Saul, Paul, and Black History Month

At the end of Acts' chapter 7 an fearless profit by the name of stephen fell dead to the rocks of Jews that stoned him after he claimed to see Jesus at the side of the only true God. While the Jews stoned Stephen they laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul, who from that moment went on about the business of being God's enemy. At that time the evil the Jews had committed in front of this malleable young man shaped his intentions for years until a later time when Jesus intervened. This story reminds me of a situation in which I was talking to a teacher about black history month before i spoke to her class about the monthly occasion. She said that the kids thought the month was all about black people and how they over powered the white man to become free. To finish the story of Paul/Saul being molded, Stephen cried out before the last stone freed him of his earthly bounds, "Father don't hold this sin against them." Why didn't Paul or Saul at the time take that moment of godliness radiating from Stephen and changed the world for the better instead of manufacturing evil for years after? Majority Rules, the most influence on a child's life is shaped by the people that spend the majority of the time with that child. The majority always has the loudest voice and the hate that flowed from their ruckus quieted Stephen words. That often happens with teachers, their hopeful voices often gets faded out by the noise that comes from home.

Black history month is about a common purpose and a principle that a person can have the freedom to truly do whatever they want with the God given life that they have. The majority of the people that prove this to be true was African Americans but it was a minority of whites that paid the price to see the freedom of blacks also, they were slurred at, sprayed with over powering waters, they marched while dogs bit at them, and some did give their life for my and others freedom. Its not about one but about the freedom of all for when one is not free, all are not free. Rosa fought to sit in the front for all, Dr. King said he had a dream of equality for all where his child could hold hands with a white child, African Americans fought to become even not to be exalted above any race. Black history month is not about the majority or the minority it's about process of where the minority and the majority meet. It's about obstacles taken by African American leaders and White leaders to defy the majority of what they had been taught and the majority of what others believe to hold truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. The actions of African Americans to be such examples of how a people should fight for freedom should be celebrated but not abused. We should all celebrate this month to continue efforts to push the kids of our future to the right majority, which is the story of progress of a nation of people that is different but alike at the same time. For today there are Sauls being molded when there could be Pauls molded and that divide between the two is our Slavery and our modern day segregation. I truly hope that the kids at loachapoka elementary understood my message through their present day majority.
May God bless you and May he bless this nation of immigrants, and may he give us the wisdom to create the right majorities

Where There is a Human, There is a Way

"Happy valentines day, don't be jaded there are so many people to love." That was a quote I happen to come across while rolling through my Facebook time line, from the lovely Katherine Russell. I feel as if she has always had great prospective on life every since I met her in my young days at Auburn University, as fellow students at ACF. Faith and prospective are very synonymous words, one means likely to be or become and the other means trust or confidence. Prospective is just taking a problem that is way larger than us and using our faith to make it smaller. Prospective is seeing and faith is doing, having enough belief in our abilities and our God to will ourselves through whatever storm we travel through. When we use our prospective and faith past failures, our biggest problems, and our present fears make the mountain of the uncertain future all but a pebble.

It seems as if recently the world has been burning down around me. Things just continue to get worse, as the days grow greater and as I get older. It seems as if I lost my faith in this world and the good that it can accomplish. The middle east is falling apart and no one is sure as to how it might come back together. The majority of the oil that powers the world is trapped in ports of the middle east that is worker-less because the employed is in the streets changing their governments. This has risen gas prices to new levels never seen before, effecting so many people I know who don't have a job here in Alabama from getting to job interviews, picking kids up from school, going to the grocery stores and raising those grocery prices at the same time. I also have a dear friend who has contracted cancer for the third time, and this time it's located in her brain, another friend who has a dad who fell hit his head and is now in a comma. Two friends of mine have a mother in the hospital with an unknown fever.

I don't speak of those problems to complain, but to show the faith I have in people. Age after age we as a civilization continue to rewrite the book on problem solving, we never quit, we never falter, we never stop, we never grow weary, we never lose the creativity that helps us rewrite the end of our story prolonging our journey that keeps our destruction from becoming present. The truth is that most of the time our own adversity paves the way for our success and that's having prospective. Someone once asked JFK how he became a war hero he said simply, "Somebody sunk our boat." When Chester Greenwood suffered from frost bite after a journey through the woods he went home and invented ear muffs. When Humphrey O'Sullivan got tired of his bad back aching he created the first rubber boot to support him during work. When a man shop was in poor financial position and he got his gaslight turned off due to the corrupt gas company, Thomas Edison created the light bulb. Adversity is what shapes our prospective, our faith, our battle with the unknown and our relationships with god.

Someone once said that the Brave may die young, but the cautious never live. We are the brave, we progress against all odds. Cancer may kill some of us but the rest of us WILL FIND A CURE! While oil grows short now, we will find alternatives in affordable ways. While Health care seems unsolvable, we will find a solution. While those less fortunate then us starve we will find a way to feed them. Because where there is a human there is a way! My faith in us comes from the strength god gives us, our strength to find prospective and have the faith to believe in a better tomorrow, to believe in a dawn at midnight, to know nothing but us can harm our future. For God is the same unchanging provider that gave the strength to the divide of the red sea, and the strength needed to beat cancer for the 3rd time and the strength to awake us from the grips of commas. Where there is a human god is capable of making a way.

May god bless you, May God bless this burning world in which we live, and may he continue provide the way as we follow.

The Architect of Inception

"It was just a dream all so long ago, I was so high in the sky, just don't let me fall." Those are the great words of a talented young rapper by the name of B.O.B. What are dreams and how does the lord work in them? Dreams seem to be something that we truly love and adore, something that takes us from a world not meant for us and place us in a world made for us. Whether it's what we think of as our future or what we're thinking about as we dream, they have captured our hearts like a favorite memory. Think of all the songs, speeches and movies about our dreams, Dream weaver by Aerosmith, The Wizard of OZ, It was just a dream by Nelly, the history changing I have a dream speech by Dr. King. Everyone uses dreams to connect and relate because they are like yesterdays, everyone has one and can understand where you are coming from when you use them to be descriptive of what your trying to prove or tell. My favorite dream usage comes from the movie Inception, one of the greatest movies ever made in my mind. Inception is a movie about dreams and different levels of dreaming, where you meet your enemy at each level which happens to be you and your own subconscious. The deeper you go the more dangerous it gets. At one point of this movie the lead actor finds someone else to design his dreaming because his memories keep interrupting the job at hand, this is our life. Our life is our dream, we can't continue to sleep on the days we live thinking that we can only accomplish our hope through something that's only a dream. If you want to go change the world go and do so, if you believe that you can stop what is the downfall of man reach out and break the fall, and if you can hinder destruction then why not be the world's hero. I recall 25 years ago a group of brave men and a teacher bravely lead us to the heavens from the space shuttle Challenger. They left this level of life to touch the face of God, President Ronald Regan said after their ship fell to piece mid flight. Yet their legacy is still greater than most of us that still live way after they have died. For all that this life is made of is different levels of dreaming where on the first level you fight your subconscious telling you not to even start, just dream and the second level is a stronger you telling you no and on the third level is the impossible telling you that you can't. When the truth is that your enemy is a memory reminding you of how weak you USE to be, of how you USE to fail, of how it's impossible for you to go to the next level of your life because the map is to hard to navigate. We are weak but we can gain strength, we have failed but there are second chances, and the map is much to big to navigate but we can find a new architect. When Jesus is our guide, our power, our designer, our hope, our second chance, and our architect all things are possible. Doors shut and others are open, streets close but new ones develop, bridges fall but others are built. We shall overcome, we shall ascend, level after level shall past and there will be no blocks,there will be no dreaming without doing, and there will be no waiting in limbo. Just a lot of earth shattering change! With faith abundant, Jesus can construct dreams like an architect in Inception. May God bless you, may God bless this country we call home and may HE continue to be the architect of our lives.

Promontories

I had the unique honor to sit across the table from a couple that had been together longer than the years I had lived. The greatest thing about this couple is the fact that they were 9 and 15 years old during World War 2. So I'm sitting an hour outside of Frankfort talking to these two extraordinary people who lived during the most racist time in German history only to hear them call me their grandson. See this couple is my best friend's wife grandparents and they love me just as much as Jacob and I'm proud to call them my Oma and Opa! Oma smiles every time she looks at me because the first American she ever met at the tender age of 9 was an African American, who gave her the first piece of gum she had ever chewed or tasted. The Germans that outlived the hostile reign of the German empire in those days, and the embarrassing view of the world that empire held has to be the greatest Generation in the world's history! Germany is one of the safest places to ever live because more than three quarters of the Germans follow the law to the absolute T and then dot the I. One German explained it as a people trying to make up for the wrongs they caused the world. As I watched these people it seemed as if all of them are trying to do their part to renegotiate this terrible depiction that history gave them so long ago. With that said, this subject got me to thinking, since we have all did our part in history to make this world bad why don't we do our part to make it a little better. I have these huge dreams of what my future might be and a lot of the time those dreams are so present in my thoughts that I forget to do my part in making this world better before I leave it. We as Americans with our freedom to do whatever we want, achieve whatever we want, and succeed at whatever we want, forget to do the small things before trying to conquer the huge things. If we all worked in conjunction with each other to lift the load of the future, their would be no problem with debt, no problems with the wealthy and poor, no problems with affordable health care and no problems with border disputes. We have to assemble the blocks of our country with one brick at a time or we may topple over amidst our building like the great kingdoms of Egypt, Rome, and Persia. Conquering the small before the huge reminds me of a old solider from Kentucky who held several jobs after his service to his country but finally found a great job at cooking his specially made recipe in a filling station right off a major interstate exit. When the exit and the interstate was moved he couldn't draw the money or the customers that he use to. So instead of quitting and drawing a social security check of $105 dollars a month he went to restaurants selling his chicken recipe. Next thing you know Colonel Sanders is a millionaire selling his chicken recipe to any and everyone that'll buy it and eventually he got an establishment named after him. Success is a process, even Jesus went through a 33 year process to achieve his father's glory. He went through all these predrawn details hidden in the old testament during his trials just to attend his suffering at the cross. We are all one and the small things we attend to not only certifies our own success but also encourages the process of our future together as a nation. We are all promontories! Promontories are describe as things that are surrounded on three sides but connected to something, much like Florida or a peninsula. Essentially saying that no man or woman is an Island. We are all connected, what one does the other feels, and no example is as clear as Hitler and Germany. As each star serves it's own purpose to the universe, we all serve a purpose to our communities, our states, our nations, our world, and our savior! Be mindful of the main body for no man is a island. May god bless you, may God bless these states united under him and may he continue to allow our promontories to bring success to our mainlands.

90/10

10% of our lives is what happens to us, the other 90% is how we deal with what happens to us. As human beings we choose to wrestle with the 10% of our life that can easliy be pinned, given the 3 count and defeated by what we choose to do with the other 90%. It all has to do with attitude and how positive we are about the life we live. Every day is a struggle and god gives the strength to handle those struggles, he gives us the opportunity to work for him through our positiveness. Positiveness gives us the ability to garner attention and that's where God recieves the glory, through the attention that is paid to us. That's when people ask questions like: how is she getting out of bed after he left her at the alter, how does he still smile when he has no job and no money to take care of his family, how can you continue to live when your love one's death came so quickly and suddenly, they were so young, y'all had a long life ahead of you. It's because Jesus dwells in that person, and the only way he can dwell there is through the positiveness and the faith that person clings on to. The lord cannot dwell in any unclean place and the reason we feel so disconnected from him is because there is no room for him to dwell in our heart when it's cluttered by negativity. The bridge to understanding our life and how we continue to find him amongst the trouble, the heartache, the impossible moments, and diffculties is through positive moments in a not so positive place. The souls of men and women are found during the great diffculties that cannot be explained or that can't seem to be defeated. America's greatest generation defeated the greatest war in history and a baffling depression, America's greatest presidents are known for what they did in a time of crisis not peace, and Jesus most defining moment was escorted by pain and suffering. And if our god is for us then what and who could ever stop us, that is a positive thought and you cannot believe that truly without thinking positively. With those words we gain great power, with those words we are a avalanche of faith that cannot be stopped, with that faith we cause destruction that changes the world for the greater. It all starts with positiveness and the attitude we use today to defeat tomorrow problems that God turns into a story to change one soul at a time! What can stand against us when we are positive? Nothing! I don't know what I will do with my life, but where ever I live it from I will be a mountain of positiveness. I've been to negative for this portion of my life. So God shine through me whether it's from a house on 1600 Pensylvania Avenue, whether it's from the rolling plains of Alabama, whether it's from southwest side of Clay, whether it's from a city street corner, let me be positive in your image so I maybe used for the good of the world. God bless you, God bless the good ole USA and may god make us positive every day that we live.

From 30,000 feet, Ich bin ein Berliner

From 30,000 feet you can see miles beyond the natural road blocks that prohibit our fore sight on the ground. From 30,000 feet our adversities are small hills compared to the mountains we see from the ground. From 30,000 feet the vision you obtain from the ground seems to be useless. I do think that one reason God made it possible for man to suspend from 30,000 feet is to get a inch of a glimpse of how high he sits as we wonder the maze that we call life. Being this high gives a whole new meaning to a lot of things, for example; I think when God said if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will be able to move mountains. I truly believe that he meant if you trust in his vision from way above 30,000 feet there is not a mountain that can hender you, essentially saying that they have been moved to provide a path for the life God has in store for you. For some unknown reason God gave me this amazing best friend (Jacob Morris) who is allowing me to escort him and his wife to the beautiful mountains and valleys of South Germany. During this long 8 hour flight that I am currently in the midst of, I've been able to acknowledge how small I am compared to the large movement God is trying accomplish on the ground. I recall President John F. Kennedy standing before a wall in Berlin on June 26, 1963 and saying that, "Freedom is indivisible and when one man is enslaved all are not free." He went on to say that Americans from across the ocean are as one with the free man that stands on the free side of the Berlin Wall. Our fallen president then let go of some of the most famous words an American has ever said in the German language. "Ich bin ein Berliner!" meaning WE ARE ALL FROM BERLIN or we are all Berliners. What a pleasant sight it would be for the Lord that has given his all for us, to look down and see a world where all men wasn't just free but saved by the blood of his son Jesus Christ! This may seem like the impossible and is an accomplishment that couldn't take place in any man's lifetime but if we all lived by the thought of IF ONE IS ENSLAVED by the darkness of this world then NO MAN IS FREE. We would work tiredlessly to find freedom for one soul, so that we may find freedom. We would work as hard as a woman who went to be a missionary in Iraq in the middle of the War on Terror.  Her and her husband dug wells for the waterless Northern Iraqis who only recived water from Saddam every few months. On there way out of  the village some terrorist lined the highway and fired machine gun rounds into their truck. She awoke from her comma months later only to realize she had a body full of bulletts, that 3 of her fingers were gone, and her husband was killed. After mourning her losses she found a way to realize god was way above 30,000 feet and is currently tring to become a missionary once again. Ich bin ein Berliner!" We are all from Berlin. How great would it be if we could scream amidst our life full of mazes filled with mountains and natural roadblocks with useless vision, Ich bin ein christen! We are all Christians! May God bless you, May God bless these States that are United under him and May he continue to love us from way above 30,000 feet.          

Not me but we, which turns into HE

Years ago a 16 year old young girl stood in a bathroom shaking from the thought of herself being with child. She paced back and forth nervously as she shook the stick that would determine her life's fate. When the reading finally showed itself to my mother she dropped the stick and before it could hit the ground she knew she would not stroll the stage of her High School graduation, nor grace the halls of any university. There in her belly forming, was all the hopes and dreams that she had left and Marion Clark Thomas was later born into the world. Even though the young father of my brother promised to be around he later took off after graduating and my mother knowing before he ever left that she needed to quit school and begin caring for her child, she was ready for the responsibility. Later came Sherrie Thomas by way of the same father and later me when my mother met the lanky love of her life in my father. My mother is THE STRONGEST WOMAN I know, she has suffered loss after loss and she continues to move forward. First it was the loss of her dreams, then it was lostness of the door shutting behind the father of her two children, and the heartfelt loss as she stood beside a casket with the man of her dreams within. With all these losses it's amazing that she could still stand to live this life and I marvel at this beautiful woman everyday. The reason she still stand are many and I believe it has all to do with god but as far as rewards I finally saw why she is so satisfied with a life with no fulfillment, at least that's what I call it. A wise man once said that the greatest gift you could ever give the world isn't your services or efforts but it is the gift of another human being. If you could give this world another person who will continue to push forward the efforts of truth and service years beyond your living then you will change the world more than any Nobel prize winner or president. When you have the chance to mold a person to transform human being after human being it leads to change beyond years, decades, and generations. My mother's joy and rewards was for a trophy case of accomplishments or for degrees of acrediations, but it was turned into pushing her children to do well to this world every since she drop that stick when she was 16. Her trophy case is filled with the image of a high school Valedictorian and a degree and masters won by that Valedictorian from the University of Alabama that made her the most sought after tax manager in the city of Birmingham and on the edge of CFO. I believe there is an image of a solider who went from the battle field to building government ships as a private citizen with a degree in engineering for the betterment of the strongest Navy the world has ever seen. In the recent part of that trophy case is the image of a younger Thomas who was to prove wrong his caring school counselor who called his mom after hearing of his acceptance to Auburn to debate whether he should attend or not. The counselor argued that his ACT score was to low to finish the increasing toughness of an Auburn University degree, but she pushed her son forward and in a couple days I'll walk across a stage to shake the hand of the president of a university I love and as a memory in my mother's mental trophy case. Matter of fact it won't be me but we who walk across that stage. As in we I mean Elizabeth,Ronald, Marion, and Sherrie. For we forged this life together and we stormed the gates of difficulty together all for the betterment of this world and to my mother she should receive all the glory. If I know Elizabeth like I think I know her she would add not me but we turns into he. She believes that through all things, through all that this world brings and it's impossible moments and the days where you lose all hope and all dreams. That life is possible through Christ that strengthens her, me, our family, and the life we continue to live. It's not about me but we, which turns into he, and he being our lord and savior Jesus Christ. God bless you, may God bless these great states of America and May god continue to let us all be trophies to our parents.