Is this desperation’s last breath
Or surrender’s first fatal sigh,
Looking the firestorm in the eye?
Seeing its heart, its depth and breadth,
Its maelstrom flames embracing death;
Pain remains the last sensation,
Smoke-seared final desolation;
Leaving no charring dream unscorched –
Embers turned to cinders, a torched
Future… lost in immolation
Written following Ronovan’s Weekly Decima Challenge on RonovanWrites – #05 “Eye”
A time will come called Judgement Day,
Too late to turn toward the Light;
Realise then you’ve lost the fight,
Too late to sink to knees and pray,
As yokes of sin on those left weigh
Darkest evil -terrible, great –
Will enslave, cast down… decimate…
None may know the hour, none know when –
Be warned, be wise, for until then
It’s not yet writ… there is no fate.
Written following Ronovan’s Weekly Decima Challenge on RonovanWrites – #05 “Mate”
Flaming wave crests across the Lake,
Damning the shore, lapping with fire;
Heat and despair press high’r and high’r,
Scorched lips silenced, part, crack and ache.
False dawns, tortured minds, wake and break;
Feigned glimpses – a distant city?
Cru’l deserts littered with pity
Stretch too far for mortals to cross;
Curs’d dunes, bearing waves of great loss
Bound the shore for Eternity.
Written following Ronovan’s Decima Challenge on RonovanWrites – “Lake”
Does Hell Exist? Pope Francis Says No
This is what the Bible says:
Matthew 5:22
But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
Matthew 5:29
If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Matthew 5:30
And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
Matthew 10:28
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matthew 18:9
And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.
Matthew 23:15
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
Matthew 23:33
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?
Mark 9:43
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.
Mark 9:45
And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell.
Mark 9:47
And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell,
Luke 12:5
But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
James 3:6
The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
2 Peter 2:4
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment;
Friends, the post which follows was written following the events in Orlando last summer – I didn’t have the courage of my convictions to post it at the time partly as I know Christian friends, US citizens, who felt very strongly about their constitutional right to own guns. After the events in Las Vegas this past weekend, I cannot hold back publishing any longer. For ‘Orlando’ you could easily read ‘Las Vegas’.
God help us all.
-13 June 2016-
Friends in the USA, what follows is not my usual style of post, but the events in Orlando on Sunday, and the reaction I have seen to this atrocity both in the media and amongst the blogging community have prompted me to write. I have paused 24 hours, I have considered the fact that this is a highly emotive subject in your country, and that many who read this will continue to fiercely defend their constitutional right to own firearms. My only intention is to invite pause for thought, although my hope is that highlighting these shocking statistics will apply that thought to action.
I have read clichéd suggestions that “guns don’t kill, people do”. The evil in men’s hearts is certainly the ultimate cause of this and other gun-related murders; but why would you allow the evil in a maniac’s heart to be coupled with a lawfully-purchased murderous weapon in his hands?
My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims, the city of Orlando, and a nation which, I would humbly suggest, cannot continue to ignore the appalling impact of guns on its society.
The type of AR-15 rifle that terrorist Omar Mateen used to kill 49 people and wound dozens more in Orlando has has been used in multiple shootings during this decade alone, yet the military-inspired semi-automatic rifle designed for civilian use is perfectly legal in most states.
FACT: There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents (a mass shooting is defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant).
Source: Mass Shooting Tracker
Mateen was armed with a .223-caliber AR-15-type rifle and a 9mm semi-automatic pistol – both legally purchased – when he opened fire at the Pulse club in Orlando early Sunday morning.
FACT: The US spends more than a trillion dollars per year defending itself against terrorism, which kills a tiny fraction of the number of people killed by ordinary gun crime. According to figures from the US Department of Justice and the Council on Foreign Affairs, 11,385 people died on average annually in firearm incidents in the US between 2001 and 2011. In the same period, an average of 517 people were killed annually in terror-related incidents. Removing 2001, when 9/11 occurred, from the calculation produces an annual average of just 31.
The AR-15 rifle is the civilian version of the fully-automatic M16 used by soldiers in the Vietnam War. Unlike the M16, users must pull the trigger every time they want to fire a shot. The most common versions of the AR-15 have been banned in a handful of states, including California.
FACT: There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012 (including occasions when a gun was fired but no-one was hurt).
Source: Everytown for Gun SafetyResearch
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents gun manufacturers, said there are five million to 10 million AR-15 rifles in the U.S., a small percentage of the 300 million firearms owned by about a third of the US population. That is nearly enough guns for every man, woman and child in the country.
FACT: Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured [those figures exclude suicide]. Those figures are likely to rise by several hundred, once incidents in the final week of the year are counted.
Source: Gun Violence Archive
Last October, gunman Chris Harper-Mercer, 26, used an AR-15-style firearm to kill nine people before he killed himself at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.
An AR-15 model was used by married couple Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 29, when they killed 14 people and wounded nearly two dozen others at a work Christmas party in San Bernardino, California, last December. Police recovered two .223-caliber AR-15-type semi-automatic rifles after the couple died in a shootout with officers.
An AR-15-type firearm was used by 20-year-old Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which shocked the nation in December 2012. Lanza fatally shot his mother, Nancy, who legally obtained the firearms, at their home before he killed 20 children and six adult staff members at the school.
“It was designed for the United States military to do to enemies of war exactly what it did [in Orlando]: kill mass numbers of people with maximum efficiency and ease,” said lawyer Josh Koskoff, who is representing families of the Sandy Hook victims in a lawsuit, when interviewed by the New York Daily News.
That shooting renewed the gun debate in the USA, and led to calls for a ban on sales of AR-15-type firearms.
However, sales went through the roof, and the National Rifle Association boasted that its membership surged to around five million.
FACT: The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 – the most recent year for comparable statistics – was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared with just 0.1. Of all the murders in the USA in 2012, 60% were by firearm compared with 31% in Canada, 18.2% in Australia, and just 10% in the UK.
Source: UNODC
FACT: So many people die annually from gunfire in the USA that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country. According to research by Politifact, there were about 1.4 million firearm deaths in that period, compared with 1.2 million US deaths in every conflict from the War of Independence to Iraq.
Source: Politifact
‘He shall judge between the nations,
and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.’
– Isaiah 2:4
I am like the deaf, who cannot hear,
like the mute, who cannot speak;
I have become like one who does not hear,
whose mouth can offer no reply.
Lord, I wait for you;
you will answer, Lord my God.
For I said, “Do not let them gloat
or exalt themselves over me when my feet slip.”
For I am about to fall,
and my pain is ever with me.
I confess my iniquity;
I am troubled by my sin.
Many have become my enemies without cause;
those who hate me without reason are numerous.
Those who repay my good with evil
lodge accusations against me,
though I seek only to do what is good.
Lord, do not forsake me;
do not be far from me, my God.
Come quickly to help me,
my Lord and my Saviour.
Loving each other,
Let us stop passing judgment –
Instead, encourage
written in response to this week’s prompt at Haiku Horizons, drawing inspiration from the text of Romans 14:13
Like shimmering heat
in sunshine’s streams,
like a cloud of dew
in harvest’s heat;
From His dwelling place,
the Lord observes;
Quietly resting,,
His eyes see all.
Then, before harvest,
as blossoms fall:
Flowers slow turn to
ripening grapes –
The Master Gard’ner
prunes ev’ry vine:
Training their branches
to bear good fruit.
written in response to today’s prompt at The Daily Post, and inspired by the words (although not the original message) of the bible’s book of Isaiah, Chapter 18, verses 4-5
Curtains of linen
Blue, purple and scarlet yarn
Holy Tabernacle
Clothed in commissioned splendour
Constructed with reverence
written in response to The Daily Post prompt – “yarn” – and inspired by the descriptions of the Tabernacle in the Old Testament’s book of Exodus
How sweet are His words
Ears test words as the tongue tastes food
Taste and see that the Lord is good
For Day 28 of Na/GloPoWriMo, NaPoWriMo.net reminded us that many poems explore the sight or sound or feel of things, and Proust famously wrote about the memories evoked by smell. The prompt challenge was to write a poem that explores your sense of taste – this could be a poem about food, or wine, or even the oddly metallic sensation of a snowflake on your tongue.
This poem drew inspiration from the Old Testament, and in particular lines from Job and the Psalms.
Faith Unlocked 