Archive for May, 2007
“Until the lions tell their tales, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
African Proverb
The African proverb I quoted reminds me that we all have at least one good reason to remain objective. As evidenced by the lives of the 52 women Ms. Ann Spangler and Ms. Jean E. Syswerda chronicled in their insightful book, Women Of The Bible, there are always two sides to every story. Have you ever betrayed a man’s trust, lost a man’s respect, or broke a good man’s heart? Has he forgiven you? Have you forgiven yourself?
What did you learn this month about yourself? Who was the woman, or women, that you closely identified with because her story, her struggle, her great weakness reminded you of your walk with God? Did any of the 52 women you read about this month give you hope? Why? Do you know any men who give you hope, who love, honor, and respect you, who make you feel safe and secure?
How many women in our community have ever seen any of the men in your lives cry uncontrollably or watched a broken man die a slow, spiritual death because of another woman’s heart-breaking behavior? Do you lose respect for men who cry or do you respect men more because they would rather cry than die high?
Do you honestly believe that strong men never cry or that men who trust you enough to reveal their vulnerabilities, to expose their weaknesses, to express their deepest fears, to display their emotions by crying in your presence are wimps? Do you find yourself gravitating towards the strong, silent type because that the type of man your mother married?
Are you a woman who prefers to date abusive, unpredictable bad boys because you’re secretly addicted to the adrenaline rush their traumatic, dramatic behavior creates? Do you avoid good men because you can’t stand the boredom and predictability of dating nice men, emotionally connected, financially stable men who never give good women a reason to break up just to make up?
Hunters hurt. Yes, it’s true. Real men receive reality checks we aren’t always prepared to cash. Strong men struggle. Silence is not always a sign of strength. Wise men weep. Weeping is not always a sign of weakness. Even Jesus wept. The example of Christ’s leadership gives nice men who always appear to finish last hope.
To give the men in our lives hope, the month of June is being dedicated to men and the issues relevant to us and our relationships with our wives and the women in our lives. It’s my heart-felt prayer that next month’s series about men will also give the women who often hate to love us hope.
God willing, the critically thinking women we choose to love, honor, and respect will join us and pray for us as we take an objective look at what makes good men cry, become bad boys, and go awry.
Although, there may be a valid reason why good men snap and become bad boys who misbehave and behave badly, nothing a woman does ever justifies our sexist, abusive, misogynistic behavior. There’s absolutely no excuse good enough to justify the reasons why women still don’t feel safe and secure in our presence.
Copyright 2007 by Roderick O. Solomon. All Rights Reserved.
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May 31st, 2007
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When was the last time you read Acts 17:26? Click on this verse to read it for yourself. But be forewarned! Doing so may forever change how you choose to treat the next person you meet on the street where you live or work.
Did your discovery about the root of humanity’s family tree cause the hair on the back of your neck to stand up as you paid closer attention to this particular Scripture? Could you handle the truth or did you throw up like Neo did in the 1999 Warner Brothers’ award-winning movie, “The Matrix,” when given a reality check his mind’s depository wasn’t prepared to receive?
Will you face your deepest fears and embrace the truth about the fruit that fell from the limbs of humanity’s family tree? Will you try to deny what you read by turning a blind eye to the truth that exposed the root of humanity’s family tree?
Will it be impossible for you to believe that the culturally diverse members of the human race as we perceive it today all belong to one big blended, extended family? Now that your eyes have been exposed to what’s bound to create controversy, how differently will you begin to treat our “blood” relatives?
What will it take to end the escalating family feud that still exists between emotionally divided ethnic groups? Can we, as humans ever learn to love our enemies? Whatever you decide to do, remember what “Spoon boy” told Neo. Don’t try to “bend the spoon” with your hands because “there is no spoon.” Instead of always using your hands to get the desired results, try using your mind.
Think about it.
Copyright 2007 by Roderick O. Solomon. All Rights Reserved.
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May 30th, 2007
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This morning, I was pleasantly surprised to discover an unexpected email from one of America’s most prominent and respected ministers and biblical scholars, Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems. During the first half of the 1990’s, I was introduced to the power of this wise woman’s words during an extended series of sunny-side-down days when all appeared lost and I feared that my worst nightmare had already come true.
After my great fall, I endured a time, a season, when God’s voice vanished absent any warning whatsoever. It didn’t take long before I found myself feeling hopelessly lost in a darkness so thick that it made me too sick to care whether I lived or died. I doubted myself. When God was silent, I questioned God’s love for me because church folk chastised me and accused me of not having enough faith, for failing to pay the price required for God to bless me? Have you ever been there, done that?
Because of the personal relationship I had established with Jesus Christ, I trusted God even when I didn’t understand the reasons for the prolonged periods of silence. Because of God promise to never leave, nor forsake me, I waited on God despite how uncomfortable it felt to do so. It was definitely a struggle to endure the silence that initially frightened me.
I started writing poetic essays about what God was teaching me to prepare me for an emerging career as a writer and public speaker. Keeping a journal became a necessity because I learned so much during my spiritual crisis that my fears exacerbated when God remained silent. For years, I began writing on anything and everything I could get my hands on. Now, I blog.
I learned how to love me even when my peers hated me, betrayed me, and abandoned me to avoid being seen with someone popular people perceived as a failure. I learned how to listen to what God was speaking to the heart of my soul through the series of books I began writing. I learned how to be still long enough to know that God is still God. During God’s silence, I learned more about myself and God than I ever did during the Sunday morning sermons I listened to.
How many of you are currently experiencing a spiritual crisis because of God’s unexpected silence? When God is silent, what do you expect to learn? What are you learning about yourself right now? Are you beginning to feel secure enough about your intimate, healthy relationship with God to wait upon the Lord, to be still when you want to run away and hide from the truth about yourself?
When God is silent, what do you hear? Whose voice do you hear? Has your faith in God been tested so severely that you can comfortably stand in the face of Adversity without fainting? When God is silent, you will discover whether or not you have the character, confidence, and courage to stand alone when your friends choose to ignore you?
During those spiritual disconnects with God that we all experience, what do you do? Do you start praying vain, repetitious prayers just to avoid the deafening silence that enables you to hear a pin drop? Do you get panicky, become desperate, feel discouraged, or do you keep pretending that all is well with your personal relationship with God?
Who do you run to while trying to escape the discomfort we often feel whenever God leaves us alone to deal with our deepest fears? What do you hear in your inner ear when God’s silence forces you to listen longer than you’d like to your thoughts about you, your life, your calling, your purpose for living?
Who do you choose to listen to when God is silent? What does God’s prolonged silence mean to you? Do you begin wondering whether or not you’re “good enough“? Do you begin pondering the possibility that God doesn’t love you anymore, that you’re not worthy to experience the intimate fellowship you once shared with the Master?
When God is silent, does your soul get filled with doubts about God’s eternal promise to meet your unmet needs? Do you stop acting like the eternally optimistic person you once were and start behaving like your pessimistic peers who question God eternal existence? Do you start thinking nothing but negative thoughts? Does your soul become filled with fear, anger, bitterness, and resentment towards God during the silence that you believe is a betrayal?
Can it be that God is speaking to you by using the silence to get your undivided attention because you kept ignoring the still, small voice you heard when you didn’t like God’s answer to your prayers? If you still doubt that God can speak to you through His silence and still refuse to believe that God can witness to you without words, you haven’t met Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems.
Listening For God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt, is the title of one of the many insightful books Rev. Dr. Weems penned that I’m adding to our Bookstore under the new category, “Books By And About Women.” The following is a brief excerpt from this courageous, thought-provoking author’s book Listening For God.
“Journal writing is for me a form of prayer. For more than twenty years now it has been my principal way to talk to God. When it began to hurt too much to pray, I started journaling as a substitute. Talking to paper was the only way I knew how to talk to God, and it proved to be an ideal form of prayer because it gave me a way to see what was going on in my heart.”
–Renita J. Weems
Reading Listening For God inspired, encouraged, and empowered me when I needed to hear from God after my great fall. Because Jesus treated all people equally, it didn’t bother me that God had chosen a woman to minister to my cast down soul. In my weakened condition, it didn’t matter how God redeemed, renewed, and restored my socially ostracized soul.
After the fall, I already felt marginalized, diminished and devalued by the sting of the resulting ridicule, rejection, and humiliation my psyche endured due to my personal, financial, and professional failures. When God was silent, I experienced a spiritual crisis that was partly responsible for changing the way I felt about female ministers. I learned to respect the “power of a wise woman’s words.”
It didn’t matter to me that a manifestation of God’s love, grace, and mercy showed up dressed as a woman because my critically ill soul was strengthened by the power of a wise woman’s words. For those of you who have never heard this eloquent orator speak as she teaches and preaches God’s word, I can assure you that you will walk away from your unforgettable experience a changed person.
If you don’t know her inspirational story, you will enjoying reading about what this extraordinary woman did when God was silent. “Something Within” is the name of Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems’ blog. For reasons now known, it is indeed an honor to introduce this phenomenal woman to all the culturally diverse members of our blended, extended family.
As a sign of respect, let’s tip our hats, extend our hands in peace, and welcome our distinguished guest. May this gifted writer’s inspiring words of wisdom comfort you and keep you from doubting God’s love during His silence.
Copyright 2007 by Roderick O. Solomon. All Rights Reserved.
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May 25th, 2007
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Stunned! Stupefied! Speechless! I couldn’t believe it. Ms. Yolanda King died this morning at the tender age of 51. My heart is heavy right now. Words can’t express the pain I feel. Ms. Yolanda King, the eldest child of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, and her siblings, have endured so much during their emotionally tumultuous childhood.
As evidence by the contents of The King Center, the King family has paid such a heavy price while fighting for the civil and human rights that our generation is privy to because of the relentless leadership of Yolanda’s Daddy. Hate took the life of her hero, the first man she ever loved, away from this pearl of a girl at such a critical age and crucial stage of her personal development.
Reading the book, A Testament Of Hope: The Essential Writings And Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. will enlighten those of you who aren’t familiar with the extraordinary life of a great man who had a great woman standing by his side.
I challenge each member of our blended-extended family to honor Ms. Yolanda King and her heroic family’s legacy by choosing to do something on a daily basis to improve the quality of somebody else’s life. Are you willing to let the synergistic power of the link love we share as a community of bloggers do its part to conquer hate? I hope so.
As always, the choice to do something to give hope to the people you will meet on the streets where you live and work is yours alone to make. Something as simple as a smile, a hug, a compassionate act of kindness could make such a huge difference in the life of a person who has lost hope.
Ms. Yolanda King, may your precious soul rest in peace in God’s comforting presence always and forever. As a sign of respect, I tip my hat to you. My wife and I extend our condolences to the surviving members of your courageous family.
Copyright 2007 by Roderick O. Solomon. All Rights Reserved.
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May 16th, 2007
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As promised, we’re continuing this month’s series, Women Of The Bible, with yet another look at the life of Eve. If you haven’t read Genesis Chapters 2 and 3, please do so in order to better understand the harsh reality of the truth and the ugliness of the dilemma Eve faced after the fall.
Since we’re dedicating the entire month of May to women and issues relevant to women, we’ll discuss Adam’s role in the fall of humanity next month with the message, “Adam, Where Are You?” For now, we’ll stay focused on the life of the woman whose name means, “Life-giving.” Imagine hearing God saying to you what Eve heard after the fall that gave birth to death, to pain, to shame, to fear, to the emotional division that still exists between man and woman.
Yes, it’s true. We’ve all blown it. We’ve all made mistakes. Big ones. Small ones. Inadvertent ones. Intentional ones. We’ve all done something we shouldn’t have at some point in our lives. We’ve all been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. I know I have. Have you?
Take some time right now to search the seat of your soul, to dig deeper into the cluttered place where all our secrets still hide and reside. Uncomfortable? Most definitely! But necessary. Take a moment to take a closer look inside the heart of your soul. What did you find? What did you do? What did you say?
On the flipside of this script, what didn’t you find? What didn’t you do when you had a chance to take a stand? What didn’t you say when you had an opportunity to clear the name of an actually innocent person who was falsely accused of a crime you know they didn’t commit? Justifying your unethical actions by telling yourself that “I was just doing my job” doesn’t make the pain go away.
Do you feel like crying right now? Go ahead, cry if you must to cleanse your face and rid your soul of the toxic residue that’s poisoning your body. During my showers in the mornings, I cry often. Do you? The water from the shower symbolizes the tears I shed. The shower cleanses my body as it washes away the dirt I picked up from the previous day.
The tears cleanse the heart of my soul as they wash aways the residue of all the unwise decisions, the mistakes, the dirt I’ve done. Crying is better than dying a slow death from the anger, bitterness, and resentment you feel towards yourself for failing to face you deepest fears. Weeping may endure for a night, a few nights, a season, but sooner or later, joy always comes in the morning.
As some of you may know, the morning is symbolic, a metaphor for the glorious day that the long-awaited sunrise will appear and allow your eyes to meet the “greatness of God’s faithfulness.” Have you been waiting a long time for the light of God’s love to pierce the spiritual darkness of the hopelessness Despair creates?
Maybe you said something you shouldn’t have and harmed somebody you love with the words from your own mouth. Maybe you betrayed somebody’s trust and lost their respect, their friendship, their financial support. Maybe you let somebody down who depended on you to keep a promise, to fulfill a commitment, to prepare an important sales presentation, to keep your end of the bargain. But you blew it big time.
Saying, “I’m sorry,” isn’t enough this time. The damage is done. You’ve blown it one time too many. You finally found the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. If only you had the supernatural power to turn back the hands of time. Alas, you don’t and now you must sleep in the mess you’ve made. If you’ve been there, done that, you can imagine how Eve felt once this woman finally realized that her mistake would affect generations of women who had done no wrong.
Imagine how it must have felt to know that both she and Adam could no longer stand in God’s celestial presence without feeling “naked and ashamed.” Both Adam and Eve had sinned against God. The word sin means to miss the mark. Despite your noble efforts, your due diligence, your good intentions, how many times have you missed the mark?
“Okay, now what?” you ask yourself. “Where do we go from here?” you wonder as you ponder the eternal consequences of your disobedience, your failure to do the right thing, your willful act of rebellion. Matters not the reason why. Where do you start? What steps must you take in order for you to feel good about the person you face in the mirror? I don’t know. But God knows. That’s where I’d start.
During your dark night of the soul when all seems lost, remember that God is still standing closer than a brother. God will not leave you nor forsake you. God still loves you despite what you’ve done or didn’t do. Don’t give up. Don’t give in to the pain you feel. Don’t quit. Today is the beginning of the rest of your life. The present, not the past, is a great place to start doing something new.
For some of you, today’s challenging message will be liberating. Some of you will find the song you stuffed deep down inside the seat of your souls that you’re afraid to sing because you committed a sin you’re ashamed to admit to yourself, to God. Haven’t you noticed that our deepest fears have an uncanny way of silencing us for too long and keeping us from singing our song for all the wrong reasons? What are some of the reasons that you’re still afraid to sing your song?
It’s true. Each one of us is capable of doing, or saying, what we all know is wrong. “Okay, now what Mr. know-it-all?” Some of you will hate me for loving you simply because you still don’t love you. You still hate yourself. You hate anybody that looks like you and reminds you of you. Some of you will become defensive, misunderstand my intentions, and choose to personally attack me for challenging you to face your fears and embrace Change. But that’s to be expected.
“Better the wounds of a friend than kisses from an enemy.”
Some of you may decide to thank the person who keeps loving you enough to tell you the truth about yourself. I find it interesting that Jesus never identified, with specificity, the truth that makes people free as evidenced by the Scriptures. So, what is the truth that will make you free? Does this truth differ from person to person? Think about it.
Knowing the truth that, in God’s eyes, we are all created equal and will be treated equally may liberate you. For others, it may be just knowing the truth that God loves each of us absent any conditions. Knowing that we’re all imperfect people living together in an imperfect world may make you free enough to finally forgive you, to highly esteem you so you can learn to love you again.
Just know that God isn’t surprised, nor is He disappointed by anything we may say or do. Despite what occurred in the Garden of Eden, God has a plan and a purpose for each one of His children. Knowing that our most merciful and gracious Father was willing to sacrifice the life of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, in order to pay for the sins of the world did it for me.
The truth that makes people free is knowing that God’s love inspired Jesus Christ to pay a debt He didn’t owe because we all owed a debt we couldn’t pay. After the fall, Eve also experienced the grace of God. Hence, our next message will deal with Eve and God’s amazing grace. I hope and pray that you will feel better about you today now that you know that God still loves you.
Copyright 2007 by Roderick O. Solomon. All Rights Reserved.
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May 15th, 2007
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HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!!
My wife of 6 years and counting, KWiz, is also the Mother of our 3-year old gift from God. My Queen’s “Happy Mother’s Day” greeting and celebration will remain personal and private this year since this post is specifically about paying tribute to the special women who gave birth to us all. What makes your Mother so special to you? Here’s what’s so special about my Mom.
My Mother, has sacrificed so much to ensure that her four children always had a safe place to lay our heads. After graduating from LPN school, she frequently worked “double” and “triple” shifts just to make ends meet. No sacrifice was too great for my personal “sheroe.” She never complained to me about how tired she must have felt during her valley experience. She didn’t have to since I saw it in her eyes.
During Junior High School, I often cried while watching my Mother fall asleep sitting up at the kitchen table following one of her 24-hour marathons until I became old enough to get my first job at Comanche County Memorial Hospital in Lawton, Oklahoma. Because of her small stature, I would pretended that my Mom was my girlfriend from a rival school whenever she came to visit me at Mac Arthur High School located in Lawton.
My Mother’s love knows no limits. During my darkest night of the soul, my beacon of hope stood by me during the tough times. To this day, she’s still one of my most loyal, trustworthy friends. By the grace of God, the first wise “woman of substance” that I ever loved will celebrate her 70th birthday this year.
My Mother’s relentless “leadership by example” taught me so much about what it means to be a man, a friend, a husband, a parent, a person that the level of my gratitude towards this Queen of a woman is beyond words. As a sign of respect, I tip my hat to my Mother for making the opportunity possible for me to make my big dreams come true.
Mommy I love you now, always, and forever!! Happy Mother’s Day!!
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