The Last Ride

                                                                       
For He says: "In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you."* Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. NKJV 2Cr 6:2

Yesterday I took the day off. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and hazy, a slow hot Tuesday. By noon I decided to go to Marshalls. Nice to be inside an air conditioned department store buying little things like soap and lotion. Little things that make you feel so good but wont break the bank. On my way to Marshalls a funeral....Who was this mysterious person that was being buried on a hot day with just 4 or so cars following the hearse?

When I was young I would look at the obituary section of the paper (every time) and I would be terrified but mesmerized by the array of names and ages of complete strangers that I never even knew existed, but now know they didn't exist anymore...

Would the few numbers of cars following the hearse be a sign that the person died very short of survivors or very short of loved ones?

Would that last ride be to the celestial mansions on the Father's Estates or to the worst, most treacherous, scary, filthy, dark, sad, inescapable ghetto more known as "HELL"?

Was it someone that in life bent his knees on hot summer afternoons to speak with the Father, or was it someone that spent his summer evenings in bars while his family wondered where he was?

Was it a mom that set her kitchen table nicely for her family and knew they were special gifts from heaven, or a mom whose own kids were invisible to her and was too busy with her gossiping friends, latest lipstick color and worldly affairs?

Was it a dad, a business man, very involved with his financial life, pretty secretaries and golf friends, or a Daddy that put his kid to bed every night with little kisses, sweet bedtime stories and prayers?

Was it someone whose soul was full of grace, love and forgiveness from Jesus, light and airy as heaven, or whose soul was heavy with sins, hatred, pride and unforgiving, as heavy as dirt and the spaces below?

GODCIDE

                                                                            

I think of mine and I think of humanities crimes against God. What are my reasons? What would I say facing the judge?


• I lived for too many years in the world.

• I was just a regular worldly person till 10 years ago, neither me, nor my parents or grandparents, great grandparents and actually no one knew Him, we got saved in a 2 year span and have no biblical roots.

• I tried.

I did live too many years away from Him, not knowing His way, and not knowing that He lives. And now I feel His attempts on my heart. Now it hurts me when I hurt Him. I feel He wishes one thousand from me and I only come up with one cent and trembling hands. My smallness is embarrassing and unescaping.

My spirit needs desperately a more excellent way and at the same time I feel chained to this brutal force called flesh. At the same time that I love His perfect love I keep on hating. I have more deaths on my back than most serial killers in the end of their careers. I top all of them easily. And He keeps on grabbing on insisting on expecting, He invested everything on "me" and I keep on disappointing Him, on needing salvation from my old ways.

Just like Adam and Eve hid, I hide too. I hide on the Law, I hide on psychology, I hide on simplistically being just a human being. I hide on self preservation.

And others will keep on going with their rituals. And even others will keep on going denying that He exists and that He is God. And you know why? Because it is so hard! Because they don’t want to be like Him, so if He doesn’t exist they can just be left alone to be what they are and to be what they like to be, and to be what they know how to be: F L E S H.

So great and so brutal are mine and humanities crimes committed against God, that I don’t want to rip off my vests but my mind. Free me please from the death of this body, Holy Spirit! Free me please Holy Spirit from any genetic association that I have with my own species.

Thank God I didn’t  just turn into one of those incense burners, or into a rosary repeater, or into one of them that lit candles and say mantras, and wear all white or black or all orange, and shave their heads, and eat just veagan, and perform complicated rituals? That is all so easy, it all exalts the flesh. And they can't see, what I see now.

But instead I chose the Word or the Word chose me, as they say, and the Word speaks to my inner core even with my Bible closed, even in the height of my anger, in the midweek a thousand miles away from church sermons, the Word keeps on living. The Word is not restricted to the exact color candle or animal type blood or exact day of the week for rituals or readings.
The Word is not under any formality or procedure designed by humans on futile attempts to BE something when only He IS everything . The Word is the only One that physically, spiritually, visibly, precisely, infinetely, and in every step condemned and destroyed flesh. The Word cant be shut, can be killed though to this day they keep on trying. And the Word cries for the multitude of my crimes, our crimes against Him and against His creation.


The Word is the One and only way. The Word is God. The Word is Love.

THE MUSIC OF GOD

The music of God came to me

As I turned around the curve

And found the ghostly shadow

Of a tattered banner still hanging high

But silent and grey and frozen and faded

Not flying full of hope against the sky

No; a lonely bird that no longer can fly

And that’s when and why

My eyes filled with tears

And all my strength left me

Like an army of trembling hands

Like an army of wobbly knees

I knew how big was this defeat

And that’s when I wished to die

I simply wished to cease to be

I did not wish to see

The others marching by

To their captivity

I did not wish to hear

The enemy’s armies’ shouts of victory

And as I died in little bits

The music of God came to me

And ever so softly

Wrapped my thorn from war body

In a blanket of gentle words

A symphony

That spoke of flowers blooming and children laughing

That smelled like the fresh sunny meadows

By the sea

Not like gunpowder and human waste

And misery

Like a little baby

I let the music to rock me

It picked me up from the battleground

In this blanket of soft words

And sweet sounds

Erasing the stains of blood

Washing me

They are “seeds of new life” they sang to me

And I allowed

The music of God

To put my parts back together

For they were all over and I scared

I was like that banner all tattered

And I let the colors

No longer grey

To lullaby me to sleep and rest

Even with my failed tests

And enormous defeat

And to say the least

I let the music of God

Simply to love me

Worship and Bible Study - All Nations Baptist Church, Danbury, CT 03-20-2011 11:45am - AmericanTowns.com

Worship and Bible Study - All Nations Baptist Church, Danbury, CT 03-20-2011 11:45am - AmericanTowns.com

wheat and chaff

I don't even know when I became a "woman of prayer" it was just suddenly as suddenly as how the first day of spring (not the calendar one) pops up breaking the rigorous disciplines of winter....you open the door bracing for the cold air and it's w a r m  and  b r e e z y.

I only know that this specific night I took enough NyQuil to kill a turkey (LOL) I was really sick and I just cant fall asleep if my nose is stuffy breathing through my mouth is not an option ...awake until maybe midnight I kept praying for my dear ones Antonio Arelis Miguel Ceu Nick Mom Simone Angelica Wanda Luana and Preethan and myself. Every time I prayed I was certain that in the end I would just fall asleep, it didn't happen. Instead I felt this sadness building up, these tears hot and fierce inside my heart. But I wasn't going to let them out.

Images of my mom's straight and long black hair dancing around her waist, her body so shapely in the blue and white polka dot halter top dress with a big red heart on the chest, that she herself made (made one for me and another for Eliane too) She was like a tiny Japanese looking doll, holding me by one child like hand and Eliane by the other as she walked us everyday in our way to and from school. On the road, along cat calls a small procession of cars and lots of honking didn't do anything for her (she knew she was beautiful but her heart belonged to daddy and to us, her kids) but that too passed one day...

Her sweet features kept playing in my mind only interrupted by another, that of Ceu's newborn baby crying with her pinkish face and tiny helpless delicate body...I have seen Ceu's beginning ....mom's best days, and now this little pink baby too... I'm getting old and seen so much...and so much will also pass...

Jesus warned us: life is like a vapor...so is beauty, and everything truly passes but His Words. So weird how now is already 4AM and here I am, entertained by old and new images and tears I could not restrain anymore, the Holy Spirit visited me and my room was in glory, sleeping was no longer an option, so I continued paying...but now was not just Ceu's new baby images in my mind, but it was humanity's newborns and humanity's helpless older bodies and different people and the sick and the emotions that come and go, and pretty faces and sad ones, and tears rolled.

The instability of things! How delicate and helpless not just newborns, life. Life is just so filled with uncertainty, new life and old life and in between alike. Life walks alongside with death. Is life filled with death, and in death there is life??? And then Joana my beautiful friend and the other short lady from church that would not pray for her to get healed but would pray for God to take her ... Wheat and chaff, brilliancy and idiocy, life and death and uncertainty...Yes thanks be to Him that life is like a vapor but Eternal Life is in His Presence. Anything else would be unbearable.

The Nissan Saleman from Wilton CT.



Liam was a very pleasant young man. After visiting about a dozen dealerships and finding not so nice salespeople, Ceu, my daughter, immediately liked him. He was soft spoken, gentle, really quiet for a salesperson, even gentler than Dr. Taweh, Ceu said, but I disagreed.

I liked him too. He was young but kind of old school. In his desk he had a picture of his new bride. He was a newlywed he told me excitedly “we got married in Hawaii” he continued pointing to the picture of the wedding day in his desk. “When you hit the lotto you don’t ask questions” he said referring to his wife’s beauty.

Everything about Liam was good, but a spark was missing in his eyes…like many people, even in spite of all his new wonderful achievements and blessings, still the Light was missing. His happy words didn’t match a sad tone in his eyes. So silently I prayed for Liam, I told him about Jesus about Gods gift to us…in his gentle voice his response to me was: what would you think of me if I told you I was an atheist? I responded that I would still think he was the sweet and nice person I thought he was.

At home days later I continued to pray for him, on and off, and one day God gave me this revelation:

Liam gets up every morning and takes his shower, he shaves his face and puts his cologne, he brushes his teeth, uses mouth wash, carefully applies mousse to his hair and combs it his way. He looks at himself, then he wraps the bandage around his wound very carefully and very tightly, then he finishes dressing-up and faces the world. Like Liam so many have been wounded deeply. Unfortunately the Only “person” that can heal the hurt, is the one they shut down. A multitude of hurts carefully hidden and bandaged, very carefully protected. Maybe at some point they were exposed just to get hurt even more. This is your world, your neighbors. Masks and bandages carefully put on…A morning ritual all over the world. Hide what is hurting, protect what otherwise maybe vulnerable, and shut Him down.

Why? Because if God truly existed He would not allow me to suffer, or him or her to suffer, and He would not allow this or that to have taken place…if He exists He must not love me because He surely didn’t care to stop the hurt from happening...


Yes He did care! God stopped all the hurt from happening by allowing His only Son to be soooo hurt and sooo crushed for us. God started it all anew in the person of Jesus. If we were only "somewhat" like Him we wouldnt cause the monstruous hurts we hear in the news, we wouldnt even cause the little daily hurts we still do to others.

Based on my own hurts and semi healed scars, I know that I grew spiritually through pains and sorrows and much more through lacks and needs and through my afflictions then through my good times. Standing on my removed bandages I can sincerely say that all my hurts are still infinitely less than those of Jesus, betrayed, savagely beaten, abandoned and hung on a cross to die as a criminal convict, ashamed, humiliated, naked, cold, hungry and thirsty, mocked-at, called names, ridiculed, with nowhere to go and full of His own pain still He cared to minister to the pain of those few mourning for Him. I imagine the cold air, the hours hanging on the cross, hour after hour, one eye shut, His Jewish beard ripped away with force and violence, what if He needed to go to the bathroom, what if insects were crawling on His face and body, skin ripped away, what was left covered in splinters from the rough wood, still His last words were blessed words of Love, sweet words of Forgiveness and Hope.

Jesus' cared for you and for all till His last drop of blood, which was capable to save the whole world. Jesus' last breath was still to comfort. When faced with anguish He didnt take it out on the weaker or on the foolish not even on the meanest one of us, He brough it to the Father...Jesus was sweet and good and a saviour to His last second on earth. Yes He cares for you.

The King of Hearts

                                                                               

God can love so well and so long, He can love forevermore because He is forever. Out of God’s lips no one will ever hear: well, I wasted 10 years of my life loving this person…Because God’s life has no end, He is not limited. We have been tainted by the little years of life we have, and during those few years have to do it right. 10 years or more is too much to waste, 1 maybe too much to waste. We have been scared by our limits and uncertainties…


And this is what took me to seek for something bigger as a teenager. I rebelled against my parents and against all adults. I rebelled against the formal types and the hippies too. All of them with no exceptions were a failure in my eyes. They seemed so loveless and joyless to me. They never enjoyed anything. They never enjoyed the money they worked so hard for. They were incapable of loving the person they vowed to love. Much of their love ended in hate and the children they produced among loving words and whispers of passion, were also barely loved…one resemblance of traits they didn’t care for …love could cool…

I vowed to never be like them. I vowed to do everything differently. But I too without even knowing was already becoming one of them. Too busy dating and trying to find a school that could hold me trough the uncertainties of Brazil’s economic situation in the 80s. My life was already shrinking around myself.

I wondered about love…how can someone for their entire lives just love the 4 or 5 in their households and then barely…in my juvenile eyes even the love they dedicated to their parents was a love undressed of joy. It was more like an “obligated too, irritated by you, love I still give”

I vowed to never ever follow failed models, my own models and the general public models given to us through history. But before I knew I was thinking of baby names and though I did everything opposite to what they did, and though I vowed to love more and love better and love further and love harder and to love longer, and to also love in numbers and quality, I too failed. I knew that…I knew that I too didn’t know how to love, didn’t know if I truly loved who I once claimed too and now really seemed to hate…

I laughed at myself and wondered if there was a guide a step by step guide on how to really, for real give substantial love. Something like an Idiots Guide to Real Love. I needed one soon. I imagined that my parents like myself were too caught in this rebelling against their parents when they were young, but their parents also had no fault, no clue. We all rebel against becoming another failed model. But no good model was available to my knowledge.

Yes there were songs of love, of broken hearted people with cheating lovers, of happy people in love, of immigrants missing the nation they so much loved. But in my eyes this too was limiting stuff…how can you only love your lover, your country, your children? This tiny life seemed like a waste of time. Mine was one unexpecting life. Weak models of love, fiery words of passion that usually ended in a cold or bored bed. Really foolish and pointless. Love that ends in hate, passion that ends without compassion, usually in bitterness. The love of humans is not what I admired, but there was no escaping.
Then my “Idiot’s Guide to Love” came through one day.

1000000000000000000000000000 to the N to the N to the N to the N and N volts incomparable to it…a Light that could fill all the dark holes of the universe known and unknown. A warmth that expressed Everything, everything that is safe and good, and life and purpose, and L O V E real love gentle and pure and exciting so much like my first bike ride on my own, and the summers of my childhood, and grandma’s Aracy “cozido” with bananas and corn and the rice to go along, and like her cuscus too, and like the first time I’ve seen puppies and held one, like seeing grandma Julia beautifying herself with a dab of perfume a hat and pearls, like looking at my mom’s closet and wondering at all the silks and scarves and chains and heels…would I ever measure up to her model of lady and mom?

…a new Universe was before me, just like when in Buzios we saw all the baby fish in the seashore by the millions…like when you’re confronted with so much life and the helplessness of the possibility of the loss of it all…like when they handled Ceu to me, wet with blood and placenta and I was so mesmerized and afraid that she would slip from my arms and die on her very first day of life…so I draped her in my hospital gown but never felt safe since that day, just like when the kitchen starts to fill the whole house with the smell of cake and you know at any minute now pleasure is near, like the smell of the earth just before a heavy rain, like the humming of bees by the Jaboticaba trees and you know even the worst humming wont keep you away…I was before a new Universe.

One that would take me by the hand step by step. A Christ in me, me in Him. A Christ to save me from my unexpeting life. A Christ to save me from when life turns 40 or 60 or more years of death. A Christ to expand my borders my love limits my love knowledge. A Christ to save me from my ugly criminal self, my unloving heart.

My Idiots Guide to Love came in the form of a deformed person, a man hanging on a cross…Is it even possible, love like this? Love that can give it all endlessly and hopefully.

Is it possible, to kill Death and Hate and Hell by dying? My heart trembles and makes my whole body shake…

I was before a new Universe…the love I so much searched and doubted and questioned and wondered for, was here, in the form of what was left from a man hanging on this cross wet and covered by His own blood…Somehow I thought of Jan 1st my baby, wet, spotted by my own blood…it is funny how our minds react to when the Truth is finally put before us… Love like this made me feel so small, so small that I wished to disappear, to vanish for sometime or forever in my tremendous smallness…

A Christ to save me from much more than I even knew I needed saving, I knew nothing of hell and nothing of my own sinful condition, I knew nothing even of the condemnation hanging over my head, my days counted…

How foolish. I knew nothing of my final destination. The most unloving and fickle people I knew in earth seemed like merciful angels before what exists in hell…how common and unkind of me to always be criticizing people.

I never even knew I was coming to Him looking for the perfect Love and found perfect Eternal Life, an escape from hell…

I was lucky or better yet Blessed, I was before a whole and Holy new Universe ruled by the King of Heaven, the King of Real Hearts the King of Eternity, the King of Love and Charity, Eternally Strong and Just and Whole and Perfect, the King of me.