Marshall's Blog

Its starting again. The long process toward meaningful change. What do you do if you know how long the journey is, and you are already tired. Almost like you are crossing the desert and after the car starts you watch the needle drop to E. At that point its not if you will stop and get stuck, but when you will stop and get stuck. The desert seems to stretch out forever and shimmer on the horizon. You check your canteen and find that its not empty, but it is no where near full.  The only way forward, to make it is across, is to drive through and when that ceases to be possible, to hike through. Do you dare shift gears and depress the gas pedal as your truck shutters forward? Faith seems so elusive sometimes. It is easy to tout faith when you've got air-conditioning and know when the next stop is for Gas. But thankfully faith is not measured when we have enough, when we are strong enough, smart enough, nice enough, or even put together. It is measured by the times we move forward with...

      There's warmth and light emanating from the glass double doors. You can almost hear the laughter and conversation echoing inside. Juxtapose that against the angry echo chambers online, the sympathy, lack of sympathy, and sensational news reports dinging phones and constantly reminding  us that this is the largest scale winter disaster in over 30 years. The hows are pitted against the whys today. How can we help versus why did this happen. I can tell you as a returning resident of Texas and a joyful member of the hows today, it is a much better place to be. There will always be time for whys later, people to hold accountable, systems to change, and policies to retool. We have plenty to discuss and lots of time that can be wasted online, and more feedback than you could ever dream of, and on Social Media nothing is demanded of us more than our time and attention. Community demands more than that, but also gives us something that is not exactly available on I...

      Fighting is how we get closer. This seems like a contradictory statement right. Especially if you have been privy to an argument that led to someone leaving or terminating a relationship. After an experience like that, it is certainly understandable that arguing, shouting, and disagreements can be the trigger that convinces us something is about to change, typically for the worse. I grew up in two different households with two very different conflict styles. One had conflict seldom and always on the surface level, and the other had conflict constantly on the surface level and occasionally the deep very long arguments that seemed to never end. To be honest, I became an expert of avoidance in one household, and an argument closer in the other. I found that retreat and despair were very effective in the non-confrontational environment, both meant I never had to have a real conversation. In the conflict rich environment, I found that I could save up my anger to rol...

      You can hear their confidence. There is no chance that they have a single doubt about what they are talking about. They are both equally intelligent and thrust points and parry rebuttals and it seems we want to believe both, but in doing so we have to be wrong, we take a chance at being foolish of being accused of not having sense, reason, or a quantifiable IQ. Passion is not a sign of righteousness, but for those of us looking for truth it seems that truth and lies are announced with equal passion in our society. It is not surprising as we were warned in scripture that men would no longer follow God in the end days, but walk in the way that seems right to them. This prophecy is an echo of one of the darkest points of apostasy in the Story of God's people in the book of Judges that describes that historical period as a time when men did what they thought was right in their own eyes. While we often think of the end times as a time of ultimate evil, it is most li...