Tag Archives: Guilt

Practice Writing 2-20-2025

Posted on by under PRACTICE WRITING, The Stories

We buried my father on the hill at Silver Lake Cemetery.

My mother turned to me as the committal concluded and said, “It’s my birthday.”

In all the chaos of those days, we had forgotten. Maybe she had forgotten too. I like to think so. It helps.

This was grief’s first contact with me.

Here is what I learned. Grief reveals chaos. Grief has no standard form or process. It has no absolute expression. It is inevitable. It is universal. It is inescapable, and it does not come with a verifiable end date.

For me, grief’s expression was not sorrow. I cried once during that whole time. That was because I realized my children would never get to know my father, and it was because I knew I would not… could not represent him in his full personhood to them. I had only just started knowing him as a multi-faceted being myself. My father’s death made me realize I had lost an opportunity, one that would never come again.

And so it was that the doorway to chaos first led me into a confrontation with my guilt.

Heaven Pt. 158:So Very High

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles

The Heaven posts are a devotional word study through the Bible using every reference to the word “Heaven”.

The Way By the Cliffs of Moher

The Way By the Cliffs of Moher

“he does not treat us as our sins deserve
    or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;”

Psm. 103:10,11

Sometimes in my place of prayer I become overwhelmed with a sense of my own sinfulness. I feel like Isaiah standing in the Temple of the Lord,  who said “ “Woe to me!…I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Isaiah 6:5

Does that ever happen to you?

At such moments I could easily be swallowed alive by the feelings of guilt if it were not for a truth buried even more deeply within me. That truth is Jesus loves me! Jesus forgives me! Though my sins were as scarlet He has made them white as snow! AND If Jesus has forgiven me who am I not to forgive myself?

The truth is His love is higher than the Heavens. How high is that? Well I guess it depends on which Heavens we are talking about?

Is it higher than the first Heaven the Heaven which the birds fly in? Well then that is about a mile high. That’s pretty high but I think God’s love is bigger than a mile.

Then is it higher than the second Heaven. the Heaven where the planets and stars dwell? Well that is much higher. We are talking light years not miles. And who knows where the end of the universe is? Well no one on this planet, but still our universe is measurable. I think God’s love for me is even bigger than that.

It is higher than the third Heaven, a place beyond the boundaries of time and space, framed in eternity a thing itself unaffected by time. The distance to it cannot be measured by any of our human standards. That is the love God has for me, immeasurable by my standards and yet it is even higher than that!

Let’s suffice it to say God’s love is so big and vast and immeasurable I cannot lose it. If I don’t want God’s love I purposely have to throw it away because there is no other way to get rid of it. Now there’s a guilt killer if ever there was one!