(8/3/18) AC Scrapbook Letter
I failed this summer.
I’m sorry, Geormond; I’m sorry, Isaiah. Will you ever find peace in your lives? Did I do enough to save you?
I cannot know; my inadequacy ruins me.
Oh LORD, give me peace! For my soul is weary. I long for human affection, but I reject it for your sake. I have given up my hunger, my rest, my time for You. For my children’s sake, my peers consider me an outcast. My wants, my ambitions, they have become impossibilities. I have given every hour of the day to feeding my children. I bear their toils as you have borne mine.
Yet it is not enough! Oh LORD! What will I do? Even with my utmost, still I fail! They will fall, and they will perish. Save them LORD, for I cannot! I plead with you, for your jurisdiction knows no bounds. Surely you can save them, so do it! Please God, save them! Your love covers all wrongs; surely You can overcome my failure.
I know You do all things for Your good. So if it pleases you, let them fall, though it ruins me. I cry, for their failure is mine.
John! I did not discipline you enough. Could my rod have saved another from your cruelty? Could my correction have saved you from yourself?
Geormond! I do not know if your soul will persist; were the roots I planted strong enough? Or were they but brittle sticks, broken with a single step in the dark? Who can help you? Who will save you? Turn to God, lest you run the race alone! I fear you never carried my strength back home, so I am crippled with regret.
I failed you, Isaiah. Oh, how I failed you! Who knows what demons brood behind those wondrous eyes of yours; I should have given you a little more, pushed you a little harder. Will you ever know the love of God? Don’t lose hope. Live! Oh, my God, please let him live! Guilt coils around me like a noose. Sorrow crushes me so that I can no longer breath. Had I done all I could? Had I loved them to my utmost? No; I deserve death, for my selfishness has damned them all to Hell.
When I look around me, I am destroyed, for I am not alone in my failure. Oh, God! My peers live their faiths for the children, but not themselves! They change when no campers are near. Brothers and sisters, hear me! You sneak out, late at night, leaving your cabin completely unattended. You gather in the dark, surreptitiously planning out your debaucheries. Bareback horse-riding. Skinny dipping. Spin the bottle. Every year, the foolish do such things. Have you not learned? Flee the evil desires of youth! Do you not know? True Christianity does not change. Idolaters! No one can serve two masters. You will hate one and love the other. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? If you dishonor God when there are no children to watch you, then the Christianity you have so carefully mimicked is fake! You profess to know God, but you deny Him by your works!
Fools! You must give it your all! Here there are children struggling with depression, struggling with divorce. Teenagers who must return to neighborhoods pockmarked by bullets. Twelve-year-olds who cut themselves, who yearn to watch their blood spill, who wish for death but lack the courage. A rape-victim, searching for a reason to live. A child of abuse, hating God for what He has done. The sick and needy are knocking at your door, but you turn them away because you want to have a good time, because you think nobody is watching. Do you not fear God? It is not for nothing that He demands everything you have! What could possibly be more important?
So many of you revel in a perversion of God’s love. Like parrots you echo each other with empty words: “I love your heart of service”; “I just love Jesus so much”; “I love you”. You use ‘love’ too lightly. God is love. True love is hard. God loved Job -- and Job loved God. That is love, and God calls you to do no less. God demands your all -- He cares for nothing else! He doesn’t care about your image; He doesn’t care about your friendships; He doesn’t care about your suffering. If your heart -- your thoughts, your words, your actions -- loves at any moment anything but Him, then the Lord’s wrath burns against you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire -- He is a jealous GOD.
So give Him your all! If you falter in a time of trouble, how small is your strength! Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?
Go! Go home, and give God your all! Make no mistake, it will be difficult: even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength! They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Go home, and give God your all! Spare nothing for His cause, and he will sustain you; for everything but God is meaningless; everything but God will condemn you to Hell.
Oh Yhwh, consume us! Give us the strength to do your will. Amen.
I’m sorry, Geormond; I’m sorry, Isaiah. Will you ever find peace in your lives? Did I do enough to save you?
I cannot know; my inadequacy ruins me.
Oh LORD, give me peace! For my soul is weary. I long for human affection, but I reject it for your sake. I have given up my hunger, my rest, my time for You. For my children’s sake, my peers consider me an outcast. My wants, my ambitions, they have become impossibilities. I have given every hour of the day to feeding my children. I bear their toils as you have borne mine.
Yet it is not enough! Oh LORD! What will I do? Even with my utmost, still I fail! They will fall, and they will perish. Save them LORD, for I cannot! I plead with you, for your jurisdiction knows no bounds. Surely you can save them, so do it! Please God, save them! Your love covers all wrongs; surely You can overcome my failure.
I know You do all things for Your good. So if it pleases you, let them fall, though it ruins me. I cry, for their failure is mine.
John! I did not discipline you enough. Could my rod have saved another from your cruelty? Could my correction have saved you from yourself?
Geormond! I do not know if your soul will persist; were the roots I planted strong enough? Or were they but brittle sticks, broken with a single step in the dark? Who can help you? Who will save you? Turn to God, lest you run the race alone! I fear you never carried my strength back home, so I am crippled with regret.
I failed you, Isaiah. Oh, how I failed you! Who knows what demons brood behind those wondrous eyes of yours; I should have given you a little more, pushed you a little harder. Will you ever know the love of God? Don’t lose hope. Live! Oh, my God, please let him live! Guilt coils around me like a noose. Sorrow crushes me so that I can no longer breath. Had I done all I could? Had I loved them to my utmost? No; I deserve death, for my selfishness has damned them all to Hell.
When I look around me, I am destroyed, for I am not alone in my failure. Oh, God! My peers live their faiths for the children, but not themselves! They change when no campers are near. Brothers and sisters, hear me! You sneak out, late at night, leaving your cabin completely unattended. You gather in the dark, surreptitiously planning out your debaucheries. Bareback horse-riding. Skinny dipping. Spin the bottle. Every year, the foolish do such things. Have you not learned? Flee the evil desires of youth! Do you not know? True Christianity does not change. Idolaters! No one can serve two masters. You will hate one and love the other. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? If you dishonor God when there are no children to watch you, then the Christianity you have so carefully mimicked is fake! You profess to know God, but you deny Him by your works!
Fools! You must give it your all! Here there are children struggling with depression, struggling with divorce. Teenagers who must return to neighborhoods pockmarked by bullets. Twelve-year-olds who cut themselves, who yearn to watch their blood spill, who wish for death but lack the courage. A rape-victim, searching for a reason to live. A child of abuse, hating God for what He has done. The sick and needy are knocking at your door, but you turn them away because you want to have a good time, because you think nobody is watching. Do you not fear God? It is not for nothing that He demands everything you have! What could possibly be more important?
So many of you revel in a perversion of God’s love. Like parrots you echo each other with empty words: “I love your heart of service”; “I just love Jesus so much”; “I love you”. You use ‘love’ too lightly. God is love. True love is hard. God loved Job -- and Job loved God. That is love, and God calls you to do no less. God demands your all -- He cares for nothing else! He doesn’t care about your image; He doesn’t care about your friendships; He doesn’t care about your suffering. If your heart -- your thoughts, your words, your actions -- loves at any moment anything but Him, then the Lord’s wrath burns against you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire -- He is a jealous GOD.
So give Him your all! If you falter in a time of trouble, how small is your strength! Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?
Go! Go home, and give God your all! Make no mistake, it will be difficult: even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength! They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Go home, and give God your all! Spare nothing for His cause, and he will sustain you; for everything but God is meaningless; everything but God will condemn you to Hell.
Oh Yhwh, consume us! Give us the strength to do your will. Amen.
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