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Poem: No longer listening

I once heard what I thought  
was a calling. A mating call of yearning, 
of need, of matched desire. 
I listened. 
 
Was someone seeking me? 
The voice seemed familiar –  
its vibration pierced my soul, 
breached the dark midnight of my days  
in the directionless wilderness of life. 
It pulled me, spun me 
surrounded and filled me. 
The melody delighted me. 
Surely it was a call to live;  
to fulfill hopes and dreams 
I kept listening. 
 
Even as I called back,  
I listened.  
Even after I became a seeker  
starving through the ravenous desire 
of a supernova devouring its own light, 
I listened. 
I called back. 
I listened. 
I called back. 
I waited and waited and waited, 
for more than a dozen years,  
I waited for my radiant reply to reach  
the one my soul loved;  
ached for the brilliance of their  
presence to sustain me. 
 
I thought I needed to see, to feel, 
to be seen, heard, wanted, and needed.  
I thought I needed someone to love me;  
someone I could pour love into. 
Yet aging with none of my needs met 
altered my hearing, diminished my longing. 
Silence is not only deafening, 
it deadens the soul and mutes the heart. 
I stopped listening to the void. 
 
A lifetime ago, a whisper tickled my senses  
through the wilderness of the universe. 
But how could that be when  
sound can’t travel in space? 
Relics of my imagination had launched  
on gases of hope, creating orbits of dreams 
in the echo chamber of my heart. 
So… I’m no longer listening. 
 
I will feel what I can, be who I am, exist as created 
with no regard for the sliver of sound heard 
in the wilderness of loneliness, that had only  
ever been my own echo reverberating off stardust. 

LaShawnda Jones
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ACAD – Rejection: Psalm 43

Prayer to God in Time of Trouble

Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause
    against an ungodly people;
from those who are deceitful and unjust
    deliver me!
For you are the God in whom I take refuge;
    why have you cast me off?
Why must I walk about mournfully
    because of the oppression of the enemy?

O send out your light and your truth;
    let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
    and to your dwelling.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
    to God my exceeding joy;
and I will praise you with the harp,
    O God, my God.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
    my help and my God.


New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 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.

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Sermon: SPEAKING FOR GOD IN A HOPELESS TIME

by Pastor Carter Conlon

Click here Speaking for God in a Hopeless Time to listen.

Notes from the sermon

“Sometimes we miss the power of God because of it’s simplicity. We think it should be more complicated.”

John 20:13-16  “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”

“Jesus appeared as an ordinary person. He never appeared in recognizable form. He was still Jesus, but not in the form people expected to see Him in. He appeared as a Gardener. How amazing is that? He was telling us that He will have a body here on earth. Many bodies in the form of ordinary people walking in the power of God.” ~ Pastor Carter

“You and I are not called to be super stars. We’re not called to have all the answers. We have an answer within us. We’re called to be just ordinary people with faith and compassion. There’s been more done in my life through words of assurance and tender hands than every prophets that’s ever lived in the Kingdom of God.” ~ Pastor Carter

Luke 24:13-27   “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”

“Suffering and sorrow and confusion and darkness does not mean that we’ve lost the battle. We have to be able to explain to them, which He did – He opened the scriptures and showed them that it is the plan of God to send His Son, and have His Son die on a cross and to take the sins of the world upon Himself, to be placed in a grave and to be raised again from the dead on the third day – so that forgiveness and life and victory could be brought back for those who put their trust in Him. Sometimes darkness has to come before the dawn. Sometimes suffering has to come. You see, we’ve allowed a gospel to be preached that it’s all sunshine all the time. How do you explain when things start going the other way?” ~ Pastor Carter

“No matter what you’re suffering, no matter how dark it is, what God promised you is what it’s gonna be!” ~ Pastor Carter

John 21:4-14  “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.”

Romans 8:34-36  Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

“Cast the net on the right side of God. Get back to where the power of God is! The victory…the battle…everything we long for is in Jesus Christ!”

Ephesians 1:17-22  Spirit of wisdom and revelation; the hope of His calling.: ...that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.

“There is power in speach. We are the only thing in creation given the ability to willfully speak the Word of God.” ~ Pastor Carter

2 Corinthians 5:17  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

“Lord, some of these things are so simple, they’re deep… but you have clearly shown us the pattern. Until the day we get home, will you help us understand these things? Embrace these things? Help us to meditate on these things today? And will you comfort us in our confusion and sorrow that we to willl comfort others? In the name of Jesus, amen.”

“We take something so simple and we make it so complicated. Then it becomes frustrating. And with the frustration comes fruitlessness.”

I’m trying to get back to the simplicity of just being a Christian.

God loves you.