My son, if you accept my words
and store up my commands within you,

then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God. Proverbs 2: 1-5

The book of Proverbs is rich with guidance and tutelage on how to be filled with wisdom and enjoy life. So for me today’s scripture is more of a series of steps that will guide us to wisdom and happiness.

Pardon me, while writing this message I just received terrible news and I would be untrue to myself and my walk with our Creator if I did not address how I am feeling. I still feel that the word gives us an understanding for life, the word gives us wisdom and knowledge so that we may grow and live harmoniously in this world. But the word also tells us “thou shall not kill”, and we live in a time where the life expectancy of young black men is getting lower and lower everyday. A pastor once said that the church has left black men in the cold; that as a group of people we do not reach out to our brothers on the corner. He may have been right!

Sean Bell was murdered in cold blood by people who were supposed to protect and serve him. As people of God we have to stand up against these injustices; it says right there in the bible “Thou shall not kill”. It does not say you can kill if you are a cop, you can kill if you are the Supreme Court and the Constitution holds you to be the interpreter of the land. I am thankful for the Lord and his words though, because right now as I am filled with frustration and quite frankly rage I looked back up to the original scripture. We will get through such hardships together because we accept the Lord’s word, and we turn our ears toward wisdom and understanding. We fear our Lord, and find knowledge in his teachings and though it looks like the other team is winning. We will prevail, I believe that in my heart; it’s raining today but the sun will shine again. We must try to change the tides, change the tides to the wisdom of God because these evil spirits can claim any one of us at any given time. I love you because you love yourself, you love God and thus you love me. Peace and Grace be unto you.

By any means necessary

I like it! - Diggz

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-nFw4JPFvk&hl=en]

Then Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had accompanied him to his fathers funeral. But now that their father was dead, Joseph’s brothers became afraid. Now Joseph will pay us back for all the evil we did to him, they said. But as Joseph told them, don’t be afraid of me. Am I God, to judge and punish you. As far as I am concerned, God turned into good what you meant for evil. Genesis 50: 14-15, 19

What a rich scripture this is, I first read it days ago but I was not ready to embrace it at that point and attempt to decipher what it meant to me. I am so amazed by the grace of Joseph that I do not know where to begin. His faith is so strong, how often are we faced with people who attempt to sabotage our very existence? Whether this be at work, school, your love life; far too often people’s actions can have a great impact on us and for a short time negatively affect our lives. Since a child my mother has always told me “vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord”! Listen to Joseph, “Am I God, to judge and punish you”. We have no right nor do we need to judge those who trespass against us, their own conscience does it for them. Look at the fear of Joseph’s brothers, they are afraid because they know that they have wronged him. By not judging, by not taking these situations into our own hands we are sowing good seeds into the earth. If we followed the eye for an eye rule; a. we would all be blind, but more importantly we would sow bad seeds of karma into the earth for ourselves. We are responsible for our actions so even though we were wronged; by retaliating we only restart the cycle of wrongdoing. Making ourselves vulnerable to yet another attack and this time a rightfully deserved attack.

His faith amazes me, because he has set his faith in our creator and took the hardships that he was presented with and now sees them as good. The rough road that you are traveling may seem rough now as it did for Joseph but one day we will look up from the mountaintop and remember when we were down in the valley. We will stand tall from the balcony of a skyscraper and remember when we walked amongst the streets, confused and angry at the situations life had presented. We will stand and be thankful because the evil that others had tried to bestow upon us; that bewildered us for a time will be made good. Because we endured and believed in our Creator we will be able to look back at those blemishes and be thankful for that journey. We are not the judge, so let us let go of the ill harbored feelings that we have towards those who wrong us, their own conscience is eating them up already. Let us get deeper in our faith and understand that we are being blessed, we will be blessed and that God will turn our hard times to the most joyous occasions we have ever experienced. Peace and Grace be unto you!

Reputation is the shell a man discards when he leaves life of immortality. His character he takes with him.

Today’s message is simple and sweet, it is one of the more popular messages of the word yet many of us still struggle with it. It’s not that we are not delighting ourselves in the Lord, it is not because we are not using our mouths to spread the words of our creator. No, we struggle or at least I struggle because of my lack of patience. What do you do after you have delighted yourself in the Lord? Often I feel like when I do something wrong I immediately feel the brunt of that mistake, its like my bad karma can’t wait to find me. But when I am in my mind doing the “right” thing sometimes I don’t see the good coming back to me as quickly. So I become impatient with the Lord, but as I am writing this I am reminded of something I told someone about delighting in the “small victories”, so in actuality my good comes back on me everyday that I wake up and I am healthy, everyday that I have a meal to eat, and friends and family to love.

Another scripture tells us to not be weary of well doing for in due season we shall reap. Once again asking us to refine our patience, and when we find that we are not being patient and we ask for patience, what do we get? The Creator then challenges us upon what we have asked, he presents us with situations that test our patience. God works in mysterious ways, something we have heard for years but it didn’t start making sense to me until recently. So if we ask then we shall receive, but when will we receive; I don’t know the answer but I think its when we least expect it, the blessing always comes on time! To delight is to take great pleasure in something, so if we take pleasure in believing in a higher being, our greater purpose, we will be provided with the desires of our hearts. The love of our lives, the job of our dreams, wealth and abundance, whatever your heart desires will be granted, probably not tomorrow but if we are patient I am sure we will receive. Enjoy your day, Peace and Grace be unto you!

However long the night, the dawn will break!