Jesus and Muslims

They other day I downloaded an eBook by Fouad (pronounced 'fwad') Masri. The book is so wonderful and effective I looked up Masri on YouTube and found several of his videos.

If you have 30 minutes, watch this one video and then download the book. Masri is speaking at Ozark Christian College in this video - his talk is preceded by a short presentation about Muslims over the past 20 years.

Click these links below:

Ambassadors to Muslims

Fouad Masri speaking at Ozark Christian College

The Fall

The Fall

It was time to check out

After shopping in the store.

In the lane I turned about

And promptly crashed to the floor.

Usually I push the cart,

This time I was a contrarian

And in narrow space made a quick dart

A move not good for a septuagenarian.

With loss of all control

I could but let the flow carry on

Bracing not parts but the body whole

Descending with force to the concrete lawn.

It took only one second or two

For my steadiness to leave,

Lay on my side not knowing what next to do,

Standing I could not achieve.

Looking up, on her knees she beside me,

“Are you alright?” her petition.

“I’m not sure, I could be.”

She made me to talk to her, that was her mission.

A cold bottle of water she gave me to drink,

She wasn’t going to leave me undone.

More questions she asked made me talk and think,

While the store manager dialed 9-1-1.

“Are you married, and for how many years?”

I told her a half century one month after March,

Almost thirty years for her was near.

I was then beginning to feel parched.

“I want to stand up, will someone help me?”

The store manager suggested I stay on the floor,

That lady still talking and still on her knee,

As eight paramedics came in through the door.

They checked all my vitals

And questioned me a lot,

They suggested the ER,

I said “I’d rather not.”

Upon my release

I returned to my cart,

To pay for my groceries,

I needed to complete my transaction part.

I asked the cashier,

“Where’s the lady on her knees?”

I wanted to thank her.

She had disappeared in a breeze.

Making sure I not faint,

She unknown, a perfect stranger.

Her attention was of a saint,

Her mission, a caring angel.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

How different now is it

From Thomas Jefferson’s day?

What aberrant political skit

Is presently in play?

Tom’s enemies abundant,

From Hamilton to John Adams.

His love for political order constant,

Endless pursuit of harmony he fathomed.

His ways and means paradoxical

His peers appear wiser, George the smartest,

Tom’s mercurial enterprises clear and more logical,

When we see his natural vocation as artist.

Politics to him not a dispiriting distraction,

An avenue making almost anything possible.

Never a man of inaction,

A creative impulse for the plausible.

Personal and political contradictions

Notwithstanding, a brief dynasty enduring,

He generated an executive legacy of successful convictions

With Madison, Monroe, Jackson, and Van Buren.

Religious freedom superior to state-defined civil rights, ABC says to Parliament

I find this English Parliament contribution by the Archbishop of Canterbury to be quite interesting. To me it is surprising. It is not a timid statement, nor is it ambiguous.

Archbishop Addresses Religious Liberty in Parliament

The Crushing

The Crushing

After rowing and wading

Through years of litigation

The virtue in new life began fading,

And the shameless saturated our nation.

Coldness and indifference the new norm,

Legal rights and privileges Supreme.

Only selected lives now allowed to form,

Crushing the unwanted not seen as extreme.

When was the point made pivotal,

When did conscience lose its mooring?

Revulsion of the biblical, cynical,

And unfettered freedom then went soaring.

“Do not tell me what to do,

I am the captain of me.

I can crush whatever I choose.

That 7-2 decision set me free!”

At our ancestral founding

Creation was honored and accepted.

Now in affluence the crushing compounding,

With no borders, boundaries expected.

In recent, hubris within the Supreme Five

Reverse rendered positive law

What the natural makes thrive,

Catering to the unnatural, from the natural they claw.

Now more than six years progressive

The nation torn apart,

Becoming increasingly repressive

And guided by a marxist chart.

No boundaries, no borders

No limits to follow,

Removing our history is in order,

Leaving America utterly hollow.

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Jeremiah 31:31-34

My bride is you,

The House of the North,

And the House of the South.

A newer pact with you I now bring forth.

My new agreement is an eternal act,

Something intended in My original law,

Broken by both ancestors’ tract:

The letter, not the heart, they held in awe.

Those were the days past.

The new law I now impart,

An agreement to last,

Because I write it on your heart.

No more teaching about Me to your neighbor,

No more approaching your brother.

For in the future there will be no labor:

I will forgive your iniquity, and sin I will smother.

On the River Jordan

On the River Jordan

He appeared to them

Cloaked in camel’s hair.

A good news message, he brought a gem,

To turnaround and escape despair.

They came from the City of Peace

And its greater region from afar,

A flood of people never cease

Drenching in the river looking up at the star.

Overwhelmed by his power

To forgive all their sin,

Quickly denied he being that flower,

But revealed the true Forgiver was kin.

“I prepare you for change through water,

I make way for Him who will come.

For you He will go to the slaughter,

The Son of the Father He is from.”

“He Who is to come is mightier than I.

But to the world He will become a scandal,

I unworthy to stoop down and untie,

The straps of His sandals.”

“I baptized Him in the Jordan,

An act in cosmic reverse.

Adornments of glory fell like a cordon,

The great heavenly blessing, not a curse.”