich blues and gleaming white, stands out stark against the darkened shadows of the hall. He cuts across the tiled floor, greaves clanking with each long step.

“Pardon the interruption, my lord,” Zephirin regards him with trademark impassiveness. “I have information of the utmost importance to share with you.”

The prompts Aymeric to raise a brow. Long has he worked aside the men of the Heavensward, but never has he grown confident in his abilities to read Zephirin. However, he has always been sure that his father kept an array of secrets, any of which could pose a threat to himself or Ishgard. Due to the recency of his ascension, he made the bold choice to not yet question any of the ward. He would attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. Giving them time to adjust, know and trust him would bear richer fruits than pressuring them to spill his father’s precious secrets. Perhaps that patience is finally paying off.

“You may speak,” Aymeric nods, fingers pressing the papers on the desk flat to the polished wood.

“My lord, I assume you are privy to the existence of the Ascians?” Zephirin’s inquiry nearly makes his brows raise, yet he keeps firm hold of his expression, a face of practiced, steady neutrality.

“I am.” Immortal creatures who were a source of strife to every nation and settlement, known for inflaming local beast tribes into summoning deadly primals. “Why, pray tell?” He wouldn’t put it past his father to break bread with some of the world’s most notorious troublemakers, and he knows better than to hope otherwise.

The migraine blossoming behind his forehead thuds into the foreground. The very last thing Ishgard needs is pressure from another faction. Not whilst they’re in the middle of a transitional period. He knows that change must be introduced slowly for the people to accept it. He already has the Dravanians clawing at the wall every chance they get, and the alliance still knocks on the city’s gates semi-regularly. Aymeric is not an easily agitated man, yet there is only so much he can take before his hinges rust and his temper runs out.

“Before the Archbishop’s untimely death, they approached him offering an alliance,” Zephirin is watching him carefully, closely, measured in his words and demeanor. The timbre of his voice is neutral and passive. “He accepted with the intent of ascertaining their true goal and betraying them when his plans reached fruition. It is my full belief that he never intended to truly ally with them.”

Of course, Aymeric says to himself, Thordan would keep such a crucial secret from him. He wonders if the wretch he barely called a father is laughing at him from the hells below, for now he will surely be expected to continue this trite charade with the Ascians. It is likely that they will approach him openly, expect him to break bread with them despite their transgressions against the star as a whole.

He fancies himself a man with a long fuse, but the sudden revelation makes his fingers curl. He leans forward with the weight of sudden news, flattening his hands against the desk.

“It is a pity he did not disclose the details of something so completely crucial to the future of our nation,” Aymeric takes in a deep breath and sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “The Ascians are not to be easily trifled with. Regardless of his ability to to predict and handle them, I should have been informed much, much earlier.”

“My sincerest apologies, my lord,” Zephirin begins, the barest hint of apology seeping into his otherwise blank expression. “The Knights of the Round—”

“No. I am not in the mood to entertain trite excuses,” Aymeric replies, tone clipped as he restrains himself. There’s much he wants to say, but Zephirin needs not to be the target of his misplaced aggression. “Go. There is much that still has to be done before the day’s end. I will see to the Ascians this evening. Go about your normal duties until you are needed.” A newfound tension sweeps over his entire body and mind as he returns to the long road ahead. Perhaps some of his father’s files will shed some light on the situation.

- - -

The morning descends upon you with firm vengeance. Though your wounds have for the most part aided by Ishgard’s finest astrologian, the aches and phantom pains still wrack you. The plush blankets that curl around your body make up a warm nest you never hope to leave. The mattress is soft and gentle on your back. Still, it is a comfort most difficult to enjoy whilst there is so much work to be done.

Thus, you tumble out of your nest and barely catch yourself on your feet. Your morning routine is scarcely different from the one you had before your ejection from Ul’dah, yet the pain slows you. The cold claws settled within your muscles and bones make it difficult to move with your former swiftness. Climbing out of the shower is pure agony. Even though you’re inside, Ishgard’s vicious climate thwarts you at every turn. Only when you’re clothed are you at last at ease.

The Ishgardian garb is made of lush cottons that loosely swaddle you, easy on the body and meant to avoid aggravating your skin. Your hands duck into your sleeves, absentmindedly playing with the fabric as you descend the stairs.

Artoirel awaits you at the bottom, leaning casually against the banister. He sweeps out from his resting position with a smile at the sight of you, expression warm and welcoming.

“Good morning,” he says. His posture is casual, but his gaze is searching as it rolls you up and down. Curious, explorative. “How are you?”

“Good morning.” You withdraw into yourself ever so slightly, doing your best not to wilt underneath his gaze. “I’m well.”

“Haurchefant is tending to his duties today, but I do hope I can measure up to him in the realm of being pleasant company. Would you grace me with your presence for today’s breakfast?”

And to that, you have no objections. Artoirel cuts an intimidating figure, physically, but his gentlemanly attitude softens his sharp features. He’s something you’d expect from a wealthy prospective suitor in a romance novel.

Breakfast is a wide array of Ishgard’s finest dishes—foods hearty and rich in nature. It’s a struggle to not scarf down your portions, but easy conversation with Artoirel helps you space out your bites.

It’s all pleasantries at first. He attempts to dive beneath who you are outside of your status as the Warrior of Light, asks about your skills and your hobbies, what you enjoy doing outside of slaying gods and monsters alike. He’s picture perfect. Even the bites he takes of his foot are petite and polite, not a crumb to be seen on the corners of his lips. His expression flexes, the space between his eyebrows wrinkling. He looks like he’s grasping for words, lips pursing as he stares down his remaining food.

“Have any of the nobility made a bad impression on you?” he asks out of the blue, a piece of bacon perched atop his fork.

“No. Not yet, at least,” you look down at your potatoes, eyeing the way the chandelier light bounces off the silverware. It’s a surprising line of conversation to go down, but his concern touches you.

“Full glad am I to hear that. I would hate for any of my more… judgmental peers to sully your experience,” his voice is soft and delicate, a type of gentility that makes your heart squeeze. “However, I must encourage you to be cautious. Ishgardian high society can be… especially brutal to the few foreign guests we receive. Should you encounter any hostility, do not hesitate to inform me. I cannot guarantee any consequences for those in rival houses, but be assured that we at House Fortemps do not share the same sentiments.”

It’s reassuring to hear him so concerned with your reputation and well-being. You’re a new stranger to Ishgard, and there’s no doubt that everyone from the high borne to the lowly of the Brume can tell. Being thrust into such a foreign environment after what you endured has made you feel lost and overly dependent on your connections here. And… perhaps you are. But Artoirel’s devoted sentiments soothe you against your better judgment.

You don’t think much of it now, nor do you think much of it when you’re called down for lunch. Or dinner. It’s only right for the count to call all the residents and guests in his home for meals.

Emmanellain joins you for dinner that night. His eyes glint cleverly, his very presence incessant in its curiosity.

“To think, the champion of the ixal could be felled so succinctly!” he crows after you recount your deadly battle with Garuda. “Ah, I remember Haurchefant arriving home with stars in his eyes, that night. Word of your grand exploit was all he wished to speak of—well, besides your form… and the lovely curves that adorn said form.”

Ah. Long have you been aware of Haurchefant’s growing… intrigue in you, but never has it been so plainly observed by another. How much had he said about you? Your cheeks warmed as you thought over the possibilities, distracted from the raise of Artoirel’s voice as he reprimands his brother.

Haurchefant doesn’t return. Artoirel helpfully informs you that he’s seeing to his very last post at Camp Dragonhead before he returns to fully join the Heavensward. His absence leaves you feeling emptier than usual.

And when you cannot sleep, you occupy yourself with studying Ishgardian history. Much to your frustration, you can’t lift more than four of the tomes at once without your arms and shoulders screaming in protest, so you begrudgingly settle for three. You read throughout the night and find that the founding of the city state alone is enough to cover two-hundred or so pages.

A few hours before dawn, you dim the light and settle back against the pillows, filtering in and out of consciousness until you need to use the bathroom.

You eat breakfast with Artoirel again that morning, and promptly decide you need to take a walk for your own sanity. Manor Fortemps is a splendous place to live, but you can only stand being cooped up for so long before you lose your mind. You make sure to throw on a scarf and some knitted gloves that had been fetched for you, all bundled up and equipped as diligently as possible against the merciless cold.

Though you still don’t have a handle on the city’s layout, you believe asking for directions will serve you just fine. The manor is practically a landmark. Any local worth their salt should be able to point you in its direction. You assure yourself as you make your way towards the grand double doors.

“Oh, are you taking a walk?” Artoirel’s voice pipes up, the lord’s head peeking out from behind a nearby corner.

“Yes. I just wanted to get some fresh air, is all,” you inform him with a small shrug. He steps fully into view, his gaze soft and his smile sweet as he regards you.

“Ah, I was just about to head to the astrologicum. Would you care to accompany me?” He tilts his head ever so slightly as he inquires, leaving you struggling for an answer. On one hand, you likely should visit. If you weren’t mistaken, the man who treated your wounds is an astrologian. On the other… your entire stay in Ishgard has been a procession of well-meaning individuals constantly fretting about and crowding you. Even a moment outside alone would help combat the ceaseless, crushing sense of helplessness it has left you with.

Before you can even answer, Artoirel glances past you, gaze sparking with recognition as he spots one of the housekeepers.

“Ah! Adrienne, the Warrior of Light and I are about to take a visit to the astrologicum. Should Emmanellain return before us, kindly to tell him that the tarte tatin is to be shared. I will not have a repeat incident of last week.” His voice carries a firm edge to it at the end of his sentence, exasperation barely kept from breaching the surface. He shakes his head the housekeeper says an affirmative and scurries off, turning back to you with a sheepish smile.

“My apologies. The last time our chef prepared tarte tatin, he sneaked in and pillaged the entire share before dinner even started,” Artoirel shook his head with a sigh. “At times, I can’t help but think Honoroit is more suited to his position than he is… but that’s nothing for you to worry about.” He dismisses the matter with a wave of his hand as he throws his coat over his shoulders. A shame. The nosier part of you wishes he had continued. It’s no secret that his younger brother is a divisive subject among the family due to his immaturity and habitual slacking off, but you’ve heard quite little of the boy who follows him around like a lost puppy.

“I have an acquaintance at the astrologicum who was hoping to meet you.” Artoirel, for the most part, seems genuinely oblivious to your internal monologue. He holds the door open like the truest of gentlemen and sticks close to your side as he swans elegantly down the street. Even his walk is refined, long legs sweeping nimbly over the concrete.

You try to keep your crestfallenness hidden as you follow, hoping Artoirel’s insistence is simply him overcompensating in an effort to be a good host. You’re in no shape to deny him at the moment—he’s the count, and he’s so graciously allowing you to stay in his home. Should he decide to shove you out the front gates, you’ll surely have nowhere to go.

You don’t know how you haven’t realized the potential danger in that until now.

- - -

You accompany him to the astrologicum to placate him.

You try to take your leave after dinner, hoping he’ll be too busy finishing off dessert to notice you slinking towards the living room. He does, of course. And he continues to do so. Every attempt you make to leave on your own winds up inevitably thwarted underneath his watchful gaze.

He accompanies you on walks, and you accompany him on small errands whenever he offers, figuring fresh air with him is better than none at all.

“Foot traffic is high this time of day, especially after the archbishop mandated a longer break time for the construction workers down at the lower Ishgard. I dearly hope the noise has not kept you from your sleep.” Artoirel sighs as he accompanies you through the crowd, a palm flat to your lower back.

“Forgive my intrusion, but I cannot help notice that you have been favoring your right leg. Perhaps it would be a better idea to remain inside and rest? I imagine Urianger will be quite cross with Haurchefant and I if your recovery is hampered in any way.” Artoirel says imploringly, his eyes sweet and his lashes long as he bats them.

“We have a gazebo in the gardens if you would like somewhere to enjoy a spot of fresh air,” he informs you passively over the dinner table. “Not much grows out there these days, but it has been swept down and cleaned up for your use.”

It doesn’t reassure you. The next two days are fraught with uncertainty as you await Haurchefant’s return. Conversations with Alphinaud and Tataru are a brief reprieve from the blossoming paranoia, but you deign to not tell them the truth. There’s no doubt that Alphinaud will march straight to wherever Artoirel happens to be and demand answers.

If this is all some massive understanding, you don’t want to risk jeopardizing your relationship with your host. You keep Artoirel’s suspicious insistence on keeping you cooped up a secret, even as the stress it invokes worsens your condition.

However, you are nothing if not resourceful. The balcony door to your room has remained unopened throughout your short stay. Exiting from the second level had been beyond your capabilities given your current status, but desperate times call for desperate measures. (And trapped creatures often make irrational decisions.)

Your muscles strain under the pressure of holding yourself up as you lower onto a conveniently close ledge, and then onto a trash can nestled against the brick wall. The loud rattle of the metal lid against the can makes you flinch, but the side street is blessedly empty.

Just like that, you’re free. The phantom pains grip you tight and dig into your ilms of muscle, causing you to buckle. One of your hands finds purchase against the textured brick wall, gasps rattling in and out of your lungs as you struggle to steady yourself. Spikes of frigid pain lash out at your head, the space above your eyes throbbing as you attempt to reign it all in. Your thick gloves keep your nails from grating along the brick, something you find yourself suddenly grateful for as the pain begins to clear.

You focus simply on pulling the breath in and out of your lungs, the cold air drying your throat. The rest of the world dims as you refuse to focus on it, the agony ebbing away into blissful nothingness. Only then are you able to straighten up, gaze clear as you look down the long alleyway. Ishgard’s steep spires and long roads suddenly seem to curl around you, the prospect of navigating them alone somehow intimidating.

Weeks ago, you would have been fine with exploring without a chaperone.

You’re only going on a short walk, you rationalize. Your body moves accordingly as you urge it forward, heading out of the alleyway and onto the streets proper. Each step forward is another to be proud of, you try and tell yourself, but the words ring feeble and hollow in the void of your consciousness.

- - -

Estinien, for better or for worse, has grown accustomed to traveling near exclusively via rooftop. The streets below are littered with strangers who are able to perceive him. It’s daunting in ways he refuses to admit to. The stench of raw Ishgard rubs foul against his nose when he mingles among the masses, an affront to his sharpened senses. At least the beast inside of him knows it does not belong.

Powdery snow drifts from the grey sky, dotting his hoarfrost lashes, threatening to blur his vision as they nearly melt on impact. Here, legs perched upon the thin ledge of a building’s high spire, he can comfortably separate and spectate the writhing populace. Idle people-watching has become a disturbingly frequent indulgence in between his missions and tasks.

It helps distract him from the red vines that curl around the tall buildings, from the patches of disembodied flesh that decorate the cobblestone ground. Features of Ishgard only he can see—the beast trying its hardest to convince him to leave.

Perhaps it is the human part of him that remains that enjoys this passtime, desperate for a vicarious taste of old normalcy. Of belonging. He despises it. He is no longer soft flesh and natural composition. He is hard edges and scales, branching horns and gnashing teeth all wrapped neatly under the illusion of humanity. If his glamor were to be dispelled, they would surely throw rocks and knives and weapons of every sort in his direction despite all he has done to protect them.

So he broods, and he is willing to admit that he broods. He consumes the crowd beneath him with wide sweeps of his piercing gaze.

An old woman hands over a coin purse in exchange for a pair of mittens. A child in the middle of a game of tag slips on a patch of ice, tumbling onto his knee. He hears the resulting yelp, despite his distance. The beginnings of warm, childhood nostalgia creep up on him. His jaw tightens as he prepares to beat it back—oh.

He notices someone decidedly different from the rest of the crowd. A figure that stands fulms and fulms apart, one he has seen before. The Warrior of Light. You look decidedly healthier than you had the last time he had laid eyes upon you, sheltered in the cloistered bookman’s keep. You had been crumpled by your injuries, a mess of an individual dragged in, hanging onto life by a mere thread.

You’re walking around, at the very least. Still a tad gaunt. The bags underneath your eyes are new, but he supposes you have plenty to lose sleep over after everything you have been through. He is no stranger to loss. He knows how it can rip a person’s core out, make them a shell of their former self. He sympathizes.

He dismounts his perch, climbs across roofs and spires as he follows you along, glued to the shadows. No one regards him, his armor stained deep grey with the intent of better camouflaging him.

There’s a noticeable stagger to your steps as you visit different merchants, not bothering to actually head inside any of the storefronts. Perhaps the cold is harsh on your injuries. Why, then, are you not inside? He imagines Haurchefant would be on you like a mother hen, though he recalls that the youngest Fortemps child has been sent to Camp Dragonhead for the next few days, overseeing the change of leadership.

A pity, then, that he is not able to stop you as you aimlessly float from stand to stand. With each moment your movements become more labored, more encumbered despite you having nothing on your person. It’s easy to follow you from his position so high above. Eventually, you split off from the crowd, your eyes wide and your arms drawn tightly to yourself. You stumble up the stone steps, across the street and into one of the thin alleyways, thoroughly closed off from the rest of the populace.

It is not sympathy or concern that makes him dismount his perch. The frozen air whips through his long locks and lashes at his eyes as he descends, body instinctively contorting to stick a perfect landing.

It is a curiosity that plants him so firmly before her, a need to know the woman so vaunted and pursued for himself. You, who have so immediately commanded the adoration of Ishgard’s most coveted and quiet astrologian.

You startle as he lands, the sound of the impact ricketing up and down the otherwise empty alley.

- - -

Fatigue jolts up and down your anguished limbs as you trudge through the crowd. Initially, it hadn’t been so bad. Sure, you had been a tad tired after your escape, but your condition quickly snowballed down the slope. Ishgard’s cold seeps into your body even though your thick, cushy clothes. Your capricious escape leaves you in a poor state by the time you reach the marketplace.

Hells, you wouldn’t be surprised if you managed to exacerbate your wounds in the process. Still, you flutter from stand to stand, half-heartedly looking over merchants’ wares until the whimsy to move on strikes you. It helps distract from your new, pounding headache.

One of the most appealing booths has little puppets that are hand-sewn. An array of cute, fuzzy characters is lined up atop the wooden table, alongside some plain stuffed animals. Had you actually brought your coin purse, you undoubtedly would have purchased something. One of the aforementioned plushes is a grey-pelted fox wearing a stone-faced expression, something about it reminding you of ser Aymeric.

Unfortunately, the pain grows too great. Its bitter grip ensnares you, making your breath shorten and your body tremble as you continue your trek. You’ve overstayed your welcome. You should return home. To Manor Fortemps.

You split from the crowd, heading in the direction you believe is right. It’s difficult to keep your full mental faculties whilst so distracted, so you stumble down the alley and hope for the best. The dark brick walls make the path thin and constricting.

It’s by pure chance that you manage to see a flash of red above you before it lands. It’s a fluid blur of motion, a figure descending from the heavens that you don’t quite comprehend until it lands.

Brilliant plates of red armor wrap the broad figure’s body tight. The odd pikes that extend from its form and the angular nature of the sculpt let you know this is a dragoon, albeit unlike anyone you’ve ever seen before. The helmet is absent, allowing you to fully view the individual’s face.

He possesses hardened, sharp features. A cut jawline and a nose with a high bridge. His eyes are narrow, irises a shade of icy blue. It’s the whites of his eyes that take you off guard—stained a deep crimson. Long strands of snowy hair frame his face and brush against his jawline. All things that catch your attention for a fraction of the moment, but what draws your alarm are the two, blackened horns that arch from his skull, curling backwards slightly, raised to the sky. His cheekbones are adorned with glimmering, black scales. They gleam red where the light catches off them.

Sickly, red lines akin to veins scatter across either cheek from his eyes. It’s nothing you’ve ever seen before.

You don’t see it as much as you feel it, waves of inky black void that roll off him like fog or flame. He is the picture of everything Ishgard fears all at once, the corruption of their own people by the dragons who have kept them in stalemate for hundreds of years.

Your breath stalls in your lungs, every muscle in your body seeming to tense as you struggle to comprehend his visage. Upon closer inspection, his form is absent of the gauntlets most dragoons wear. Another thick layer of scaling coats his arms from the elbows down, the tips of his fingers curling into sharp claws.

“The Warrior of Light,” he addresses you contemplatively, but his expression belies disappointment. “I had not expected to see you out of your sickbed so soon—though it looks like you’ve flown the nest before you were ready.”

“Who—what are you?” you stammer, coherency returning to you in staggered stages. You hunch against the cold, brick wall, eyes near the size of saucers as you stare him down. You don’t dare shift your gaze away from him.

The droll disappointment that colors his features vanishes, giving way into momentary surprise. One side of his mouth quirks into a crooked, shark-like smile. Even his teeth are refined into sharp points, better for ripping into flesh and chewing bone. He barks a cold, humorless laugh.

“So you can see me,” he remarks idly. The edges of your consciousness begin to burn and fray. The inky splotches that swim at the edges of your vision threaten the view you have of him. “You have truesight yet the first thing you see with it is this wretched form. I almost feel sorry for you. Aymeric was correct in his assumptions about you, though that’s for better or for worse,” he remarks as you feel yourself start to sway. Your hands grow numb. A slow tingle takes your fingertips and strokes down to your palms, sweeping to the rest of your arms.

Any panic that you might feel is swept under the growing void, too exhausted to muster even a drop of emotion.

The last thing you hear before you take the plunge is the clanking of his greaves against the stone ground.

[author-morgan]

HEY! I really love your writing and I wanted to ask you if you could make a Brasidas x reader, fluff if it's okay (◍•ᴗ•◍)

Aww! Thank you so much, nonny. Ask and ye shall receive, behold Baesidas Brasidas fluff. 

Brasidas x fem!Reader

ANTHOUSA WEEPS WHEN she hears the news. The Monger has taken another of her girls. She won’t stand for it any longer. Something must be done. Determined to stop the brute’s reign of terror over her city, she goes to the Spartan general under the guise of night. Anthousa has her disagreements with Brasidas, but he is the best hope she has of seeing her girl returned safely. 

The Monger’s men leer at you, but they do not dare touch you before their leader has his fill lest they are on the receiving end of his wrath. So you tremble in the dark, hands and legs bound waiting for the inevitable and praying to the goddess you so devoutly serve to send someone to save you from this fate.  

Shouting interrupts your restless sleep. The rogues are leaping from their tents and bed mats trying to stamp out the flames overtaking the camp. Spears come from nowhere, embedding in men’s chests and backs. Some flee, others are stupid enough to stand their ground against the attackers in the night. 

A group of Spartan soldiers emerges from the smoke and flame. Hoplites take to finishing off the Monger’s men, but the Spartan commander is searching for something or someone. You cry out, rolling away from the fire licking at your back and into the greaves of the Spartan. He kneels, and you recognize your rescuer at once. 

Brasidas cuts through the rope bindings, pulling you from the ground and into his arms —heading toward the entrance of the camp, calling for his men to fall back. A pale horse is waiting in the tree line, and he places you on the beast’s back and mounts behind you, taking the reins. 

You and Brasidas are acquaintances of a sort. He and his men had come into the city after a victory for the night. Most of the men were quick enough to pick their girl and head off, but Brasidas had taken a spot next to you and reclined —starting to talk about his home near the heart of Lakonia. You listen to him with a smile, wondering if you’d ever get to see the city you were born in again. After that first night, he starts coming more often —sometimes alone— and wants only your company. And so an unlikely friendship buds between a Spartan general and hetaera. 

Upon reaching the Spartan camp, Brasidas eases you from horse and back into his arms. He takes you to his tent and kneels placing you delicately upon his bedroll. The light of a brazier catches a small scrape on your cheek and he frowns. “Never been so happy to see that stern face of yours,” you remark softly, smiling. The General has a proud and stern face, marred only by the slim scar crossing his cheek —his earthen eyes smile at you, even if he doesn’t.  

When Anthousa told him it was you the Monger had taken rage clouded his judgment. Brasidas prides himself on being a reasonable man. Able to see past his emotions and make noble decisions for the betterment of his men and Sparta, but by the gods, when the hetaera mentioned your name he was ready to summon an army. 

Brasidas rests his war-roughened hand on your cheek. “Are you hurt?” He asks. He can see the bruises and scratches on your wrists —he’ll tend to those in a moment, but some hurts do not show themselves physically. You shake your head. The Monger’s men hadn’t hurt you, not in the way Brasidas means. 

He shifts, bringing a bronze washbasin forward. “I would ask you not to fret over me, General,” you tell him kindly. You’re but a hetaera —a servant to Aphrodite and men. It is unfitting for a man of his status to stoop to your level. Brasidas is not like other men you remind yourself. 

“But,” he gently chides, shaking his head and wringing water from the washcloth, “this is my choice.” You offer no more protest as Brasidas wipes the dirt from your face and the flaking blood from your wrists. He’s tender and attentive —unbecoming of the Spartan label perpetuated by most of the Spartiates. The bruises on your wrists and ankles are not large, nor are they especially painful —in a few days they will fade, and it will all become a bad dream. 

The dirtied rag plops into the basin. You hold his warm gaze —surprised by the swell of confidence that rushes over you. “What else would you choose to do?” You inquire. Brasidas’ eyes dart to your lips. He’s dreamt of what they must taste of for weeks, though he shies away from desire —it’s the decent thing to do. Now though, he will not back down. 

“Let me show you,” he whispers, leaning forward. His beard tickles your cheek and then his lips meet yours. One of his hands slides back into your hair, the other down to your waist. You stroke your hand along his cheek. He groans slightly, opening his mouth to deepen the kiss —drinking in the soft sigh that passes through your lips. 

He draws back, forehead resting against yours —unable to hide his soft smile. You comb your fingers through his beard and boldly steal another quick kiss from the Spartan, and Brasidas is happy to oblige. “Get some rest,” he breathes, kissing your forehead before hopping to his feet. 

“Where are you going?” Brasidas doesn’t answer, but you already know —he’s too stubborn and honorable to stay the night, even if it is only to lie next to you. You frown, not wishing to see him go so quickly. “It’s rather chilly,” you muse before he leaves the tent, a poor excuse. 

“Then I’ll fetch more wood,” he responds —practical as always, thinking like a soldier. 

You almost laugh. “Brasidas,” you call, tone almost chiding. And finally, he turns back, seeing you’ve made enough room on the straw bed mat for him to fit. He fails to hide the smile tugging at the corner of his lips. The General pulls his bracers and greaves off, scaled cuirass following —he’ll let his guard down for the night, for you. 

[tagging @levikra for this Spartan softie]

[thestreamofconsciousness777]

As for me, when they became ill, my clothing was sackcloth, with fasting I afflicted my soul, and upon my bosom my own prayer would return...  

“The word that occurred to Jeremiah from Jehovah, saying: “Stand in the gate of the house of Jehovah, and you must proclaim there this word, and you must say, ‘Hear the word of Jehovah, all YOU of Judah, who are entering into these gates to bow down to Jehovah. This is what Jehovah of armies, the God of Israel, has said: “Make YOUR ways and YOUR dealings good, and I will keep YOU people residing in this place. Do not put YOUR trust in fallacious words, saying, ‘The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah they are!’ For if YOU will positively make YOUR ways and YOUR dealings good, if YOU will positively carry out justice between a man and his companion, if no alien resident, no fatherless boy and no widow YOU will oppress, and innocent blood YOU will not shed in this place, and after other gods YOU will not walk for calamity to yourselves, I, in turn, shall certainly keep YOU residing in this place, in the land that I gave to YOUR forefathers, from time indefinite even to time indefinite.”’”

“Here YOU are putting YOUR trust in fallacious words—it will certainly be of no benefit at all. Can there be stealing, murdering and committing adultery and swearing falsely and making sacrificial smoke to Ba’al and walking after other gods whom YOU had not known, and must YOU come and stand before me in this house upon which my name has been called, and must YOU say, ‘We shall certainly be delivered,’ in the face of doing all these detestable things? Has this house upon which my name has been called become a mere cave of robbers in YOUR eyes? Here I myself also have seen [it],” is the utterance of Jehovah.

“‘However, GO, now, to my place that was in Shi’loh, where I caused my name to reside at first, and see what I did to it because of the badness of my people Israel. And now for the reason that YOU kept doing all these works,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘and I kept speaking to YOU, getting up early and speaking, but YOU did not listen, and I kept calling YOU, but YOU did not answer, I will do also to the house upon which my name has been called, in which YOU are trusting, and to the place that I gave to YOU and to YOUR forefathers, just as I did to Shiʹloh. And I will throw YOU out from before my face, just as I threw out all YOUR brothers, the whole offspring of E’phra·im.’

“And as for you, do not pray in behalf of this people, neither raise in their behalf an entreating cry or a prayer nor beseech me, for I shall not be listening to you. Are you not seeing what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The sons are picking up sticks of wood, and the fathers are lighting the fire, and the wives are kneading flour dough in order to make sacrificial cakes to the ‘queen of the heavens’; and there is a pouring out of drink offerings to other gods for the purpose of offending me. ‘Is it I whom they are offending?’ is the utterance of Jehovah. ‘Is it not they themselves, for the purpose of shame to their faces?’ Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, ‘Look! My anger and my rage are being poured forth upon this place, upon mankind and upon domestic animal, and upon the tree of the field and upon the fruitage of the ground; and it must burn, and it will not be extinguished.’

“This is what Jehovah of armies, the God of Israel, has said, ‘Add those whole burnt offerings of YOURS to YOUR sacrifices and eat flesh. For I did not speak with YOUR forefathers, nor did I command them in the day of my bringing them out from the land of Egypt concerning the matters of whole burnt offering and sacrifice. But this word I did express in command upon them, saying: “Obey my voice, and I will become YOUR God, and YOU yourselves will become my people; and YOU must walk in all the way that I shall command YOU, in order that it may go well with YOU.”’ But they did not listen, neither did they incline their ear, but they went walking in the counsels in the stubbornness of their bad heart, so that they became backward in direction and not forward, from the day that YOUR forefathers came forth out of the land of Egypt until this day; and I kept sending to YOU all my servants the prophets, daily getting up early and sending [them]. But they did not listen to me, and they did not incline their ear, but they kept hardening their neck. They acted worse than their forefathers!

“And you must speak to them all these words, but they will not listen to you; and you must call to them, but they will not answer you. And you must say to them, ‘This is the nation whose people have not obeyed the voice of Jehovah its God, and have not taken discipline. Faithfulness has perished, and it has been cut off from their mouth.’

“Shear off your uncut hair and throw [it] away, and upon the bare hills raise a dirge, for Jehovah has rejected and will desert the generation with which he is furious. ‘For the sons of Judah have done what is bad in my eyes,’ is the utterance of Jehovah. ‘They have set their disgusting things in the house upon which my name has been called, in order to defile it. And they have built the high places of To’pheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hin’nom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, a thing that I had not commanded and that had not come up into my heart.’

“‘Therefore, look! days are coming,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘when it will no more be said [to be] To’pheth and the valley of the son of Hin’nom, but the valley of the killing; and they will have to bury in To’pheth without there being enough place. And the dead bodies of this people must become food for the flying creatures of the heavens and for the beasts of the earth, with nobody to make [them] tremble. And I will cause to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of exultation and the voice of rejoicing, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; for the land will become nothing but a devastated place.’”

“At that time,” is the utterance of Jehovah, “people will also bring forth the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of its princes and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem from their graves. And they will actually spread them out to the sun and to the moon and to all the army of the heavens that they have loved and that they have served and that they have walked after and that they have sought and that they have bowed down to. They will not be gathered, nor will they be buried. As manure upon the face of the ground they will become.”

“And death will certainly be chosen rather than life on the part of all the remnant of those remaining out of this bad family in all the places of the remaining ones, where I will have dispersed them,” is the utterance of Jehovah of armies.

“And you must say to them, ‘This is what Jehovah has said: “Will they fall and not get up again? If one would turn back, will the other not also turn back? Why is it that this people, Jerusalem, is unfaithful with an enduring unfaithfulness? They have taken hold of trickiness; they have refused to turn back. I have paid attention, and I kept listening. It was not right the way they kept speaking. There was not a man repenting over his badness, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Each one is going back into the popular course, like a horse that is dashing into the battle. Even the stork in the heavens—it well knows its appointed times; and the turtledove and the swift and the bulbul—they observe well the time of each one’s coming in. But as for my people, they have not come to know the judgment of Jehovah.”’

“‘How can YOU men say: “We are wise, and the law of Jehovah is with us”? Surely, now, the false stylus of the secretaries has worked in sheer falsehood. The wise ones have become ashamed. They have become terrified and will be caught. Look! They have rejected the very word of Jehovah, and what wisdom do they have? Therefore I shall give their wives to other men, their fields to those taking possession; for, from the least one even to the greatest one, each one is making unjust gain; from the prophet even to the priest, each one is acting falsely. And they try to heal the breakdown of the daughter of my people lightly, saying: “There is peace! There is peace!” when there is no peace. Did they feel shame because they had done even what was detestable? For one thing, they positively could not feel ashamed; for another thing, they did not know even how to feel humiliated. “‘Therefore they will fall among those who are falling. In the time of their being given attention, they will stumble,’ Jehovah has said.

“‘When doing the gathering, I shall bring them to their finish,’ is the utterance of Jehovah. ‘There will be no grapes on the vine, and there will be no figs on the fig tree, and the foliage itself will certainly wither. And things that I give to them will pass by them.’”

“Why are we sitting still? Gather yourselves together, and let us enter into the fortified cities and be silent there. For Jehovah our God has himself put us to silence, and he gives us poisoned water to drink, because we have sinned against Jehovah. There was a hoping for peace, but no good [came]; for a time of healing, but, look! terror! From Dan has been heard the snorting of his horses. Due to the sound of the neighing of his stallions the whole land has begun to rock. And they come in and eat up the land and what fills it, the city and its inhabitants.”

“For here I am sending in among YOU serpents, poisonous snakes, for which there is no charming, and they will certainly bite YOU,” is the utterance of Jehovah.

A grief that is beyond curing has come up into me. My heart is ill. Here there is the sound of the cry for help of the daughter of my people from a land far away: “Is Jehovah not in Zion? Or is her king not in her?” “Why is it that they have offended me with their graven images, with their vain foreign gods?”

“The harvest has passed, the summer has come to an end; but as for us, we have not been saved!”

Over the breakdown of the daughter of my people I have become shattered. I have grown sad. Outright astonishment has seized hold of me. Is there no balsam in Gil’e·ad? Or is there no healer there? Why is it, then, that the recuperation of the daughter of my people has not come up?

-Jeremiah 7 & 8, NWT

MURDERING: US Congresswoman Betty McCollum Denounces Israel's 'State-Sponsored Killing' of Palestinian Child

[alloveroliver]

Evil!Harr Part 1

harr anon: part 1 of some very evil!harr! its quite a doozy, so i had to split it, but harr/alice will come in the 2nd part (and guess who thoroughly enjoys the cradle gothic vibes…:D)

tw: Gore

The yawning nights never made the Magic Tower any more inviting. Loki climbs the steps with the same apprehension as always; after all, it was very hard to shake away the memories of the atrocities that had very nearly been inflicted upon him. If he listens carefully enough, he can almost hear the moans and cries of those who had been confined here, bodies prepared to undergo the gauntlets Amon Jabberwock would orchestrate.

And yet, he fears the cries he hears now may just be history repeating itself.

The marble staircase coils upward towards the private chambers of the new master, perched over an ornate writing desk like a haggard crow. Only this time, the robes have been changed from violet to black, fine silk for ragged six-string…gold eyes for red ones.

“Harr? When did you come back?”

Since the death of Amon, Harr had been swift to overthrow the Magic Tower and its brainwashed occupants. They had cowered under his superior magical abilities, the crystals holding now sway over the deflective spells and ancient incantations that forced them to their knees, burnt their hands and filled their veins with pestilence. Casting the robes of the Tower aside, Harr stood proud and furious above all, as if punch-drunk on the power he had suddenly acquired. The few that had been deemed worthy to live treated him like a god in the flesh, immediately obeyed his every whim, and allowed him to carry on with his games. For his magic was innate, beautifully so, and he was worth dying for.

Even if Loki had hated how the color of his eyes had changed.

“Loki? Ah, I’ve only been back a short time,” At the sound of his name, the elder sorcerer looks up from what appears to be numerous torn papers, detailing correspondence between members of the Red Army. Loki tries his hardest to overlook the splatters of blood and viscera on each page. He focuses on the smile he was so used to seeing, soft and reassuring, and hopes back for the days before all of this madness. “But I’m glad you’re here. I have something to show you.”

Papers flying, Loki crouches down on the other side of desk as Harr seems to reach down behind it, fiddling on with the straps on a battered leather sack. His hums a soft melody as he works, and the younger kindles faint memories in the back of his mind, when the same tune was hummed over a kitchen sink, a solo tune that soon drifted into a duet when he would come to help with dinner.

I’ve been reminiscing a lot, he thinks…and it’s with a twinge of sadness as he realizes the sorry state of affairs that have forced him to do so, if only for his own mental well-being.

But soon enough, Harr’s voice cuts into his reverie. “I’ve been thinking long and hard how to finally get through to the King of Hearts,” he hums, though there’s a distinct edge to his tone as the buckles come loose on the sack. “And I think I may have finally done it. My greatest achievement.”

The King of Hearts? “But Lancelot has always…refused your offers before.”

“Then perhaps my latest attempt has caused a…change of heart, if you will.”

No…

Harr reveals a glass tankard from the confines of his bag, sloshing around with a glossy red liquid that instantly forces the hairs on Loki’s neck to prickle. He can smell it before he sees it - spilled blood - and the sight is unfortunately not unique. He wants to vomit every time, but his throat is dry and tight, and he wants to run…but Harr is there, grinning, and Loki can only remain dumbfounded.

An adult human heart, beating wildly within a glass cage.

Loki’s slit pupils flare for a second. He looks ready to protest, jaw clenching and unclenching…but nothing leaves his lips. Perhaps he realizes what an objection means by now, and instead occupies himself by watching the disembodied organ throb in the jar. It mesmerizes him in a sickening way, how it squeezes and oozes in the red liquid, pulsing with gentle magical light.

The heart ripped from the Queen of Spades’ chest didn’t glow like this. Or the others. None of their hearts glowed at all.

Would my heart glow this way?, he thinks, only to quickly push that line of thought to the depths of his subconscious. His fingers tremble over the breastbone under his skin, where even now, he wonders if there is anything left at all.

Invisible hands pulling at the frantic muscle, ready to tear it clean from its shell…despite the heat of the room around them, Loki shivers in poorly-masked terror.

“Beautiful, no?” Harr resumes his gentle harmony, fingers curling over the remaining vessels upon the tables. “I knew Lance wouldn’t disappoint.”

Ten jars for ten men, each housing a beating heart. And Loki remembers them all too clearly. How each one faltered at the most crucial moment, letting Harr’s wicked fingers slide over their chests and drag the bleeding muscle from under the flesh, only to shove a jagged crystal into the cavity instead. They were living puppets, meat caskets for the Joker to toy with as he saw fit.

The Queen of Spades had been first, so eager to help his former friend that he hadn’t even seen it coming. But the horror on his face as Harr had stood over him, heart dripping his own blood onto the carpet, had been unforgettable. And with a single snap, the first puppet was made, jumping to his feet with vacant eyes and a luring call to draw the King into a secluded spot. Unversed in the intricacies of magic, the Black Army was swift to fall asunder.

Lancelot proved to be more difficult. He had visited Kyle that morning. Kyle had never thrown up blood before…Kyle’s eyes…had never looked so milky.

Knowing Amon’s ways, he had been privy to the darker side of magic, so when Zero had attempted to beckon him toward the training room alone, eyes vacant like those of a doll, he had already suspected foul play. But by then, he was exhausted from the years of futile conflict with the Black Army, as well as the weight of potentially retreading the footsteps of the very man who had held his father’s soul overhead. Falling to his knees with a soft smile upon his face, he had willingly surrendered his flesh to the Joker and his sickening cause.

And so, life would go on….or at least, it would seem to. Now at the helms of each side of Cradle, Harr had only to simply will his word into law. Who would go against him? Who was even left?

Loki cast a forlorn glance up the staircase towards the private quarters of his master…and the strange girl he kept caged up there.

“What do you plan to do with it, Harr?”

When the wizard turns back to his apprentice, his voice softens. “It doesn’t quite fit…does it?” he sighs. He runs his fingertips over Lancelot’s vessel, nails tapping an ancient rhythm over the glass. “Only further proof how we are not the same as the normal populace.”

Loki flinches at the use of ’we’. The dichotomy he had once fought against, being championed by his mentor, makes his gut twist uncomfortably. “Then what are you going to do?”

“There is always room for further study into the archaic world of magic,” comes the response, though there was a dangerous glint in Harr’s scarlet gaze. His mouth twists ever so slightly, the edge of a smile gracing his lips, though never enough to reach his eyes. “And I would find it most useful to expand my knowledge. The Tower may have gone far in their research…but there is always more.”

The younger wriggles a bit where he stands, pulling the hem of his jacket. “I don’t know if you should go any further, Harr. You know what…what the Tower did, do you really want to know that much?”

“You make a fair point, but this heart has such boundless energy…and I could always…consume the excess myself.”

The fear sinks deeper into Loki’s bones, his entire form only kept from shaking by every muscle locking stiff. He looks for any sign that the elder is joking, but his face is remarkably serious. “Harr…y-you can’t be serious-”

“But I very much am, Loki,” comes the cold reply, and the younger flinches at how his master’s lip curls into a sneer. Were his teeth always so sharp? “There is no need for Lancelot to entertain the masses with his magic, not when I have my rule implemented in Cradle. It would be a waste to let it simply sit here as a trophy.” And with unfamiliar malice, he suddenly grimaces. Loki’s blood freezes in his veins, and he can barely breathe “Besides, Loki Genetta, you have no right to pass judgment on me for eating the hearts of men.”

The glare was piercing. Cutting right through his soul, Loki’s legs give out beneath him. Blood-soaked memories flicker behind closed eyelids, servants in violet cloaks and a frightened madman cowering underneath his claws. It was frightening to imagine, that loss of control, the sheer desire to maim and consume…like some kind of beast. But the thrill of the hunt had pounded wild through his veins, deliciously stringing him along toward the lifeblood that he could scent in the air…feral, hot, hungry…

“You remember it, don’t you?” Harr senses the confusion in the younger’s body, how his eyes flit to the floor and his lips quivers. Moving ever closer, he wreathes himself around Loki, stroking his hair and crooning ever so sweetly into his ear. “Tell me how powerful you felt, Loki. Did it feel good to rip that man to shreds?” The contrast between face and voice was jarring, but Harr’s soothing tone still pulls tenderly upon the boy’s heartstrings. Somewhere, he hopes that his old friend is still there. “Tell me how good it felt when you cleaved that devil open. How good it felt to consume his essence.”

It was sickening to say…but Loki couldn’t deny it. The hedonistic rush of magical power as he had ripped through Amon Jabberwock with fang and claw, wild as a hellcat and with an appetite to match. Yanked by puppet strings and with Harr holding the sticks, he had lunged and clawed and bit and killed. It was sweet vengeance; surely, Harr had even told him so. Harr had promised he hadn’t been wrong, he had promised…

You were the one who told me to do it.

“It felt…amazing.”

“Then you know it’s only fair that I should also enjoy such pleasure. I gave you the opportunity, after all, and absolved your sins upon the deed’s completion.”

“So I was wrong to do it?”

“Oh, Loki…taking life is wrong, but it had to be done. Come to me.

The embrace is warm, familiar, and Loki cannot contain himself any longer. He sobs into Harr’s warm arms, clinging to the cloak that now reeks of earth and freshly-spilled blood. He lets himself be soothed, coddled, lied to under the pretense of sweet whispers of comfort. He knows there is something horribly wrong with the man he had once come to know as his carer, a friend in the darkest of times, but he is powerless to stop it. Because Harr was all he had left in this world, even though the corruption that had filled his soul was nothing like the kind, gentle human being who had swept him off the ground as a child and into a loving home.

Fingers come to rub gentle circles into the individual bumps along the younger’s spine, where the same corruption begins to take hold. Loki notices it every day, his body contorting into something more animal, more beastly by the day. First had been the teeth…then the claws…then the twisting of his spine, some days leaving him yowling like a creature on all fours. A punishment by the gods, perhaps? Or a sickness of the soul, brought by Harr as he takes the worst of the sins wrought by their terror?

All he knows is that he will follow Harr until the end, even when his body contorts and his voice leaves him, until he is nothing but a monster with a feline grin.

"Your place is here with me. Cradle is still cruel to the likes of you and me, for they don’t understand the gifts we come to bear,” A pregnant pause fills the air, only punctuated by the irregular thumps of distended hearts. Unbeknownst to the young man, Harr’s grin twists into something more sinister. “Your parents were not the only ones. And I only do my work so that no more children come to suffer as you did. I keep you and rid you of your sins, and you help me to achieve the paradise we deserve.”

When Loki looks up at him once more, tears track messy lines down his cheeks. His eyes are so lost, so full of fear and hope, clinging to whatever scrap of stability he can. Harr has Loki pinned under his claws, eager to please and fearing every detachment, lest he disappear…just like his parents had.

Twisted pleasure runs hot through Harr’s veins.

“You know how much I love you,” Harr only reaches forward to stroke his apprentice’s wild hair. He watches those mismatched eyes harden to flint, only to melt once more as his fingernails scratch into the young man’s scalp. The lies taste sweet on his tongue, almost as sweet as the look of adoration upon his charge’s face. “I don’t want the pain you felt to ever come back. I want to protect you. You know that, right?”

A soft sigh breaches those plump lips, and a barbed tongue rasps his palm in a gesture of submission.

“Do not disappoint me, Loki.”

“Not you. Never you, Harr.”

[loveofyhwh]

December 26: Habakkuk 1–3; John 17; Psalm 145:14–21; Proverbs 30:29–31

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December 26: Habakkuk 1–3; John 17; Psalm 145:14–21; Proverbs 30:29–31

Old Testament:

Habakkuk 1–3

Habakkuk 1–3 (Listen)

1 The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.

Habakkuk’s Complaint

2   O LORD, how long shall I cry for help,     and you will not hear?   Or cry to you “Violence!”     and you will not save? 3   Why do you make me see iniquity,     and why do you idly look at wrong?   Destruction and violence are before me;     strife and contention arise. 4   So the law is paralyzed,     and justice never goes forth.   For the wicked surround the righteous;     so justice goes forth perverted.

The Lord‘s Answer

5   “Look among the nations, and see;     wonder and be astounded.   For I am doing a work in your days     that you would not believe if told. 6   For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,     that bitter and hasty nation,   who march through the breadth of the earth,     to seize dwellings not their own. 7   They are dreaded and fearsome;     their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. 8   Their horses are swifter than leopards,     more fierce than the evening wolves;     their horsemen press proudly on.   Their horsemen come from afar;     they fly like an eagle swift to devour. 9   They all come for violence,     all their faces forward.     They gather captives like sand. 10   At kings they scoff,     and at rulers they laugh.   They laugh at every fortress,     for they pile up earth and take it. 11   Then they sweep by like the wind and go on,     guilty men, whose own might is their god!”

Habakkuk’s Second Complaint

12   Are you not from everlasting,     O LORD my God, my Holy One?     We shall not die.   O LORD, you have ordained them as a judgment,     and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof. 13   You who are of purer eyes than to see evil     and cannot look at wrong,   why do you idly look at traitors     and remain silent when the wicked swallows up     the man more righteous than he? 14   You make mankind like the fish of the sea,     like crawling things that have no ruler. 15   HeThat is, the wicked foe‘>1 brings all of them up with a hook;     he drags them out with his net;   he gathers them in his dragnet;     so he rejoices and is glad. 16   Therefore he sacrifices to his net     and makes offerings to his dragnet;   for by them he lives in luxury,Hebrew his portion is fat‘>2     and his food is rich. 17   Is he then to keep on emptying his net     and mercilessly killing nations forever? 2   I will take my stand at my watchpost     and station myself on the tower,   and look out to see what he will say to me,     and what I will answer concerning my complaint.

The Righteous Shall Live by His Faith

2 And the LORD answered me:

  “Write the vision;     make it plain on tablets,     so he may run who reads it. 3   For still the vision awaits its appointed time;     it hastens to the end—it will not lie.   If it seems slow, wait for it;     it will surely come; it will not delay. 4   “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,     but the righteous shall live by his faith.Or faithfulness‘>3 5   “Moreover, wineMasoretic Text; Dead Sea Scroll wealth‘>4 is a traitor,     an arrogant man who is never at rest.The meaning of the Hebrew of these two lines is uncertain‘>5   His greed is as wide as Sheol;     like death he has never enough.   He gathers for himself all nations     and collects as his own all peoples.”

Woe to the Chaldeans

6 Shall not all these take up their taunt against him, with scoffing and riddles for him, and say,

  “Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own—     for how long?—     and loads himself with pledges!” 7   Will not your debtors suddenly arise,     and those awake who will make you tremble?     Then you will be spoil for them. 8   Because you have plundered many nations,     all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you,   for the blood of man and violence to the earth,     to cities and all who dwell in them. 9   “Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house,     to set his nest on high,     to be safe from the reach of harm! 10   You have devised shame for your house     by cutting off many peoples;     you have forfeited your life. 11   For the stone will cry out from the wall,     and the beam from the woodwork respond. 12   “Woe to him who builds a town with blood     and founds a city on iniquity! 13   Behold, is it not from the LORD of hosts     that peoples labor merely for fire,     and nations weary themselves for nothing? 14   For the earth will be filled     with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD     as the waters cover the sea. 15   “Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink—     you pour out your wrath and make them drunk,     in order to gaze at their nakedness! 16   You will have your fill of shame instead of glory.     Drink, yourself, and show your uncircumcision!   The cup in the LORD’s right hand     will come around to you,     and utter shame will come upon your glory! 17   The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you,     as will the destruction of the beasts that terrified them,   for the blood of man and violence to the earth,     to cities and all who dwell in them. 18   “What profit is an idol     when its maker has shaped it,     a metal image, a teacher of lies?   For its maker trusts in his own creation     when he makes speechless idols! 19   Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake;     to a silent stone, Arise!   Can this teach?   Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver,     and there is no breath at all in it. 20   But the LORD is in his holy temple;     let all the earth keep silence before him.”

Habakkuk’s Prayer

3 A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, according to Shigionoth.

2   O LORD, I have heard the report of you,     and your work, O LORD, do I fear.   In the midst of the years revive it;     in the midst of the years make it known;     in wrath remember mercy. 3   God came from Teman,     and the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah   His splendor covered the heavens,     and the earth was full of his praise. 4   His brightness was like the light;     rays flashed from his hand;     and there he veiled his power. 5   Before him went pestilence,     and plague followed at his heels.Hebrew feet‘>6 6   He stood and measured the earth;     he looked and shook the nations;   then the eternal mountains were scattered;     the everlasting hills sank low.     His were the everlasting ways. 7   I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction;     the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. 8   Was your wrath against the rivers, O LORD?     Was your anger against the rivers,     or your indignation against the sea,   when you rode on your horses,     on your chariot of salvation? 9   You stripped the sheath from your bow,     calling for many arrows.The meaning of the Hebrew line is uncertain‘>7 Selah     You split the earth with rivers. 10   The mountains saw you and writhed;     the raging waters swept on;   the deep gave forth its voice;     it lifted its hands on high. 11   The sun and moon stood still in their place     at the light of your arrows as they sped,     at the flash of your glittering spear. 12   You marched through the earth in fury;     you threshed the nations in anger. 13   You went out for the salvation of your people,     for the salvation of your anointed.   You crushed the head of the house of the wicked,     laying him bare from thigh to neck.The meaning of the Hebrew line is uncertain‘>8 Selah 14   You pierced with his own arrows the heads of his warriors,     who came like a whirlwind to scatter me,     rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret. 15   You trampled the sea with your horses,     the surging of mighty waters. 16   I hear, and my body trembles;     my lips quiver at the sound;   rottenness enters into my bones;     my legs tremble beneath me.   Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble     to come upon people who invade us.

Habakkuk Rejoices in the Lord

17   Though the fig tree should not blossom,     nor fruit be on the vines,   the produce of the olive fail     and the fields yield no food,   the flock be cut off from the fold     and there be no herd in the stalls, 18   yet I will rejoice in the LORD;     I will take joy in the God of my salvation. 19   GOD, the Lord, is my strength;     he makes my feet like the deer’s;     he makes me tread on my high places.   To the choirmaster: with stringedHebrew my stringed‘>9 instruments.

Footnotes

[1] 1:15 That is, the wicked foe [2] 1:16 Hebrew his portion is fat [3] 2:4 Or faithfulness [4] 2:5 Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scroll wealth [5] 2:5 The meaning of the Hebrew of these two lines is uncertain [6] 3:5 Hebrew feet [7] 3:9 The meaning of the Hebrew line is uncertain [8] 3:13 The meaning of the Hebrew line is uncertain [9] 3:19 Hebrew my stringed

(ESV)

New Testament:

John 17

John 17 (Listen)

The High Priestly Prayer

17 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.Or from evil‘>1 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify themGreek Set them apart (for holy service to God)‘>2 in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself,Or I sanctify myself; or I set myself apart (for holy service to God)‘>3 that they also may be sanctifiedGreek may be set apart (for holy service to God)‘>4 in truth.

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Footnotes

[1] 17:15 Or from evil [2] 17:17 Greek Set them apart (for holy service to God) [3] 17:19 Or I sanctify myself; or I set myself apart (for holy service to God) [4] 17:19 Greek may be set apart (for holy service to God)

(ESV)

Psalm:

Psalm 145:14–21

Psalm 145:14–21 (Listen)

14   The LORD upholds all who are falling     and raises up all who are bowed down. 15   The eyes of all look to you,     and you give them their food in due season. 16   You open your hand;     you satisfy the desire of every living thing. 17   The LORD is righteous in all his ways     and kind in all his works. 18   The LORD is near to all who call on him,     to all who call on him in truth. 19   He fulfills the desire of those who fear him;     he also hears their cry and saves them. 20   The LORD preserves all who love him,     but all the wicked he will destroy. 21   My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD,     and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.

(ESV)

Proverb:

Proverbs 30:29–31

Proverbs 30:29–31 (Listen)

29   Three things are stately in their tread;     four are stately in their stride: 30   the lion, which is mightiest among beasts     and does not turn back before any; 31   the strutting rooster,Or the magpie, or the greyhound; Hebrew girt-of-loins‘>1 the he-goat,     and a king whose army is with him.Or against whom there is no rising up‘>2

Footnotes

[1] 30:31 Or the magpie, or the greyhound; Hebrew girt-of-loins [2] 30:31 Or against whom there is no rising up

(ESV)

[wolfofansbach]

The Bolshevik’s Last Rites

I wrote this in a quick sitting earlier 

She saw him come in the darkest part of the night. His coat near sloughed off in tatters from his reedy shoulders. His hair was stark with frozen sweat. He licked his lips but it did nothing. Beads of ice weighed on his lashes. The ice and snow splashed over his chest and stomach were red. But whenever more blood dripped out, it met the hard winter air and froze solid.

He raised a pale, draining fist and pounded on the monastery door. He pounded again and again, with the strength a dying man shouldn’t have.

She was in prayer when he came. The cross hung between her fingers and scraped her knees. Her lips were moving fast and silent. She could not hear God through the storm. She could not tell his thunder from the big guns anymore.

She did not know if the cannons were still roaring or if it was now only the sky. If the battle was won, then let heaven have decided it in their favor. Ice and snow slipped into the monastery, despite her best efforts to seal up door and window. Everything was white and cold and crackling.

The pounding came harder, and at least she was plucked out of her faltering commune with the father. The torchlight grew dimmer as if something black approached.

The building was ancient. Its foundations were dissolving. The alcoves that held torches and icons had been carved by hands that did obeisance to the khans. The heavy oak door rattled in its frame, like a great beast was beating away at it. But it was only the blizzard. And the man.

But she looked through the little hole in the oak and saw such a pitiable, sallow figure that he could not have moved a grain of salt. The snow at his feet was red.

Behind her, the monastery was empty. The creeping sickness came and went. Melancholy took the rest. The four graves in the field were full. She dug them herself, with the help of two sad workmen. And they were gone now too. There was little moving still in the town.

She threw the door open.

“God help me,” croaked the supplicant, and he fell inside.

At once the snow began to melt in the tender torchlight. Rivulets of water and blood and filth ran through the creases in his coat and boots and skin. He smelled like a soldier. He was on his knees, elbows propping him up. He muttered something. She knelt down, and he lifted his head.

The very first thing she saw was that he was very young. A boy, really. He had no hint of hair on his chin or lip. His cheeks were full and even red, despite his condition. His eyes were full and wet, and he looked like he desperately wished for his mother.

And then she saw his cap. It was an ordinary broad-cloth hat, drenched with snow and shredded in multiple places. But a red star was pinned off to the side. It was crudely sewn, and on the verge of falling away. But it was there. She shook her head and stepped back. He reached out after her with a grasping, bloodless claw.

“You are a bolshevik,” she said. Her lips trembled. She searched his belt and his coat for any sign he was still armed, and saw nothing. But he was a red. An enemy of the church. An enemy of God.

“I am a Bolshevik,” he affirmed. He kept his eyes to the stony floor, unwilling or unable to look at her. “Help me. I think I’m dying.”

She could have thrown the door open again. He was so weak that she could have taken him by the arm and thrown him back out into the snow. She could have let him stain the white hills with his gore and filth and kept the monastery clean, for what it was worth.

She reached down and lifted the cap off of his head, and she plucked away at the strings that still held the red star in place, and when the hateful insignia was gone, she threw it aside and placed the stripped cap back onto his head.

“Will you kill me?” She asked.

He shook his head, and that was enough. She lifted him to his feet and helped him along.

In the old refrectory, where her dead sisters once ate, she pulled away the hanging shreds of his old coat and the dirty shirt underneath. The would was still dripping gore. It was sharp and deep, perhaps a bayonet or a cavalry saber.

She was not sure she could do anything for it.

“Will I die?” He asked, his lips now glistening, and his big, youthful eyes trembling with fear.

“I don’t know,” she told him, truthfully.

“I am afraid to die,” he said forthrightly.

“It’s okay. So am I.”

“But you’re not dying,” he responded in a sort of plaintive way, as if it wasn’t fair. Which perhaps it wasn’t.

“No. Not yet.” She dabbed away at the blood. “What is your name?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why not? If you die, I will dig a grave for you, and put a cross over it, with your name.”

“Because I don’t want God to know.”

“God sees everything,” she reminded her. The most basic of Christian precepts.

At that, the boy moaned in miserable horror and put his arm over his eyes.

“There is no God!” He pronounced with a shaking voice. His fist clenched. She cocked her head. He sounded much less sure than he likely hoped he did.

“And yet you do not want him to know your name?”

“No! God! I don’t know,” he whimpered. Tears rolled down his fair, ruddy cheeks. He sniffled. She felt a deep, unwitting pity for him, like for a wounded calf in the field. “The priests conjured God…to frighten the peasants and the workers…there is nothing…nothing,” he mouthed the word ‘nothing’ one more time.

“There is nothing?” She questioned.

She tried to bind up his wound, but it was difficult. She was no expert. He helped her, even with his shaking hands. The bandage was soon stained red all the way through.

“The revolution!” He cried, suddenly. “The revolution…”

“The bolsheviks lied to you, dear one,” she sighed, as if he were a little child, though she was likely little older than him, and perhaps younger. “There can be no paradise on earth. Only in the next world with Christ.”

He looked past her. She turned, and saw he was transfixed by the tapestry on the far wall. It was the day of judgment, and a crudely drawn Christ and his avenging angels lifted the church up to the sky and cast the wicked into the pit. The flames were painted so long ago. They flaked and faded on the old stone. But they still looked so bright.

“With Christ…when I was very little in our village my mother brought me to church. She always brought me to church. And there was a priest there. He was very old but he was so strong. His voice. And he told us always that if we ever abandoned the church…if we turned our backs on God…on Christ…we would burn forever. Forever and ever, there would be nothing. Only fire. Oh God, can you imagine forever?” He moaned.

“Eternity is very long,” she said, and she tenderly gave him a wet rag to wipe the grime from his face, which he gratefully did.

“is it true?” He begged of her, with a voice that was sure she knew the answer. And before she could answer: “Oh God, sister! I’m afraid of the fire!”

“Do you believe in God?” She asked.

“I don’t know,” he cried again. “I have never seen him but…never…never I have never seen Lenin, either. If God is really there…will he throw me into the fire?”

“I am not God,” she answered.

“But can’t you tell me?” He implored.

She wanted to answer as she would answer. Hadn’t she suffered these same terrors time and time again? But what did she believe? So she said only what she had learned to say.

“Do you detest your sins?”

“When the whites come, they will shoot me. Won’t you tell them not to shoot me?”

“No one is coming to shoot you here,” she assured.

“No. No, they will come,” he responded. “God, I am a coward.”

She motioned mildly to the wound in his side. And she decided to ignore any resemblance it bore to the lance-wound in Christ’s flank.

“You do not look like a coward.”

“I wasn’t a coward when I had my gun. I wasn’t afraid of anything then. But now…” he sobbed with the pain of it all, whether psychic or corporeal. “Now I am afraid. I don’t want to die.”

She clasped his hands.

“Pray with me, then.”

“Won’t you give me the final rites? To cleanse my soul? If—if there is such a thing?”

She frowned.

“I cannot. Only a priest can—“

“Please!”

“It isn’t my right. I am—“

“You’d give me over to the fire, then.”

“I would not.”

“Then you must—“

“I cannot.”

“I cannot die in this state!” His eyes turned feral with terror. She saw the tapestry of damnation reflected in them. She saw the damned spiraling towards the fire that smoldered forever. The wrath of judgment.

“I—there is no host to give you.”

“There must be.”

And she broke the law of the church, because it was she and him in the dark torchlit convent, and she could not bear the boy’s hideous terror another moment.

She brought him a lump of bread and cut away the parts that were bad, and brought some wine that was more water.

It was not permitted. Any of it. But perhaps she had grown slack from the isolation. And the others were dead. Rigor had not saved them. Only God was watching. If she was sinning so greatly, then God would repay in his time. So she knelt next to the bolshevik.

“Do you detest your sins?”

He opened his mouth to accept the lump of bread that was not the host. Then he sprang back, as if bitten. She nearly spilled the wine. Perhaps it was his state of body that so addled his mind.

“And if I do this…and I say I believe…only to save myself now. God will see that, won’t he? And then he’ll punish me, and the fire will burn even hotter, won’t it, sister?”

She closed her eyes. She knew not what to tell him, because his terrors unnerved her, too. She swallowed them because she was supposed to be calm, and a servant of the Lord. And he was frightened for his soul, and she should offer him hope and salvation. If she could.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I am not God. Only God knows these things.”

“But you can speak to him, can’t you?”

“I—“ she was suppose to, wasn’t she? Was she the only one who heard nothing back when she spoke? Or did no one? When the others spoke of their communion with God, did they mean only the vague warmth she could sometimes make herself feel, or did they experience something she simply could not. “I have never heard his voice,” she admitted.

The boy looked saddened. Offended even. His lips twisted up.

“So then the commissars are right?”

“What?”

“And you are all liars! And not a one of you has ever spoken to God?”

His face grew ever paler. His lips were near blue.

“I—that is not what we mean when we speak of talking with God. It is…different.”

“Then you couldn’t even save me from the fire, if you wanted to?”

His wound was bleeding again. He fell back, movement seeping out of him.

“I can do nothing. God can, perhaps.”

She tried to raise the wine to his lips again.

“But all my comrades…they would be in flames too, wouldn’t they? If they didn’t believe. No matter how bravely they died…” his lips moved and sound stopped to come out. His words became soft and then slipped away entirely. “And my father, who never believed?”

“I don’t know,” she said again. “I don’t know your comrades.”

He looked past her, and his eyes were full of terror again. The tapestry hung in the windless air, illuminated in torchlight. All the horrors of hell spun in glorious, vibrant threads. Beautifully grotesque. The roasting flesh and the eternal, hopeless anguish. One could nearly smell it, and both of them shuddered.

“But I…doesn’t the church teach…that we will be damned, if we don’t believe?”

“The church does,” she said, in such a way that gave the vague impression perhaps she did not entirely agree.

“Then if they are there…then I should…” but his thought was chased off by the terror. “No, sister. I could not bear the fire, not even for my comrades and my father. Not forever. Dear God, I am a coward.” And he leaned forward and buried his face in her sleeve. “Please save me!” He wailed, sobbing again. “I don’t want to burn! Please…”

“Do you believe only because are dying?”

“No! I don’t believe! God, that is what you must save me from! Please!”

“Please, drink the wine. Take the bread.”

“Will it help?”

“I—“

“Will it help me? My soul? If…if there is a soul…no! No! There is a soul! I believe! I swear, I believe!” And they both knew he was lying. “Will it help?”

“Yes,” she promised him.

“And you promise this?”

“Yes, she lied”, because she did not know.

So he sipped the rancid wine and choked down the moldering bread and they told themselves, though they scarcely believed it, that it did some good for his spirit, if there was such a thing.

But the bolshevik did not die. And the whites never came to shoot him. And in the monastery, by miracle, he regained his health. And he thanked her each day for her succor and her aid.

And then one morning he had gone off into the melting snow. All that was left was the red star that had come off from his cap.

The war wound on, and the land turned red. Bloodied. The white was scrubbed away. Churches burned.

And it was some years later that the nun saw the red horsemen cantering down the streets towards the monastery. Her charges, the novices that had come under her care—and she could hardly believe she was no longer a novice herself.

“The bolsheviks will slay us, God be with us,” moaned one young girl.

“They will not,” the nun said, even if she did not fully believe it, remembering the young bolshevik who was only a boy and who was afraid.

But the soldiers tramped up to the monastery and threw the doors open. They were chekists, and the holy women trembled.

“By order of the regional soviet this monastery is directed to turn over 100,000 roubles worth of wealth. Gold, jewels, silver, or what have you.”

The nun shook her head, and she could hardly believe it.

He was older now, and though he was still fairly young there was scruff around his chin and his eyes were less cloying. His cheeks twitched as he chewed on nothing. If he was still afraid, he did an admirable job of concealing it.

The chekists fanned out to take stock of the convent and to strip it of valuables. And the chekist who had been the young bolshevik that was afraid stormed into the refrectory.

“You don’t remember me?” The nun asked, calmly.

He said nothing. He stood before the grand tapestry displaying the torments of the damned. His face was hard and angry.

“Lies,” he spit, to no one in particular.

“You were the one who was afraid of the fire,” she said.

“I’m not afraid of anything!” He shot back. And he looked back to the tapestry like it was an old foe. Which perhaps it was. His eyes that shone with fear that night shimmered with hatred. And he drew an old cavalryman’s saber and swept it across the width of the ancient tapestry. It rippled, and then the priceless old thing smoothly fell in two. The nun started. She imagined the old wound, long since healed and scarred over beneath his black coat. It had been red and angry and mortal that night. Now, she supposed, likely you would hardly see it. Like his terror.

He still gave no showing that he recognized her, but she knew he did.

“You’re not afraid anymore?”

“I’m…” he walked off.

But the chekists did not bother the sisters, and then the captain who had been the boy ordered them to take only half of what the soviet had demanded. And as the bolsheviks amassed to leave again he said to her, quietly and aside: “you saved me that night. My body, but not my soul, because there is no such thing.” And he was determined to convince, whether himself or her.

“Are you so sure only because you’re not now dying?”

“No, but because I was dying, and peered beyond the veil, and I saw nothing. No heaven and no hell.”

He did sound surer than he had been.

“We spoke of forever…”

“Eternity is very long. It’s lucky for us that it does not exist.”

“I’m glad you lived,” she said. “Even as you carry away our precious things.”

“Why?”

“Because all the gold in the world isn’t worth your soul,” she said. And he went to go again, his men fluttering at his back and his boots clicking on the stones he’d bled upon that winter, she spoke again, and he caught only the impression of her words on the wind: “if there is such a thing.”

[freewheelen]

Softail Vs. Dyna Vs. 2018 Softail

This past weekend, I booked a Dyna rental for my girlfriend and myself. Our plan was to test the bike out on our way up to a Born Free pre-party in Mt. Baldy. With a combination of highway, city streets, suburban roads, and twisties between us and our destination, it seemed like a great opportunity to gauge my comfort with transitioning into the Big Twins. But you know what they say, "man plans, God laughs"...

Upon arrival, Eagle Rider informed us that they didn't have the FXDL that I reserved online several days in advance. After airing my grievances, they graciously issued a reimbursement and we were on our way. 

But what were Michelle and I to do? We planned our whole day around riding the Dyna. We spent our entire week in anticipation of straddling one of those beasts. We just couldn't accept such an anticlimactic conclusion to our day. So we decided to do the worst thing we could have done...we visited the dealership.

For the past six months, Michelle has endured my endless ramblings about my next bike. 

"I want a 2018 Softail." "New bikes are too expensive. I want a Dyna." "What would you think if I kept the Sporty and got an old Softail for our road trips." "It's decided. I'm gonna keep the Sporty. Get a touring seat and bump her up to 1275." "Don't get mad at me, but what would you think if I told you I want the new Softail again?"

I'm sure it's been maddening. I'm sure she rolled her eyes more than a teen with a "cool mom" while I changed my mind more times than a ratchet changes sockets. 

But all that talk in the past 6 months was just that, talk. I hadn't dropped into the saddle of a Softail. I hadn't revved up a Dyna. I hadn't nearly shit my pants from the sheer power delivered through a minuscule twist of my wrist. It was the time to stop talking and start riding. It was time to put my money where my mouth was, literally. 

Our first stop was a shady, little used car dealership here in LA. They had a gorgeous 2007 Softail Custom but were unwilling to let me test ride her, so I took that as an indication of there untrustworthiness. 

From there, we jumped on the 405 and headed over to Top Rocker Harley Davidson in Canoga Park. I purchased my Iron 883 from this dealership and the bike has been nothing short of a dream, so I figured I'd exercise some good judgment and loyalty (two declining qualities these days 😉).

Whoever said, "ignorance is bliss"  was the wisest (wo)man in the world. After about six months of riding, I knew I wanted a bigger bike, I just never knew that I wanted it as bad as I did after test rides.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, like all bike shoppers, let's do a walk around.

Design

The initial detail that stands out to me on the 2018 Softail Low Rider is the tank console. In the past, the Dyna models took a subtle, low-profile approach to the dual gauge set up. Sleek and streamlined, it blended into the tank. It felt like a part of the tank, not a part on the tank. 

On the other hand, at a profile angle, the Softail Low Rider's console is tall and attention-grabbing, reminiscent of the FXR tank gauges that stacked near the triple tree and dropped off about half way down the tank. In my opinion, the nuance of the Dyna design tops the new layout, but that's until I saw the FXLR from a rider's position. 

Look at the refined details, the precise cutouts and taper of the tail section, the simplicity and subsequent beauty of the analog gauges. 

In the end, I think I'd take the Dyna's console, but new Low Rider's version no longer seems as hideous as I once thought. 

The next thing that caught my eye was the side covers. 

Looking at the Dyna, there's no confusing the fact that a battery resides behind that cube-like box. 

It's not trying to disguise anything. It embraces the form of the function, and it does so with a very tasteful design with hard edges and a chiseled face.

Over on the Softail, you have a bastardized "horseshoe oil tank" that truly serves to cover the mono shock anchored under the seat. 

Not only does the faux scheme rub me the wrong way functionally, but it's sloppily executed. It seems like Harley cross-bred the Sportster side covers with the Softail oil bag and all we got was something that Saturn would have put on their cars. 

The old Softail oil cans had such strong, sharp seams. 

Courtesy of Low Rider (lowrider.com)

It looked more hand-made component while the new "oil tanks" look more manufactured, and frankly, lazy. 

Again, the Dyna comes out on top when aesthetics are concerned. 

Next was the swingarm. 

Here's the Dyna:

Nothing special: a long, horizontal bar attached to an obliquely-mounted rear shock. I wouldn't call it pretty, but I also wouldn't call it ugly.

With the 2018, the "Softail" no longer resembles the rigid frames of the past. 

Sure, the top bar slopes from the neck to the rear axle, but the lower arm resembles the Dyna's swingarm more than the bottom tubes of the past. 

For this reason specifically, I wish they would have renamed the line of Softails to something completely new (Classic line, Heritage line, etc.). I'm sure Harley has an attachment to their registered trademark, but advertising these bikes as a "Softail" not only does a disservice to the customer but to the bikes as well. They're masquerading as something they aren't when they have the opportunity to make history under a whole new moniker. 

In the end, the design of the bikes is just that, eye candy. Having a beautiful bike won't get you out of a pickle the same way Ms. Universe don't win a Nobel Peace Prize. It all depends on what you're looking for in a bike, and the other side of the coin that needs to be taken into account is...

Performance

First up was the Dyna Low Rider. 

As soon as I threw my leg over the bike I could feel the size difference. My Sporty has a very narrow pan-style seat, so the added cushion and width on the Dyna made my legs bow a lot more than I'm used to. I truly felt like I was in a saddle (the horse kind). I almost looked for stirrups instead of the pegs. 

Once we rolled out of the lot, I picked my feet up and immediately noticed the forward-mid controls. Coming from the Iron, where you're feet are directly below your knees at a 90-degree angle, this slightly relaxed feel (relative/subjective) was ergonomically welcomed. 

For someone with minimum rise handlebars, I was surprised that I enjoyed the upright feeling as opposed to the hunchbacked, clamshell'd stance of my Sportster. I attribute that to the lower seat height and geometry of the Dyna. Though I've heard a lot of people mention that you feel inside a Dyna or Softail and that you feel on top of a Sportster, I couldn't relate until I experienced the ride of the bigger models myself. But the sense of control isn't the only thing that inside feeling provides. 

When you get on the throttle of these bikes, they haul - and I mean teeth-clenching, white-knuckled speed. It's a funny game of inertia. The bike shoots forward while you feel like you're getting the hook offstage. But when that sensation kicks in, I felt like my rear was diving into the seat as opposed to sliding off it, like it does on the Sporty.

What I couldn't get over was the SHAKES. During long rides on the Iron (300+ miles), my hands would start to tingle toward the end of the day from the engine vibration. On our test ride, holding onto the Dyna's bars felt like I was trying to tame a jackhammer. I noticed it so much at one stop light that I glanced over at my Salesman as a point of reference, but because he was on a 2016 Softail Slim (counterbalanced), his arms were completely still. I know there are aftermarket products that solve this issue and the attribute could be a quirk of this particular bike, but I was looking for something to mitigate that sensation I experienced on the Iron, not amplify it. 

All in all, the Dyna thoroughly impressed me. Aside from trembling like a dog at the vet and the incessant decel popping (obviously local to these particular pipes), the bike performed very well. It cornered much easier than I anticipated, pulled harder than a Strongman in the Bus Pull, and the braking performed at a much more consistent rate than my XL. 

Next up was the 2018 Low Rider...

...Softail that is. For those that aren't avid Harley followers, the Low Rider model was converted to the Softail platform this year when the company discontinued the Dyna line. While this caused a major uproar from the Dyna faithful and Harley fans in general, I wanted to reserve my thoughts until I properly test rode one. 

This year's model comes stock with a two-up seat, so Michelle strapped up her helmet and climbed on the back. Ultimately, I began my search for a bigger bike with her in mind. The Sporty's small size along with the stiff suspension has significantly contributed to the possibility of back arthritis in our futures so I wanted her to experience the difference between the Iron and Softail first-hand (the Dyna only had a solo seat). 

With Michelle safely packed on the fender, I fired up the bike...and that's when it started to feel all kinds of wrong. Maybe 'fired up' isn't the right word, because the noise of the motor only rivaled the fluttering of a hummingbird. I remember thinking, "what is this?" No shake. No rumble. No roar. No potato-potato. How is this a Harley? 

Before I knew it, my Salesman pulled into traffic. I wanted more time. I wanted to mourn the death of everything I'd come to love about the Sporty. That mechanical clank of the engine. That car alarm-activating exhaust. That feeling it gave you when you hit the ignition and she thundered to life. 

Reluctantly, I jammed down on the shift peg and eased out the clutch. We were on the road. We were riding, but it felt more like floating. With the antiquated suspension of the Iron, I've become accustomed to absorbing every bump in the road with my own ass. It made me feel like I was connected to the tarmac, like I was one with it, even if it occasionally sent my tailbone up through my skull. With all that said, I wasn't sure about this new sensation. This...comfort. I wasn't used to it. I didn't trust it.

Then I pulled back on the throttle and instantly felt the rear compress downward. The acceleration force seemed like it was pulling my arms out of their socket. Michelle's fingers dug into my ribcage as she scrambled to cling to everything in arm's reach (the first thing she said to me when we returned to the dealership was, "if we get that, we need a sissy bar.") My measly 883 resembled a scooter when compared to the torpedo we were currently riding. It's power. It's smooth delivery. It's pull. It felt like everything was multiplied by two (literally, 54 ci vs. 107 ci.).

But once we got up to speed, the lack in engine and pipe noise made it hard for me to find my shift points. On my Sportster, the loudness of the Evo engine cues my every move. High growl? Upshift. Labored chugging? Downshift. I've developed a symbiotic relationship with that machine. We both rely on one another to get what we want. For one, work. For the other, play. I rarely look at my speedo at all when I ride. I'm sure most people do this, but I shift by feel and this was completely foreign. I couldn't feel anything. It was almost anemic. By Harley terms, it was soul-less. 

Once we arrived back at the dealership, I sat down with Michelle and she praised the ride of the new Softail. 

"I love it," she declared. "I thought you didn't like the looks?" I challenged. "Yeah, but she's so pretty in person...and comfy" "Yeah, but you can barely hear her. I mean, the pipes suck and there's no rumble."

And then she told me one of the most eye-opening things I’ve heard in a long time.

"Babe, those are all bad things."

At that moment, it dawned on me. My mind was closed. I've been so used to the way my Sporty performed that I couldn't see the new bikes for what they were...a mechanical improvement.

"Did we go over any bumps?" I asked. "Yeah, a big one in that intersection," she exclaimed. "I didn't even feel it." "Yeah, that's a good thing."

There's been a lot of controversy around the new Softails. With the burgeoning Dyna culture, it's no surprise that the fanbase would have an adverse reaction to the axing of a great platform and a cross-pollination that doesn't seem true to either name. But are we throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Can these new models be "Harleys" even if they're not the same as the ones from the past? Can they be great like the Dynas and FXRs before them without tarnishing those legacies? Can all bikes be good or serve a purpose even if they aren’t your style or preference? I can definitely say that the new Softails have a more metric feel to them, but is that the worst thing in the world if that means gaining performance?

Let me know your thoughts on the new Softails and the Death of the Dyna in the comments. The more argument (constructive, of course) the better. And let me know what you think I should get for my next bike and why. It obviously won’t determine what I get, but if there’s one thing in the world I love it’s difference of opinion.

Aside from that, be safe and ride on, y'all!

[dfroza]

Shine like stars across the land.

Cling to the word of life…

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 2nd chapter of the Letter of Philippians:

If you find any comfort from being in the Anointed, if His love brings you some encouragement, if you experience true companionship with the Spirit, if His tenderness and mercy fill your heart; then, brothers and sisters, here is one thing that would complete my joy—come together as one in mind and spirit and purpose, sharing in the same love. Don’t let selfishness and prideful agendas take over. Embrace true humility, and lift your heads to extend love to others. Get beyond yourselves and protecting your own interests; be sincere, and secure your neighbors’ interests first.

In other words, adopt the mind-set of Jesus the Anointed. Live with His attitude in your hearts. Remember:

Though He was in the form of God,

He chose not to cling to equality with God;

But He poured Himself out to fill a vessel brand new;

a servant in form

and a man indeed.

The very likeness of humanity,

He humbled Himself,

obedient to death—

a merciless death on the cross!

So God raised Him up to the highest place

and gave Him the name above all.

So when His name is called,

every knee will bow,

in heaven, on earth, and below.

And every tongue will confess

“Jesus, the Anointed One, is Lord,”

to the glory of God our Father!

So now, my beloved, obey as you have always done, not only when I am with you, but even more so when I can’t be. Continue to work out your salvation, with great fear and trembling, because God is energizing you so that you will desire and do what always pleases Him.

Do all things without complaining or bickering with each other, so you will be found innocent and blameless; you are God’s children called to live without a single stain on your reputations among this perverted and crooked generation. Shine like stars across the land. Cling to the word of life so that on the day of judgment when the Anointed One returns I may have reason to rejoice, because it will be plain that I didn’t turn from His mission nor did I work in vain. Even if my lifeblood is to be poured out like wine as a sacrifice of your faith, I have great reason to celebrate with all of you. And for the same reason, you can be glad and celebrate with me.

I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy your way. He will visit soon so that he may report to me how you are doing. To hear all that is going on with you will truly encourage my heart. There is no one like Timothy. What sets him apart from others is his deep concern for you and your spiritual journey. This is rare, my friends, for most people only care about themselves, not about what is dear to the heart of Jesus the Anointed. You know Timothy is genuine in the Lord’s ways. He has been a faithful partner to me as we express the good news, as much as my own flesh and blood would have been. I expect to send him soon, and I will as soon as I see how things turn out here. I trust in the Lord that it won’t be very long before I can come and be with you in person.

But for now, I think it is best to send Epaphroditus home to you. He has become my dear brother in the Lord. We have worked well together and fought great battles together, and he was an encouraging minister to me in my time of need. He could not wait to see you all. He was concerned for you when he found out you knew how sick he really was. In fact, he nearly died. But once again, God was exceedingly kind and covered him with His mercy. And I, too, by His mercy, have been spared sorrow on top of sorrow.

I am so excited to be sending him back to you! I can picture the joy on your faces when he arrives; I can feel my worries falling away. Welcome him joyfully in the Lord. Esteem all spiritual leaders like Epaphroditus because he placed his life in grave danger for the work of the Anointed; he risked his life to serve me when you couldn’t.

The Letter of Philippians, Chapter 2 (The Voice)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 12th chapter of the book of Jeremiah that includes Judgment but also a promise of restoration:

Jeremiah: Eternal, You always do what is right

when I bring a complaint Your way.

So now let me put a case before You:

Why do the wicked prosper so much?

Why do all the untrustworthy have it so easy?

You plant them and watch them take root;

You allow them to grow and even bear fruit.

And yet, Your words mean nothing to them, deep down.

Still, You know me, Eternal One; You see what is deep inside me.

You’ve examined my heart,

So why aren’t they brought to justice? Deal with them as sheep

set aside for slaughter, singled out for death.

How long must the land cry out in mourning,

the grasses of the field wither and bake in the sun?

The birds and wild animals have simply vanished,

all because of the wicked living here—

Because they say, “God does not see what will become of us.”

Eternal One: If you are worn out after only running with a few men,

how will you one day compete against horses?

If you stumble on the easy terrain,

how will you manage in the thick brush near the Jordan?

Jeremiah, even your brothers and the rest of your family

are ready to betray you.

Even they cry out for your death; don’t trust any of them,

no matter how nicely they speak to your face.

I have turned away My house,

abandoned My heritage;

I have given My deeply beloved one over to her enemies.

My very own people have acted toward Me like a lion in the wild,

roaring at Me in defiance. For this, I hate her.

Have My own people become like colorful vultures?

Are birds of prey circling all around them?

Gather the wild beasts and bring them on to devour My beloved.

Many shepherds have already destroyed My vineyard;

they have crushed My fields.

My beautiful land of promise has turned into a barren wasteland.

The very ground cries out to Me in this empty and forsaken land;

the whole land is desolate, but no one seems to care.

The destroyers pour over the bare hills in the desert

as the sword of the Eternal devours the land from one end to another.

There is no peace for anyone.

The people planted wheat, but they will reap only thorns.

In the end, there will be nothing to show for all their hard work.

Shame will be their harvest because of the Eternal’s burning anger against them.

The Eternal has this to say:

Eternal One: As for My wicked neighbors so eager to take away the inheritance I gave My people Israel, look! There will come a day when I will uproot them from their lands, and I will take Judah from their midst. But after I have uprooted them from their homelands, I will have mercy on them and restore them to their own lands and their own possessions. And if they diligently learn the ways of My people and trust in Me instead of idols, if they swear by My name saying, “As the Eternal lives,” just as they taught My people to swear by Baal, then I will establish them alongside My people. As for any nation that will not listen to and follow My ways, I will uproot it and destroy it completely.

This is what the Eternal has declared.

The Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 12 (The Voice)

A link to my personal reading of the Scriptures for Wednesday, August 25 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons about being honest:

Teshuvah, or turning to God for life, is - in the present hour - an act of faith, for faith "sees the invisible" and discerns God's presence even as if "through a glass darkly" (1 Cor. 13:12). However, in the end, when everything will be manifest and brought to the light -- every soul will be turned to face God, and consequently every soul will be compelled to confess the truth about who they are. As C.S. Lewis wrote: "In the end that Face which is the delight or terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised" (Weight of Glory).

Human beings have a moral imperative, given by God Himself, to receive the truth and to live according to the nature of spiritual reality. Those who reject or suppress the truth, however, are responsible for their actions, as it is written, “No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes” (Psalm 101:7).

Being honest with ourselves is absolutely essential for any sort of authentic spiritual life... "No person is saved except by grace; but there is one sin that makes grace impossible, and that is dishonesty; and there is one thing God must forever and unconditionally require, and that is honesty" (Soren Kierkegaard). Confession means "saying the same thing" about ourselves that God says - and that means not only acknowledging our various sins, transgressions, and iniquities, but also affirming our new identity as the beloved children of God. Saying that God doesn’t love you is a lie as damning as denying His very existence... The great test of faith is whether you know in your heart that you are chosen, beloved, and forgiven by God, despite your many failures and sins.

Today is our opportunity to turn to God and find life. The Lord does not force us to choose life over death, though he does constrain us to choose, since being made in his image and likeness means that our choices are full of eternal and everlasting significance. When God finally appears at the end of the age, there will be no further call to choose to believe in his redemption, for the hour will be past, and our indifference will then mark our fate. Truth is the foundation of reality, and lying is therefore a form of denial of reality – a dangerous denial - since reality invariably proves self-authenticating (John 3:18). [Hebrew for Christians]

and another about forgiveness:

The essence of Torah is to love your neighbor as yourself (Rom. 13:10; Gal. 5:14). Teshuvah means, among other things, understanding how far we are removed from this ideal and how we might move to remedy the breach. This is a daily task, an ongoing duty... But we cannot give away what we don’t have to give, so if we’re deficient in self-love, we will be unable to genuinely love others, too. Part of loving others is the obligation to forgive yourself for your sins. For some people, this might mean “accepting that they are accepted” by God... Real change is difficult -- some would even say impossible -- though with God all things are possible -- including the miracle of a heart of stone turning to flesh.

Forgiving others is a way to be free of their hold over us. It is a letting go of the pain of the past and finding courage to press on in hope. In the Gates of Repentance it is written: ‎"I hereby forgive all who have hurt me, all who have wronged me, whether deliberately or inadvertently, whether by word or by deed. May no one be punished on my account. And as I forgive and pardon those who have wronged me, may those whom I have harmed forgive me, whether I acted deliberately or inadvertently, whether by word or by deed." Amen... It is only when we give up our hurt that we are able to move forward in the realm of the spirit. Faith and forgiveness are therefore intimately linked. Therefore Yeshua taught us to forgive others whenever we pray to the Father (Matt. 6:12).

For this coming year, may it please the LORD to first of all help us to love Him with all of our hearts, and to love others as we love ourselves... May it please Him that we “lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1). May the LORD renew our minds so that we might discern His will (Rom. 12:2), and may He help us abide in Him -- so that we will not be ashamed at His coming (1 John 2:28). May the new year be good and sweet for us all, and may our righteous deeds increase, like the many seeds of the pomegranate (1 John 2:29).

Hashivenu Adonai elecha ve'nashuvah, chadesh yamenu ke'kedem: “Turn thou us unto Thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; Renew our days as of old” (Lam. 5:21). [Hebrew for Christians]

8.24.21 • Facebook

Today’s message (Days of Praise) from the Institute for Creation Research

August 25, 2021

Preaching the Resurrection

“And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.” (Acts 4:33)

There are multitudes today who believe that Christ’s resurrection was a “spiritual” resurrection, insisting that the idea of a dead body returning to life after three days in the grave is completely unscientific and impossible.

This was not what the apostles preached with great grace and great power, however. They would hardly have been excited about any kind of spiritual resurrection, since everyone— both Jews and the pagan Gentiles—believed in life after death. If that was their message, no one would have doubted, and no one would have cared. Even when the disciples saw the resurrected Christ, they first “supposed that they had seen a spirit” (Luke 24:37). Christ even had to urge them to “handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39).

When the disciples finally became convinced of His bodily resurrection, they were quickly transformed into courageous evangelists, willing even to die in support of their glorious message of salvation. The resurrection was, indeed, contrary to scientific law and all human experience, and this very fact proved to them that their Lord was Himself the divine lawgiver and author of all human experience. All other founders and leaders of human religions, ancient or modern, are themselves subject to death, but He alone has triumphed over death. Only the Creator of life can conquer death, and the resurrection proves that Jesus Christ is Creator as well as Savior.

Therefore, when we today, like the apostles of old, proclaim the resurrection of Christ, we know that His name is above every name, and this enables us also to witness with great power, in great grace. HMM

[mattchase82]

Saint Frances of Rome is Lead Through Hell By an Angel

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Taken From The Writings of St. Francis of Rome

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The Gates Of Hell

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Matt. xvi. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church.

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St. Francis of Rome lived a very holy life. Many times she saw with her eyes her Angel Guardian at her side. It pleased the Almighty God to let her see many other wonderful things. Brev Rom. One afternoon the Angel Gabriel came to take her to see hell. She went with him and saw that terrible place. Let us follow in her footsteps, that we might see in spirit the wonderful things which she saw. Our journey is through the deep dark places under the earth. Now we will set off. We pass through hundreds and hundreds of miles of darkness. Now we are coming near the terrible place. See, there are the gates of hell! When St. Francis came to the gates of hell, and she read on them these words, written in letters of fire: "This is Hell, where there is neither rest, nor consolation, nor hope." Look, then, at those tremendous gates in front of you. How large they are. Measure, if you can, the length and breadth, the height and depth of the terrible gates. Is. V. "Therefore hath hell opened her mouth without any bound. Their strong ones and their people, and their glorious ones, go down into it."

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See also the vast thickness, the tremendous strength of those gates. In a prison on earth there are not, perhaps, more than two or three hundred prisoners. Still the gates of a prison are made most strong with iron, and with bars, and with bolts, and with locks, for fear the prisoners should break down the gates and get away. Do not wonder, then, at the immense strength of the gates of hell. In hell there are not two hundred or three hundred prisoners only. Millions on millions are shut up there. They are tormented with the most frightful pains. These dreadful pains make them furious. Their fury gives them strength, such as we never saw. We read of a man who had the fury of hell in him. He was so strong that he could easily break in pieces great chains of iron. Mark v. The vast multitudes in hell, strong in their fury and despair, rush forward like the waves of the sea. They dash themselves up against the gates of hell to break them in pieces. This is the reason why these gates are so strong. No hand of man could make such gates. Jesus Christ said that the gates in hell should not prevail against his Church, because in hell there is nothing stronger than its gates.

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Do you hear that growling thunder rolling from one end of hell to the other? The gates of hell are opening.

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The First Look Into Hell

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When the gates of hell had been opened, St. Francis, with her angel, went forward. She stood on the edge of the abyss. She saw a sight so terrible that it cannot be told. She saw that the size of hell was immense. Neither in height, nor in depth, nor in length, nor in breadth, could she see any end of it. Is. xxxiv. None shall ever pass through it. She saw that hell was divided into three immense places. These three places were at a great distance from one another. There was an upper hell, and a middle hell, and a lower hell. Wisd. 17. "Night came upon them from the lowest and deepest hell." She saw that in the upper hell, the torments were very grevious. In the middle hell they were still more terrible. In the lowest hell the torments were above all understanding. When she had looked into this terrible place, her blood was frozen with fright!

The torments prepared for the wicked.

The Devil

Apoc. xx. An angel laid hold on the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up.

Our journey lies across the great sea of fire. We must go on till we come to the middle of hell. There we shall see the most horrible site that ever was or will be -- the great devil chained down in the middle of hell. We will set off on our journey. Now we are coming near the dwelling place of Satan. The darkness gets thicker. You see a greater number of devils moving about in the thick darkness. They come to get the orders of their great chief. Already you hear the rattling of the tremendous chains of the great monster! See! there he is -- the most horrible and abominable of all monsters, the devil. His size is immense! Is.viii. He shall fill the length of the land. St. Francis saw him. He was sitting on a long beam which passed through the middle of hell. His feet went down into the lowest depths of hell. They rested on the floor of hell. They were fastened with great, heavy iron chains. These chains were fixed to an immense ring in the floor. His hands were chained up to the roof. One of his hands was turned up against heaven, to blaspheme God and the saints who dwell there. Apoc. xiii. His other hand was stretched out, pointing to the lowest hell. His tremendous and horrible head was raised up on high, and touched the roof. From his head came two immense horns. Apoc. xiii. I saw another beast having two horns. From each horn smaller horns, without number, branched out, which, like chimneys, sent out fire and smoke. His enormous mouth was wide open. Out of it there was running a river of fire, which gave no light, but a most abominable smell. Job xli. Flame cometh out of his mouth. Round his neck was a collar of red hot iron. A burning chain tied him round the middle. The uglinesses of his face was such that no man or devil could bear it. It was the most deformed, horrible, frightful thing that ever was or will be. His great fierce eyes were filled with pride and anger, and rage, and spite, and blood, and fire, and savage cruelty. There was something else in those eyes for which there is no name, but it made those on whom the devil's eyes were fixed tremble and shake as if they were dying. One of the saints who saw the devil said she would rather be burnt for a thousand years than look at the devil for one moment!

What the Devil does in Hell

1. Temptation.

He beholdeth every high thing, he is king over all the children of pride.

As the devil is king of hell, he does two things. First, he gives his orders to the other devils about tempting people in the world. Without his leave, no one in hell can stir hand or foot. Millions and millions of devils are always round him, waiting for his orders. Every day he sends wicked spirits, whose numbers cannot be counted, into Europe, Asia, Africa, into every country, and town, and village, and house, and to every human creature. He sends them for temptation and the ruin of souls. He tells each devil whom he must tempt, what he must do, and when he must come back. St. Francis saw that when these devils came back, if they had not made people commit sin, they were cruelly beaten. When a child is tempted, how little it thinks that the temptation has been got ready in hell, that there is a devil at its side who has brought the temptation, and this devil is breathing the temptation into its heart, and trying to make it do what the bad company wants it to do.

2 -- Judgment

As the devil is king of hell, he is also judge. When a soul comes into hell, condemned by the judgment of God, he executes the judgment. He fixes whereabouts in hell the soul is to be, how it is to be tormented, and what devils are to torment it. In a moment you will see his judgment on a soul.

A Soul Coming into Hell

St. Francis saw souls coming into hell after they had been condemned by the judgment of God. They came with letters of fire written on their foreheads. Apoc.xii. He shall make all, both little and great, have a character on their forehead. On their foreheads were written the names of the sins for which they had been condemned in hell. Blaspheming, or impurity, or stealing, or drunkenness, or not hearing Mass on Sundays, or not going to the Sacraments. As soon as any of the souls came to the gates of hell, the devils went and seized hold of it. Job xx. The terrible ones shall go and come down upon him. But what sort of devils took hold of these souls? The prophet Daniel saw one of them. He says, chapter vii."I beheld, in a vision by night, a beast, terrible and wonderful, and exceeding strong. It had great iron teeth, eating and breaking in pieces, and treading down the rest with its teeth. How do the devils take hold of these souls? As the lions in Babylon took hold of those who were thrown into their den.

When the people were thrown over the wall into the den, the lions opened their mouths and roared, and caught the people in their mouths and crushed them, even before they had fallen to the ground. So is a soul received by the devils when it comes to hell.

The Soul Before Satan

The devils carry away the soul which has just come into hell. They bear it through the flames. Now they have set it down in front of the great chained monster, to be judged by him, who has no mercy. Oh, that horrible face of the devil! Oh, the fright, the shivering, the freezing, the deadly horror of that soul at the first sight of the great devil. Now the devil opens his mouth. He gives out the tremendous sentence on the soul. All hear the sentence, and hell rings with shouts of spiteful joy and mockeries at the unfortunate soul.

The Everlasting Dwelling-place of the Soul

As soon as the sentence is given, the soul is snatched away and hurried to that place which is to be its home forever and ever! Crowds of hideous devils have met together. With cries of spiteful joy they receive the soul. Is.xxxiv.Demons and monsters shall meet. The hairy ones shall cry out to one another. See how these devils receive the soul in this time of destruction. Eccus.xxxix. In the time of destruction, they shall pour out their force. The teeth of serpents and beasts, and scorpions, the sword taking vengeance on ungodly unto destruction.

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Immediately the soul is thrust by the devils into that prison which is to be its dwelling-place for ever more. The prison of each soul is different, according to its sins.

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St. Francis saw them. One of them is called the Striking devil, the other the Mocking devil.

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The Striking Devil

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Striking hammers are prepared for the bodies of sinners.

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The devil gave Job one stroke, only one stroke. That one stroke was so terrible that it covered all his body with sores and ulcers. That one stroke made Job look so frightful, that his friends did not know him again. That one stroke was so terrible, that for seven days and seven nights his friends did not speak a word, but sat crying, and wondering, and thinking what a terrible stroke the devil can give.

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Little child, if you go to hell there will be a devil at your side to strike you. He will go on striking you every minute for ever and ever, without ever stopping. The first stroke will make your body as bad as the body of Job, covered from head to foot with sores and ulcers. The second stroke will make your body twice as bad as the body of Job. The third stroke will make your body with three times as bad as the body of Job. The fourth stroke will make your body four times as bad as the body of Job. How then will your body be after the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred million of years without stopping?

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But there was one good thing for Job. When the devil had struck Job, his friends came to visit and comfort him, and when they saw him they cried. But when the devil is striking you in hell, there will be no one to come and visit and comfort you, and cry with you. Neither father, nor mother, nor brother, nor sister, nor friend will ever come to cry with you. Lam.i. "Weeping she hath wept in the night, and the tears are on her cheeks, because there is none to comfort her amongst all them that were dear to her." Little child, it is a bad bargain to make with the devil, to commit a mortal sin, and then to be beaten for ever for it.

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The Mocking Devil

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Shall they not take up a parable against him, a dark speech concerning him?

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St. Francis saw that on the other side of the soul there was another devil to mock at and reproach it. Hear what mockeries he said to it. "Remember," he said, "remember where you are and where you will be for ever; how short the sin was, how long the punishment. It is your own fault; when you committed that mortal sin, you knew how you would be punished. What a good bargain you made to take the pains of eternity in exchange for the sin of a day, an hour, a moment. You cry now for your sin, but your crying comes too late. You liked bad company, you will find bad company enough here. Your father was a drunkard, and showed you the way to the public-house; he still is a drunkard, look at him over there drinking red hot fire. You were too idle to go to Mass on Sundays, be as a idle as you like now, for there is no Mass to go to. You disobeyed your father, but you dare not disobey him who is your father in hell; look at him, that great chained monster; disobey him if you dare."

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St. Francis saw that these mockeries put the soul into such dreadful despair of that it burst out into the most frightful howlings and blasphemies.

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But it is time for us now to see where the sinner has been put -- his everlasting dwelling-place.

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A Bed of Fire

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The sinner lies chained down on a bed of red-hot blazing fire! When a man, sick of fever, is lying on even a soft bed, it is pleasant sometimes to turn round. If the sick man lies on the same side for a long time, the skin comes off, the flesh gets raw. How will it be when the body has been lying on the same side on the scorching, broiling fire for a hundred millions of years! Now look at that body lying on the bed of fire. All the body is salted with fire. The fire burns through every bone and every muscle. Every nerve is trembling and quivering with the sharp fire. The fire rages inside and the skull, it shoots out through the eyes, it drops out through the ears, it roars in the throat as it roars up a chimney. So will mortal sin be punished. Yet there are people in their senses who commit mortal sin!

[twilightfalcon-blog]

[The Frightful Hour of Death, a Homily by Elder Ephraim of Arizona] After death, eternity follows. Every person at a certain moment will abandon his body on the earth and proceed with his soul to eternity: to the life that has no end. Man's soul will remain without the body until the Second Coming of Christ, at which time the bodies of both the righteous and unrighteous will be resurrected in order to be judged. It is a fact that, after death, man's soul is separated from the body and lives in a unique state. As we have witnessed, God visited us with the deaths of a few beloved brothers, whom He received into His Kingdom. Primarily, He took our dearly beloved brother, Father Ephraim, who lived amongst us in this brotherhood. He was my first spiritual child. As you are well aware, he lived amongst us with perfect obedience and virtuous conduct. Each one of you knows exactly how much you respected him. On account of his virtuous way of life, he had gained your trust. He helped our brotherhood tremendously. God called him unexpectedly with a traumatic death. God's decisions resemble an abyss. Who can fathom the mind or the decisions of the Lord? He knows how to arrange everything correctly. We all suffer to a degree from spiritual near-sightedness, depending on our spiritual maturity and level of discernment, and we form opinions on various matters accordingly. God, however, has a compassionate and loving Father, understands things quite differently. Oftentimes, He takes people at a young age, even though they are of great value to others spiritually. He decides to receive them at a point in their life that we feel is too early. The Lord, however, knows when each person is ready, and He acts accordingly. Had Saint Basil the Great, God's holy hierarch of Caesarea who enlightened the world, lived longer, he would have helped innumerable souls and the Christian world in general with his presence. However, he was called to the Heavens at the young age of forty-nine. Why? God knows. The Lord did not take into account the benefit that would have ensued if he remained in this world; He decided to bring him near to Himself in order to deposit securely this extremely precious soul in the divine treasury of His Kingdom. As far as the benefit that Christians would have received, God as a Father arranged this in His own way. Saint Athanasius the Athonite of Great Lavra was killed by falling off a scaffold in the altar of the catholicon and thus departed from this world. This resembles the death of Father Ephraim. In ‘The Lives of the Desert Fathers’ there is a story of a certain hermit who lived in a cave. One day, this ascetic gave his disciple handicrafts and instructed him, "My child, go down to the city, sell these items, purchase what we need, and then come back." Like a good disciple, this monk made his way to the city where he stayed for a few days until he sold all their handicrafts. During his time there, he witnessed a funeral being conducted in grand fashion with the most extravagant means of that era. There was a splendid procession with carriages and horses; a large crowd gathered for the ceremony; it was a beautiful, sunny day. The monk assumed, “An important person must have passed away for such an impressive funeral to be taking place." He asked someone in the crowd and learned that the most infamous harlot in the city had died. This event came to an end, and a few days later when he had sold all his handicrafts, he departed to return to his elder. As he approached their cave, he heard noises from within—a lion was devouring his elder, this saintly, angelic ascetic! At that moment, the monk was shocked. He became confused and began to reason, "The harlot received such a glorious and honorable burial, whereas this holy man perished in such a violent way, devoured by a beast! Where is God's justice?" Mentally, he considered this as an unfair and undiscerning decision on God's part, so he decided to return to the world, since things were not as he had been taught. When he began to head back to the city, God looked favorably upon him, through the prayers of his elder. An angel appeared to him and asked, "Why have you drawn such an unmerited conclusion concerning God's judgment?" "How could I think otherwise, my angel, after witnessing such controversial deaths between my elder, who was a holy man, and the harlot?" "God's righteous judgment is different than the way things appear to be. The harlot had done some good things in life. And your elder, prior to becoming an ascetic, while he was still a layman, had committed certain sins. God gave the harlot what was rightfully owed to her for her good works; now He owes her nothing. Since her life was burdened by sin, it was necessary for Him to repay her fairly for her few good deeds; hence, she received a memorable funeral on a bright, sunny day. Your elder, on the other hand, paid off his debt for the sins he had committed in the world, and he departed according to God's righteous judgment completely immaculate and radiant, without a single blemish on the garment of his soul." As soon as the humble disciple heard from the angel how God had judged matters, he asked for forgiveness, blamed himself, and returned to his elder's cave where he continued his way of life. This is why we should never rashly pass judgment on the death or action of any person. God does not only work out the salvation of the deceased, but He also seeks to help the rest of us who are still alive by giving us the opportunity to correct ourselves. Each one of us must seriously consider and realize that all the things of this world are vanity, and that man's life is truly a dream. Since this life is a dream, we should make certain not to be disillusioned by it; instead, we should strive to correct and obey our conscience, so that we are prepared for physiological death whenever and however it arrives. Death is inherited by every person who lives on this planet. How the world fools us! It toys with everyone like a cat plays with mice. It teases us, it makes us imagine fictitious things, it deceives us, and at the time of death it reveals the truth to us. At that moment, every soul realizes that it has been tricked by the devil, the world, and the flesh. The world feeds our imagination with so many things, which it serves to us as appetizing bait, in order to hook us in with sin. The time of death is terrifying, as the hymnologist attests: "What a struggle the soul has as it departs from the body! How it laments and wails! It turns its eyes to the angels and beseeches them in vain. It stretches its hands toward its kin, but no one can help it." The soul, all alone, prepares to meet the Righteous Judge and give an account for its actions. It is overcome with immense fear and trembling at that moment. Now we are discussing these things, but we have not experienced them. The people who have departed and have suffered through this frightful hour are not present to reveal and describe it to us, even though it cannot be expressed with human words. We will all be subject to the mystery of death. It is up to us, it is within our power (through the help and compassion of God) to get ready to meet this moment with our soul prepared as much as possible, for this will ease the fear and trembling of death. According to the sacred hymns of the funeral service and the counsels of the holy Fathers, during this frightful moment the demons approach to threaten us and to instill terror and fear. They attempt to intimidate the soul, so that it loses hope in salvation. They present God as cruel and unforgiving. Only the demons themselves and the souls who have departed from this life are aware of what exactly they utter. Just seeing them makes the soul distraught—because how can it respond? What can it reply? Who will help it? How can its loved ones provide assistance? It is absorbed in thought as it loses touch with its surroundings. It receives consolation only when God's angels draw near. When our big brothers come to the aid of the soul, it turns its eyes and gazes intently at them, pleading for help: “Save me," it cries out. "Save me from the demons!" The angels, of course, with their presence provide consolation for the soul; however, the primary source of consolation and hope of liberation stems from God and the peaceful conscience. The conscience: it will play the most pivotal role. If the conscience does not incriminate the soul, it takes courage and hopes in the protection of God and His angels. However, the moment our conscience begins to condemn us, the taste of dreadful, eternal hell starts. May God be merciful on every human soul during that frightful moment! If the departing soul had committed deadly and grave sins, it will inevitably be snatched by the demons. It is questionable if it will be able to escape from them and begin its journey upward. In the case of a saved soul or a soul with a chance of being saved, the angels take the soul and lead it to the Righteous Judge. As it ascends, it passes through the various toll-houses, which represent each one of the deadly sins. It will be examined for every passion and weakness. If it is found guilty, it will stop at the corresponding toll-house. If, however, it bypasses all the toll-houses, it will worship Christ the Master. In following, according to the Orthodox tradition of our Church, it will travel with its guardian angel to the holy abodes of God's Kingdom. Then it will visit Hades, and, in turn, all the places it lived throughout the years of its earthly life. Finally, on the fortieth day it will conclude its journey and return before Christ to hear the decision. Imagine how the soul fears and trembles. It rejoices when it beholds the Kingdom of God, but it also wonders: "Will I achieve it? Will I actually come to dwell here? I don't know for sure." When it passes through Hell and witnesses the tortures it wonders, "What if I am sent here? Woe unto me! It's not going to last a few years. No! It will be forever." As it proceeds to visit all the places it lived, then it will see many things. The soul will be ashamed to look at the places where it sinned; conversely, it will rejoice wherever it accomplished virtue. By the end of this whole time, the soul will realize and understand to some extent whether God's decision will be positive or negative. All these constitute the great truth of our Orthodox Church. We have witnessed many deaths. We have indeed observed this mystery in people who departed from this life. They revealed to us through their behavior, their facial expressions, their eyes, their uneasiness or their serenity, what exactly transpires invisibly during the mystery of death. We are completely convinced that everything contained within the Holy Scriptures, our sacred tradition, and the ascetical tradition of our Church is true, and it cannot be otherwise. For this reason, we should—and I first—seriously take into account this reality and regulate our life accordingly. Let us correct our lives in order to avoid eternal Hell and instead acquire (through God's mercy and compassion) the Kingdom of Heaven. We must take a long, hard look at our salvation and realize that it is not a game; it is not something we can ignore, it is not a joke. We see this reality being confirmed by the people who have departed from this life. Where are our fathers who were with us just a short while ago? Where are the brothers who lived with us, and with whom we conversed? Now they are no longer amongst us. This will happen to us as well, we just don't know when. This is why we should reflect, "Where are they now? Were they saved or not? Soon, the people who stay behind in this life will think and wonder the same things about us." Let us stare at our salvation straight in the eyes, no matter how alarming and embarrassing it is. Let us correct our life. Let us thank God from the depth of our heart, and let us offer Him praise and doxology because we are still alive and we can amend the matters related to our soul and prepare ourselves. We do not know, as we see in practice, the day, the hour, or the moment of our departure from this world. Let us do our prayer rule. Let us not neglect our vigil. Let us not be sluggish when it comes to attending church and the Liturgy: Let us love one another, because love is God, and "he who remains in love, remains in God and God in him" (1 Jn. 4:16). Who loves God? He who keeps His commandments. The first and foremost commandment is to love God; the second, to love our neighbor and brother. When, however, we do not fulfill God's commandments, this is a clear indication that we do not love Him, and we have transgressed the first commandment. If we do not love our brothers, if we criticize them, if we slander them, if we accuse them, if we harbor ill feelings toward them, behold: we have transgressed God's second great commandment. “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer" (1 Jn. 3:15); "he is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going" (1 Jn. 2:11). We waste our time instead of using it to pray. Our precious time, this currency that God has given us, disappears. We do not use it to purchase valuable items that will be useful for the Kingdom of Heaven. The devil tricks and outwits us. We buy negligence, slothfulness, idle talk, criticism, scattering of the mind, and harmful thoughts. All this "merchandise" is accrued by misusing life's precious currency. Unfortunately, tomorrow we will find ourselves in the position that our brothers were in just a while ago, and we will ask ourselves, "What have I done! How was I fooled? How was I deceived? I didn't expect to die so suddenly!" Oh, really? You didn't know? You never heard that this is how people die? Of course you did! Can our conscience lie and fabricate something untrue? Not at all. It will loudly proclaim the truth. Woe unto me, because I do not practice what I preach. Let us condemn and humble ourselves before God. Let us humble ourselves before our Crucified Christ and beseech Him for forgiveness. Let us correct ourselves so that our petition for His Divine Blood to wash and cleanse us, and for His death to become life for us may be fulfilled. We must thank God from the depth of our heart for keeping us alive until now and granting us time to correct ourselves. Our brothers, on the other hand, who have departed from this life can no longer do anything for themselves. Now they are waiting for help from the Church, from their brothers, and from us. When our saint, my holy elder, was informed of the day he would leave this life, I asked him, "Geronda, what would you like us to do?" I was referring to forty-liturgies, memorial services, etc. This great and wise man of God replied, "Go ahead, do these for your own peace of mind. But woe unto me if I had to depend on these alms to be saved!" Think how meticulously he prepared himself so as not to count on the prayers of others to assist him in salvation. We of course—and I first—seek help because our conscience accuses us of not doing God's will. This is why we also fear death. Our conscience does not assure us. It remains deficient and is in need of reconciliation; whereas, the conscience of the great elder was in good order. He would reassure me, "My child, all I have to do is cross the bridge (he was referring to death). After that, my account with God is settled, through His grace. Everything has been arranged!" What a brilliant and confident conscience! This is why he would also exhort, "Fulfill your obligations." He would advise us to make peace with our conscience with respect to our obligations before the elder. May our good God enlighten each one of us and give us the strength (according to our position and responsibilities) to settle and arrange any outstanding debts. Let us exert ourselves; let us not be negligent. The present life is not a time for negligence and procrastination. We should struggle not only now that the death of our brothers is fresh in our minds; rather, we should preserve this feeling as we move forward in order to correct ourselves. No one is sinless except our Holy God. No holy person left the earth without some small sin; however, this did not impede their salvation and holiness. Incidental mistakes do not detract holiness from a person. This is why only God is sinless. The great Fathers advise us to commit as few sins as possible, insignificant sins that do not hinder our salvation. For when the scalepan is full of virtue, it will tip the scale, and these small sins will be tossed into the air. Let us struggle continuously, striving to maintain sincere, correct, and true obedience; not a feigned obedience that in reality conceals self-will, disobedience, and poison. We should not do your own will because one day we will regret it. As we know, God does not expect a disciple to err with sins common to laypeople. For a disciple, fornication and adultery are committed, essentially, when he errs in obedience. Disobedience is the "number-one" mistake; conversely, obedience is the principal means of salvation. A disciple with sincere obedience has secured his salvation and will enjoy its best portion. He is the most fortunate person on earth. He has the most promising hope and likelihood of entering into the Kingdom of God. On the other hand, we who are in charge and give orders, we who lift the burdens, mistakes, and sins of others, are at risk of losing our salvation. We are endangered not so much from our own sins—for there is hope that we will be saved through God's mercy—but rather from the sins of and the responsibility for others. This is the primary hazard for people in our position who are responsible for souls and who carry others on their shoulders. For the disciple, however, no such risk exists. With a very simple and uncomplicated life, by simply saying, "Forgive me," and "May it be blessed," the disciple enters into the Kingdom of God. May God, through His infinite mercy, permit all of us to be found together in the joy and bliss of His eternal Kingdom. Amen. - The Art of Salvation, Homily 31

[muchlovedson]

Warning for America

1“If you will return, O Israel,” says the Lord,

“Return to Me;

And if you will put away your abominations out of My sight,

Then you shall not be moved.

2And you shall swear, ‘The Lord lives,’

In truth, in judgment, and in righteousness;

The nations shall bless themselves in Him,

And in Him they shall glory.”

3For thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem:

“Break up your fallow ground,

And do not sow among thorns.

4Circumcise yourselves to the Lord,

And take away the foreskins of your hearts,

You men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem,

Lest My fury come forth like fire,

And burn so that no one can quench it,

Because of the evil of your doings.”

An Imminent Invasion

5Declare in Judah and proclaim in Jerusalem, and say:

“Blow the trumpet in the land;

Cry, ‘Gather together,’

And say, ‘Assemble yourselves,

And let us go into the fortified cities.’

6Set up the standard toward Zion.

Take refuge! Do not delay!

For I will bring disaster from the north,

And great destruction.”

7The lion has come up from his thicket,

And the destroyer of nations is on his way.

He has gone forth from his place

To make your land desolate.

Your cities will be laid waste,

Without inhabitant.

8For this, clothe yourself with sackcloth,

Lament and wail.

For the fierce anger of the Lord

Has not turned back from us.

9“And it shall come to pass in that day,” says the Lord,

“That the heart of the king shall perish,

And the heart of the princes;

The priests shall be astonished,

And the prophets shall wonder.”

10Then I said, “Ah, Lord God!

Surely You have greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem,

Saying, ‘You shall have peace,’

Whereas the sword reaches to the heart.”

11At that time it will be said

To this people and to Jerusalem,

“A dry wind of the desolate heights blows in the wilderness

Toward the daughter of My people—

Not to fan or to cleanse—

12A wind too strong for these will come for Me;

Now I will also speak judgment against them.”

13“Behold, he shall come up like clouds,

And his chariots like a whirlwind.

His horses are swifter than eagles.

Woe to us, for we are plundered!”

14O Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness,

That you may be saved.

How long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?

15For a voice declares from Dan

And proclaims affliction from Mount Ephraim:

16“Make mention to the nations,

Yes, proclaim against Jerusalem,

That watchers come from a far country

And raise their voice against the cities of Judah.

17Like keepers of a field they are against her all around,

Because she has been rebellious against Me,” says the Lord.

18“Your ways and your doings

Have procured these things for you.

This is your wickedness,

Because it is bitter,

Because it reaches to your heart.”

Sorrow for the Doomed Nation

19O my soul, my soul!

I am pained in my very heart!

My heart makes a noise in me;

I cannot hold my peace,

Because you have heard, O my soul,

The sound of the trumpet,

The alarm of war.

20Destruction upon destruction is cried,

For the whole land is plundered.

Suddenly my tents are plundered,

And my curtains in a moment.

21How long will I see the standard,

And hear the sound of the trumpet?

22“For My people are foolish,

They have not known Me.

They are silly children,

And they have no understanding.

They are wise to do evil,

But to do good they have no knowledge.”

23I beheld the earth, and indeed it was without form, and void;

And the heavens, they had no light.

24I beheld the mountains, and indeed they trembled,

And all the hills moved back and forth.

25I beheld, and indeed there was no man,

And all the birds of the heavens had fled.

26I beheld, and indeed the fruitful land was a wilderness,

And all its cities were broken down

At the presence of the Lord,

By His fierce anger.

27For thus says the Lord:

“The whole land shall be desolate;

Yet I will not make a full end.

28For this shall the earth mourn,

And the heavens above be black,

Because I have spoken.

I have purposed and will not relent,

Nor will I turn back from it.

29The whole city shall flee from the noise of the horsemen and bowmen.

They shall go into thickets and climb up on the rocks.

Every city shall be forsaken,

And not a man shall dwell in it.

30“And when you are plundered,

What will you do?

Though you clothe yourself with crimson,

Though you adorn yourself with ornaments of gold,

Though you enlarge your eyes with paint,

In vain you will make yourself fair;

Your lovers will despise you;

They will seek your life.

31“For I have heard a voice as of a woman in labor,

The anguish as of her who brings forth her first child,

The voice of the daughter of Zion bewailing herself;

She spreads her hands, saying,

‘Woe is me now, for my soul is weary

Because of murderers!’

Jeremiah 4 NKJV

“Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.

“For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, or walk after other gods to your hurt, then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. “Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know, and then come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered to do all these abominations’? Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of thieves in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, ” says the LORD.

And now, because you have done all these works,” says the LORD, “and I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear, and I called you, but you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house which is called by My name, in which you trust, and to this place which I gave to you and your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh.

The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger. Do they provoke Me to anger?” says the LORD. “ Do they not provoke themselves, to the shame of their own faces?” Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, My anger and My fury will be poured out on this place—on man and on beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground. And it will burn and not be quenched.”

But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.’ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have even sent to you all My servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them. Yet they did not obey Me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.

“So you shall say to them, ‘This is a nation that does not obey the voice of the LORD their God nor receive correction. Truth has perished and has been cut off from their mouth. Cut off your hair and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on the desolate heights; for the LORD has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.’ For the children of Judah have done evil in My sight,” says the LORD. “They have set their abominations in the house which is called by My name, to pollute it.”

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭7:3, 5-11, 13-14, 18-20, 23-26, 28-30‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

* fireworks in Honolulu

15Behold, I will bring a nation against you from afar,

O house of Israel,” says the Lord.

“It is a mighty nation,

It is an ancient nation,

A nation whose language you do not know,

Nor can you understand what they say.

16Their quiver is like an open tomb;

They are all mighty men.

17And they shall eat up your harvest and your bread,

Which your sons and daughters should eat.

They shall eat up your flocks and your herds;

They shall eat up your vines and your fig trees;

They shall destroy your fortified cities,

In which you trust, with the sword.

18“Nevertheless in those days,” says the Lord, “I will not make a complete end of you. 19And it will be when you say, ‘Why does the Lord our God do all these things to us?’ then you shall answer them, ‘Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve aliens in a land that is not yours.’

20“Declare this in the house of Jacob

And proclaim it in Judah, saying,

21‘Hear this now, O foolish people,

Without understanding,

Who have eyes and see not,

And who have ears and hear not:

22Do you not fear Me?’ says the Lord.

‘Will you not tremble at My presence,

Who have placed the sand as the bound of the sea,

By a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass beyond it?

And though its waves toss to and fro,

Yet they cannot prevail;

Though they roar, yet they cannot pass over it.

23But this people has a defiant and rebellious heart;

They have revolted and departed.

24They do not say in their heart,

“Let us now fear the Lord our God,

Who gives rain, both the former and the latter, in its season.

He reserves for us the appointed weeks of the harvest.”

25Your iniquities have turned these things away,

And your sins have withheld good from you.

26‘For among My people are found wicked men;

They lie in wait as one who sets snares;

They set a trap;

They catch men.

27As a cage is full of birds,

So their houses are full of deceit.

Therefore they have become great and grown rich.

28They have grown fat, they are sleek;

Yes, they surpass the deeds of the wicked;

They do not plead the cause,

The cause of the fatherless;

Yet they prosper,

And the right of the needy they do not defend.

29Shall I not punish them for these things?’ says the Lord.

‘Shall I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?’

30“An astonishing and horrible thing

Has been committed in the land:

31The prophets prophesy falsely,

And the priests rule by their own power;

And My people love to have it so.

But what will you do in the end?

Jeremiah 5:15-31 NKJV

[1baddmouthcrown]

PART 1 A FEW PSALM’S.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore. Psalm 133

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord. There were they in great fear: for God is in the generation of the righteous. Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge. Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! when the Lord bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad. Psalm 14

Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Psalm 8

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. Psalm 19

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish. Psalm 1

The king shall joy in thy strength, O Lord; and in thy salvation how greatly shall he rejoice! Thou hast given him his heart’s desire, and hast not withholden the request of his lips. Selah. For thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness: thou settest a crown of pure gold on his head. He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever. His glory is great in thy salvation: honour and majesty hast thou laid upon him. For thou hast made him most blessed for ever: thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance. For the king trusteth in the Lord, and through the mercy of the most High he shall not be moved. Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies: thy right hand shall find out those that hate thee. Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them. Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men. For they intended evil against thee: they imagined a mischievous device, which they are not able to perform. Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them. Be thou exalted, Lord, in thine own strength: so will we sing and praise thy power. Psalm 21

Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty: then I restored that which I took not away. O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee. Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake: let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel. Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face. I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children. For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. When I wept, and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach. I made sackcloth also my garment; and I became a proverb to them. They that sit in the gate speak against me; and I was the song of the drunkards. But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time: O God, in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation. Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink: let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters. Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. Hear me, O Lord; for thy lovingkindness is good: turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. And hide not thy face from thy servant; for I am in trouble: hear me speedily. Draw nigh unto my soul, and redeem it: deliver me because of mine enemies. Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonour: mine adversaries are all before thee. Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins continually to shake. Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents. For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten; and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded. Add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy righteousness. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous. But I am poor and sorrowful: let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high. I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving. This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs. The humble shall see this, and be glad: and your heart shall live that seek God. For the Lord heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners. Let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas, and every thing that moveth therein. For God will save Zion, and will build the cities of Judah: that they may dwell there, and have it in possession. The seed also of his servants shall inherit it: and they that love his name shall dwell therein. Psalm 69

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. Psalm 2

They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth even for ever. For the rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous; lest the righteous put forth their hands unto iniquity. Do good, O Lord, unto those that be good, and to them that are upright in their hearts. As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity: but peace shall be upon Israel. Psalm 125

O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed.My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O Lord, how long? Return, O Lord, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies’ sake. For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks? I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears. Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old because of all mine enemies. Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord hath heard my supplication; the Lord will receive my prayer. Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed: let them return and be ashamed suddenly. Psalm 6

I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy name, O thou most High. When mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence. For thou hast maintained my right and my cause; thou satest in the throne judging right. Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever. O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end: and thou hast destroyed cities; their memorial is perished with them. But the Lord shall endure for ever: he hath prepared his throne for judgment. And he shall judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness. The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee. Sing praises to the Lord, which dwelleth in Zion: declare among the people his doings. When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he forgetteth not the cry of the humble. Have mercy upon me, O Lord; consider my trouble which I suffer of them that hate me, thou that liftest me up from the gates of death: That I may shew forth all thy praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion: I will rejoice in thy salvation. The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken. The Lord is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion. Selah. The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. For the needy shall not always be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever. Arise, O Lord; let not man prevail: let the heathen be judged in thy sight. Put them in fear, O Lord: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Selah. Psalm 9

O Lord my God, in thee do I put my trust: save me from all them that persecute me, and deliver me: Lest he tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver. O Lord my God, If I have done this; if there be iniquity in my hands; If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; (yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy:) Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust. Selah. Arise, O Lord, in thine anger, lift up thyself because of the rage of mine enemies: and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded. So shall the congregation of the people compass thee about: for their sakes therefore return thou on high. The Lord shall judge the people: judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is in me. Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins. My defence is of God, which saveth the upright in heart. God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready. He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors. Behold, he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood. He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate. I will praise the Lord according to his righteousness: and will sing praise to the name of the Lord most high. Psalm 7 

Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man. But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy: and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies; make thy way straight before my face. For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue. Destroy thou them, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions; for they have rebelled against thee. But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee. For thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield. Psalm 5

Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help. Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me: say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul: let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt. Let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of the Lord chase them. Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the Lord persecute them. For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul. Let destruction come upon him at unawares; and let his net that he hath hid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall. And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord: it shall rejoice in his salvation. All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee, which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him, yea, the poor and the needy from him that spoileth him? False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I knew not. They rewarded me evil for good to the spoiling of my soul. But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom. I behaved myself as though he had been my friend or brother: I bowed down heavily, as one that mourneth for his mother.  But in mine adversity they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together: yea, the abjects gathered themselves together against me, and I knew it not; they did tear me, and ceased not: With hypocritical mockers in feasts, they gnashed upon me with their teeth. Lord, how long wilt thou look on? rescue my soul from their destructions, my darling from the lions. I will give thee thanks in the great congregation: I will praise thee among much people. Let not them that are mine enemies wrongfully rejoice over me: neither let them wink with the eye that hate me without a cause. For they speak not peace: but they devise deceitful matters against them that are quiet in the land. Yea, they opened their mouth wide against me, and said, Aha, aha, our eye hath seen it. This thou hast seen, O Lord: keep not silence: O Lord, be not far from me. Stir up thyself, and awake to my judgment, even unto my cause, my God and my Lord. Judge me, O Lord my God, according to thy righteousness; and let them not rejoice over me. Let them not say in their hearts, Ah, so would we have it: let them not say, We have swallowed him up. Let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together that rejoice at mine hurt: let them be clothed with shame and dishonour that magnify themselves against me. Let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favour my righteous cause: yea, let them say continually, Let the Lord be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant. And my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness and of thy praise all the day long. Psalm 35

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. Psalm 32

Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name Jah, and rejoice before him. A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation. God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land. O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people, when thou didst march through the wilderness; Selah: The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God: even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel. Thou, O God, didst send a plentiful rain, whereby thou didst confirm thine inheritance, when it was weary. Thy congregation hath dwelt therein: thou, O God, hast prepared of thy goodness for the poor. The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it. Kings of armies did flee apace: and she that tarried at home divided the spoil. Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold. When the Almighty scattered kings in it, it was white as snow in Salmon. The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan; an high hill as the hill of Bashan. Why leap ye, ye high hills? this is the hill which God desireth to dwell in; yea, the Lord will dwell in it for ever.  The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place. Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah. He that is our God is the God of salvation; and unto God the Lord belong the issues from death. But God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such an one as goeth on still in his trespasses. The Lord said, I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring my people again from the depths of the sea: That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same. They have seen thy goings, O God; even the goings of my God, my King, in the sanctuary. The singers went before, the players on instruments followed after; among them were the damsels playing with timbrels. Bless ye God in the congregations, even the Lord, from the fountain of Israel. There is little Benjamin with their ruler, the princes of Judah and their council, the princes of Zebulun, and the princes of Naphtali. Thy God hath commanded thy strength: strengthen, O God, that which thou hast wrought for us. Because of thy temple at Jerusalem shall kings bring presents unto thee. Rebuke the company of spearmen, the multitude of the bulls, with the calves of the people, till every one submit himself with pieces of silver: scatter thou the people that delight in war. Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God. Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth; O sing praises unto the Lord; Selah: To him that rideth upon the heavens of heavens, which were of old; lo, he doth send out his voice, and that a mighty voice. Ascribe ye strength unto God: his excellency is over Israel, and his strength is in the clouds. O God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places: the God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Blessed be God. Psalm 68

[ilovefunreading-blog]

Read Your Bible: The Ten Major Messages of the Bible

As you read the Bible regularly, God will show you the overall messages that He has for mankind.  These messages can be gleaned from the Bible.  There are eight major themes that run through the entire Bible.

1. GOD’S HOLY CHARACTER

A. God is your Creator.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.  SO GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.  And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.  And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Genesis 1:26-30

B. God will provide your needs.

But my GOD SHALL SUPPLY ALL YOUR NEED according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:19

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

Romans 8:32

C. God is holy.

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.  Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.  And one cried unto another, and said, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, IS THE LORD OF HOSTS: the whole earth is full of his glory.  And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.  Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.  Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:  And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

Isaiah 6:1-7

But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

1 Peter 1:15, 16

D. God is loving.

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for GOD IS LOVE.  In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.  Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

1 John 4:8-10

E. God is just and has two sides:  His goodness and His severity.

Behold therefore the GOODNESS AND SEVERITY OF GOD: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.

Romans 11:22

2.  GOD CREATES THE WORLD

A. God is the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:1, 2

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:  And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

Colossians 1:16, 17

B. God created the universe by speaking it into existence.

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

Hebrews 11:3

C. God is the giver of life.

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy:  I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

John 10:10

D. Man is created in God’s image.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...

Genesis 1:26

E.  Man was given dominion over Earth.

...and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth...

Genesis 1:26

3. SATAN DESTROYS THE WORLD GOD CREATED

A. Lucifer is lifted up in pride and rebels against God.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

Isaiah 14:12-15

B. Lucifer, an angel in Eden, falls into sin.

Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.

Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.

Ezekiel 28:13-17

C. Lucifer turns the world into a wilderness.

They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

Isaiah 14:16-17

D. Lucifer, now called Satan attacks God’s creation, Adam.

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

Genesis 3:1

E. Lucifer, now called Satan attacks God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

Matthew 4:3

4. MAN FALLS INTO SIN

A. Man interacts with the devil and is contaminated forever.

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

Genesis 3:1

B. Man falls into sin.

And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.  And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:  And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.  Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.  And unto Adam he said, BECAUSE THOU HAST HEARKENED UNTO THE VOICE OF THY WIFE, AND HAST EATEN OF THE TREE, OF WHICH I COMMANDED THEE, SAYING, THOU SHALT NOT EAT OF IT: CURSED IS THE GROUND FOR THY SAKE; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;  Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Genesis 3:13-19

C. Sin entered into the world and through sin death came.

For if BY ONE MAN’S OFFENCE DEATH REIGNED BY ONE; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)  Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

Romans 5:17, 18

D. Death shortened the life of mankind.

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 6:23

5. GOD CHOOSES ISRAEL

A.  God chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

NOW THE LORD HAD SAID UNTO ABRAM, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee:  And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:  And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Genesis 12:1-3

And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.  And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.  But my covenant will I establish with ISAAC, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year.

Genesis 17:19-21

And JACOB went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.  And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.  And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.  And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;  And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.  And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

Genesis 28:10-15

B. God used Joseph to deliver Israel from starvation and famine.

C. God used Moses to deliver His people from bondage and teach them His laws.

D. God’s people Israel, like the Church, kept going astray to serve other Gods.

Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:  And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.  And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.  What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?  And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:  And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.  For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

Isaiah 5:1-7

6. GOD’S PLAN OF SALVATION THROUGH JESUS CHRIST

...There is none righteous, no, not one.

Romans 3:10

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

Romans 3:23

For the wages of sin is death...

Romans 6:23

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

John 3:16, 17

He came unto his own, and his own received him not.  But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God...

John 1:11, 12

Christians are released into a new life of blessings in Christ Jesus.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:  According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:  Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.  In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.  In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

Ephesians 1:3-14

According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:  Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

2 Peter 1:3, 4

7. THE HOLY SPIRIT COMES INTO THE WORLD

A. Jesus Christ prophesies about the Holy Spirit.  

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

John 7:37-39

B. Jesus promises the Holy Spirit.

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

Acts 1:8

C. The Holy Spirit arrives on earth and people begin to speak in tongues.

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Acts 2:4

D. The Holy Spirit anoints the preaching and thousands are saved.

Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.

Acts 2:41

Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand.

Acts 4:4

E. The Holy Spirit causes the salvation of multitudes.

And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.)

Acts 5:14

F. The Holy Spirit causes the salvation of entire cities.

And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.

Acts 13:44

8. JESUS CHRIST BUILDS HIS CHURCH

A.  Christ will build a church, an army of believers who will win the lost at any cost.

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Matthew 16:18

B. Every single believer is a member of the army and is created specially to do good works for the Lord.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:10

C. The Church is fearless, powerful, anointed and full of God’s authority.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

John 14:12

D. Christ gives all believers a duty to go into the whole world and preach the Gospel.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:  Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Matthew 28:19, 20

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

Acts 1:8

9. THE ETERNAL JUDGMENT OF NATIONS, SINNERS AND CHRISTIANS

A. God will judge all nations. Jesus spoke of the judgment of the nations.

And before him SHALL BE GATHERED ALL NATIONS: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:  And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.  Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

Matthew 25:32

B. God will judge all Christians.

For we must all appear before THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

2 Corinthians 5:10

C. God will judge all sinners.

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.

Revelation 20:11

10. ETERNITY: A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

Revelation 21:1

by Dag Heward-Mills

[dailyofficereadings]

Daily Office Readings June 14, 2019

Psalm 69

Psalm 69

Prayer for Deliverance from Persecution

To the leader: according to Lilies. Of David.

1 Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. 2 I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. 3 I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.

4 More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause; many are those who would destroy me, my enemies who accuse me falsely. What I did not steal must I now restore? 5 O God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.

6 Do not let those who hope in you be put to shame because of me, O Lord God of hosts; do not let those who seek you be dishonored because of me, O God of Israel. 7 It is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that shame has covered my face. 8 I have become a stranger to my kindred, an alien to my mother’s children.

9 It is zeal for your house that has consumed me; the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. 10 When I humbled my soul with fasting,[a] they insulted me for doing so. 11 When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword to them. 12 I am the subject of gossip for those who sit in the gate, and the drunkards make songs about me.

13 But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me. With your faithful help 14 rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. 15 Do not let the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the Pit close its mouth over me.

16 Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me. 17 Do not hide your face from your servant, for I am in distress—make haste to answer me. 18 Draw near to me, redeem me, set me free because of my enemies.

19 You know the insults I receive, and my shame and dishonor; my foes are all known to you. 20 Insults have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. 21 They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

22 Let their table be a trap for them, a snare for their allies. 23 Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually. 24 Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them. 25 May their camp be a desolation; let no one live in their tents. 26 For they persecute those whom you have struck down, and those whom you have wounded, they attack still more.[b] 27 Add guilt to their guilt; may they have no acquittal from you. 28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous. 29 But I am lowly and in pain; let your salvation, O God, protect me.

30 I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. 31 This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs. 32 Let the oppressed see it and be glad; you who seek God, let your hearts revive. 33 For the Lord hears the needy, and does not despise his own that are in bonds.

34 Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. 35 For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah; and his servants shall live[c] there and possess it; 36 the children of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall live in it.

Footnotes:

Psalm 69:10 Gk Syr: Heb I wept, with fasting my soul, or I made my soul mourn with fasting

Psalm 69:26 Gk Syr: Heb recount the pain of

Psalm 69:35 Syr: Heb and they shall live

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Psalm 73

BOOK III

(Psalms 73–89)

Psalm 73

Plea for Relief from Oppressors

A Psalm of Asaph.

1 Truly God is good to the upright,[a] to those who are pure in heart. 2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped. 3 For I was envious of the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

4 For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek. 5 They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people. 6 Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them like a garment. 7 Their eyes swell out with fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. 8 They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. 9 They set their mouths against heaven, and their tongues range over the earth.

10 Therefore the people turn and praise them,[b] and find no fault in them.[c] 11 And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” 12 Such are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. 13 All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. 14 For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning.

15 If I had said, “I will talk on in this way,” I would have been untrue to the circle of your children. 16 But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, 17 until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end. 18 Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. 19 How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors! 20 They are[d] like a dream when one awakes; on awaking you despise their phantoms.

21 When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, 22 I was stupid and ignorant; I was like a brute beast toward you. 23 Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me with honor.[e] 25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength[f] of my heart and my portion forever.

27 Indeed, those who are far from you will perish; you put an end to those who are false to you. 28 But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, to tell of all your works.

Footnotes:

Psalm 73:1 Or good to Israel

Psalm 73:10 Cn: Heb his people return here

Psalm 73:10 Cn: Heb abundant waters are drained by them

Psalm 73:20 Cn: Heb Lord

Psalm 73:24 Or to glory

Psalm 73:26 Heb rock

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Sirach 45:6-16

Aaron

6 He exalted Aaron, a holy man like Moses[a] who was his brother, of the tribe of Levi. 7 He made an everlasting covenant with him, and gave him the priesthood of the people. He blessed him with stateliness, and put a glorious robe on him. 8 He clothed him in perfect splendor, and strengthened him with the symbols of authority, the linen undergarments, the long robe, and the ephod. 9 And he encircled him with pomegranates, with many golden bells all around, to send forth a sound as he walked, to make their ringing heard in the temple as a reminder to his people; 10 with the sacred vestment, of gold and violet and purple, the work of an embroiderer; with the oracle of judgment, Urim and Thummim; 11 with twisted crimson, the work of an artisan; with precious stones engraved like seals, in a setting of gold, the work of a jeweler, to commemorate in engraved letters each of the tribes of Israel; 12 with a gold crown upon his turban, inscribed like a seal with “Holiness,” a distinction to be prized, the work of an expert, a delight to the eyes, richly adorned. 13 Before him such beautiful things did not exist. No outsider ever put them on, but only his sons and his descendants in perpetuity. 14 His sacrifices shall be wholly burned twice every day continually. 15 Moses ordained him, and anointed him with holy oil; it was an everlasting covenant for him and for his descendants as long as the heavens endure, to minister to the Lord[b] and serve as priest and bless his people in his name. 16 He chose him out of all the living to offer sacrifice to the Lord, incense and a pleasing odor as a memorial portion, to make atonement for the[c] people.

Footnotes:

Sirach 45:6 Gk him

Sirach 45:15 Gk him

Sirach 45:16 Other ancient authorities read his or your

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

2 Corinthians 12:11-21

Paul’s Concern for the Corinthian Church

11 I have been a fool! You forced me to it. Indeed you should have been the ones commending me, for I am not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing. 12 The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, signs and wonders and mighty works. 13 How have you been worse off than the other churches, except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong!

14 Here I am, ready to come to you this third time. And I will not be a burden, because I do not want what is yours but you; for children ought not to lay up for their parents, but parents for their children. 15 I will most gladly spend and be spent for you. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? 16 Let it be assumed that I did not burden you. Nevertheless (you say) since I was crafty, I took you in by deceit. 17 Did I take advantage of you through any of those whom I sent to you? 18 I urged Titus to go, and sent the brother with him. Titus did not take advantage of you, did he? Did we not conduct ourselves with the same spirit? Did we not take the same steps?

19 Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves before you? We are speaking in Christ before God. Everything we do, beloved, is for the sake of building you up. 20 For I fear that when I come, I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish; I fear that there may perhaps be quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. 21 I fear that when I come again, my God may humble me before you, and that I may have to mourn over many who previously sinned and have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and licentiousness that they have practiced.

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Luke 19:41-48

Jesus Weeps over Jerusalem

41 As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. 44 They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”[a]

Jesus Cleanses the Temple

45 Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; 46 and he said, “It is written,

‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.”

47 Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; 48 but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.

Footnotes:

Luke 19:44 Gk lacks from God

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.