Page not found – The Challenge http://book.ljrobinson.com By Louanne Robinson Tue, 24 Jul 2018 15:20:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.16 http://book.ljrobinson.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/cropped-Self-Prtrait-Photo-32x32.jpg Page not found – The Challenge http://book.ljrobinson.com 32 32 The World and the Flesh http://book.ljrobinson.com/the-world-and-the-flesh/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 01:01:57 +0000 http://book.ljrobinson.com/?p=83
Light and Darkness

1 John 1:5-7 – This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.​  If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

Romans 7:18-19 – For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

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Joy Stealer http://book.ljrobinson.com/103-2/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 02:11:09 +0000 http://book.ljrobinson.com/?p=103 Loneliness is always waiting,
Doggedly following my steps
Till I get to the end of an alleyway,
Rain on my cheeks
And surrounded by concrete.
He ambushes me,
Beats me down,
Steals my joy, and runs away.

I get up shaking my fist at him.
But he’s already gone,
And someone else is walking
Down the alleyway towards me.
I tell Him what happened.

He says: “Don’t worry I’m here
And I’ll never leave you to loneliness again.”
The sun comes out
And the rain on my cheek has dried.

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The Gray Between http://book.ljrobinson.com/the-gray-between/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 03:31:27 +0000 http://book.ljrobinson.com/?p=106 Dismal raindrops
Sorrowing down into a muddy pool,
Smoke-like mist,
Wreaths ‘twixt the boles of barren trees,
As tiny vapor clouds from human mouths,
Speak deadened words.

I care not to participate,
But watch instead,
From behind my window pane of grief,
Yearning for tomorrow’s morning rays
To break this cloud canopy,
That I may escape–
The gray between lives.

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You Can’t Be You http://book.ljrobinson.com/you-cant-be-you/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 04:48:44 +0000 http://book.ljrobinson.com/?p=488

(Said They, We Won’t Allow It!)

How can I
Be he or she,
Or what their minds
Would have me be.
Their expectations,
I am not,
Can’t they accept
What I have got?

Bent and misshapen into an unrecognizable mass
of ideas and goals by someone else’s hands instead of His.
Why must everybody play the potter?
I dare not mold another’s life,
When my own is but a vague shadowy form.
Once I thought I belonged to all the pictures people handed me.
I modeled myself after them until I realized,
That I couldn’t look like someone else’s photograph.

How adoringly we sometimes look up
To the figures that we have put on pedestals
And long to be as they. Perhaps because we yearn
To be looked up to, in our own pride,
Or perhaps in dire need of recognition.
But we are all separate statues.

It is time we take ourselves off of our own mental dias,
And realize we are naught but dust and clay.
Mold me O Lord!

Isaiah 64:8 – But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.

Genesis 2:6-7 – But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

The Potter

What are we made of? So many trace elements and 60% water? How did the writer of Genesis know this? Could God have inspired him?

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The Spider and the Scorpion http://book.ljrobinson.com/the-spider-and-the-scorpion/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 05:34:29 +0000 http://book.ljrobinson.com/?p=499
Detail from "Oriental Garden" A dragonfly predator - Are we worse?

So different, yet of the same family.
She, does a slow eight legged waltz,
Casting out silken lines of intrigue to ensnare,
And having done so, pounces!
Sucking her prey dry of all his life,
She leaves only a hollow shell.

He, ready to inject his deadly venom
At a moments notice ,
Dances the same dance.
Reveling in malice,
Weaving betwixt her devious warp and woof,
His poisonous barb ascending
Poises to paralyze.

A harsh word here, stab!
A cruel jest there, strike!
The two armored bodies circle and feint,
Looking for a vulnerable spot.

Who will win this deadly game?
Who will… Husband? Wife?
One will surely die inside.
One will hate for life.
Just one word aimed to the heart,
Toxic, it can kill.
Who will win this deadly game?
Surely neither will.

James 3:8 – But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

Romantic Love
(How it should be)

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A Misunderstanding on the Telephone (Anger and Hurt) http://book.ljrobinson.com/a-misunderstanding-on-the-telephone-anger-and-hurt/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 06:35:55 +0000 http://book.ljrobinson.com/?p=502

Twisted intestines
With a road map overlay of nerves,
Running a frantic lacework
Of tension wired gut.

Snapped mind anchors,
Whiplash at envisioned faces
Attached to disembodied telephone voices.
AND THE BATTLE ENSUES.

“I’m right”, “no, I’m right”
The opposing armies bellow in their electrical impulse impasses
That stop at the locked doors of their own ideas.

Tragedy masks of self pity,
Grimace at each other
Through tunneled cables in hypothetical warfare.
BUGLES BLARE…
“ATTACK”
BATTERING RAMS POISED,
As the door of my heart swung open,
and the army rushed in for the kill.
Oh, stubborn pride.

​Proverbs 16:18 – Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

​Proverbs 13:10 – Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom.

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..Had a Great fall http://book.ljrobinson.com/had-a-great-fall/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 07:39:30 +0000 http://book.ljrobinson.com/?p=505

Man and woman straddled a wall.
Man and woman had a great fall.
They chose sin, and not heed God’s call.
Serpent’s lies had held them enthralled.
And all God’s good angels, beyond time begun,
Could not set things right, ’til God sent his Son.

Centuries pass with sin still pursued,
By human hearts that had been endued,
With misery’s plague, but man does not rue,
The day he did what God said; “don’t do!”
And all of God’s prophets and even God’s word,
Are shunned, and ignored and refused to be heard.

On a cross, for sin, God’s Son died.
Entombed, He rose, ascended on high.
Still some chose sin with apocalypse nigh,
When Earth shell cleave, stars fall from the sky.
And all of Earth’s armies, 10 billion times 10,
Could not beat the powers that rose against them.
No-all the world’s forces, the Earth’s kings and men,
Could not – put the world – back together again.

But those that bowed to Jesus the Christ…
Repented deep, knew he paid the price,
For all their sins, with His sacrifice,
Will walk with Him, in heaven’s paradise.
And all THE KING’s angels, HIS saints, redeemed men,
Will tread the new Earth and New Jerusalem.

(Inspired by the old nursery rhyme: Humpty Dumpty)

Genesis 3:3-7 – But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made them-selves aprons.

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Little White Lies? http://book.ljrobinson.com/little-white-lies/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 08:18:29 +0000 http://book.ljrobinson.com/?p=512
Crisp

A thought: We don’t know if the fruit that Adam and Eve ate of was really an apple, but whatever it was, it seemed a lemon from the beginning, by it our lives became lemons.

It goes back long time ago,
to the Bible didn’t ya know,
A nice young woman had been deceived.
She took a bite of that fruit
So did Adam, before ya knew it,
Then they both discovered,
they were standing in their birthday suits.

(imagine) Honestly dad,
he almost put the fruit in our mouths.
Honest dad, he said it would make us wise.
Honestly children, I’d given you a warning
right from the start.
There’s no such thing as little white lies!

How many webs did you spin,
How much trouble are you in,
Trying to cover up those little white lies?
How deep a hole have you dug?
How can you manage to look so smug?
How many fables did you get your friends to buy?

Told a fib and someone believed it..
Just one line and 50 received it,
And the guilt is piling over your head.
How can we ever tell them all,
It’s because of Adam’s and Eve’s downfall,
That we cheat, we lie, we falsify,
and our conscience is appalled.

Honesty dad, I don’t know why I said what I did.
Honestly dad, your Word opened up my eyes!
Honesty child,
your repentance is what I was waiting for.
There’s no such thing as little white lies.

James 3:5-10

Wagging Tongues – Written and performed by Louanne Robinson
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Pieces of People in Pieces http://book.ljrobinson.com/pieces-of-people-in-pieces/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 09:26:49 +0000 http://book.ljrobinson.com/?p=518 This world’s humanity is like some once pitifully abused and unloved animal.
It comes by your side when it wants to be stroked, coddled, and fed.
It purrs when its desires are met, but …
if you stop catering to its whims it turns a cold stiff back to you
and pretends that it doesn’t know you,
until it’s hungry again!

Poor beasts that have never known true love
do not know what it is, or how to return it.

They know only their desires and temporary satisfaction …
from gnawing inner loneliness that they cannot understand or explain until …

A master lovingly comes by that knows the sufferings the animal endured,
a master that can love the animal…
even when its back is turned.

Because He knows the pain of rejection.

Detail from Momeeee (adopt me)
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I? In His Image? http://book.ljrobinson.com/i-in-his-image/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 10:28:19 +0000 http://book.ljrobinson.com/?p=521
Self Portrait (1986)

John 15:13 – Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Psalm 103:12 – As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.

Isaiah 53:3 – But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

He fasted forty days-
Yet we are slaves to our appetites.

He uttered not a word,
as he stood before his persecutors.
One person wrongs us,
And we gossip on for days.

He endured their poisoned mockery.
One laugh,
and our wounded pride rips them down
To become even smaller than our minds.

He gave his back to the scourge.
One quickly thrust remark
And our imagination would beat them to dust.

He wore a crown of thorns.
We wear our egos.

He let the nails be driven.
We drove Him to the nails.

He said ‘Father forgive them.”
And we cannot even forgive ourselves.

It is written: “And God said:”
“Let us make man in our image”
“After our likeness”
And sometimes as I
Look at myself in the mirror
And look even deeper
To inspect the wys of my heart,
I say: “I? In His image?”

Oh Thank God
That through Christ’s sufferings
The blackness of self
Has been driven back into
The sea of forgetfulness
And that I now stand
Clothed in His righteousness
On the shore of eternity,
Gazing at the Son.

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