Without my past, what stranger would I now be? Without my past, what armor would I be missing, what foundation would I stand upon, what great knowing would be greatly unknown?
A WWII orphan reacts to receiving a new pair of shoes. One reason we seldom have this feeling is because we have too much;
without The Without, we have no way to measure The Having.
Without smiles, would I know happy? Without happy, would I know joy? Without joy, would I know peace? Without peace, would I know G
Without danger, how do I measure safe?
Without lie, how do I trust truth?
Only through losing can I appreciate the ever having. The greater the loss, the greater the hurt, the longer the heal…but past all that, in the fullness of time, comes something only for me, true appreciation, and humility, for the ever having.
Without learning, we waste the brain.
Without manners, we live like sandpaper.
Those without a sense of “we” earn their isolation.
Without God, we may live the years, and great the distance between the dashes of our headstone, but it could never be, what it could’ve been, if only we’d sought the counsel of Father.
We can never respect the proper middle, of humility, without being burned by our pride.
Without knowing bad debt, we can never appreciate the zero balance.
The best of us will follow the rules, stay in our lane, trust the process, but even those will know the touch of without, of stages that end, relationships that wither, and the great without of death.
The rest of us will boldly go where only fools go. We’ll know better, and do it anyway. As for our earned without, it’ll depend on how far we strayed, how low we went, but it is not all loss, for our view of without is wider, deeper, substantial, and as we straighten up, get correct, we carry a certain humility in our scar sack, and know truly, in a just-for-us-way, that God does not give up on us.
Without Others, We’d Have No Mirrors.
Death is the great Without, and worthy of capitalization.
1960 Olympics, Rome, the Marathon. Ethiopian Adebe Bikala runs the 26 miles barefoot. And wins. Four years later, he wins again. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and being Without still leaves us with all the mysteries of Us, each of us made one-of-a-kind by the great
One Of A Kind.
Without consequences we’d be ignorant of both hurt and hurting, of into and unto.
Without our conscience, we’d never know the sound of God’s whisper.
Without age we’d never know the squander of youth.
Without knowing the normal of peace, we’d never be able to measure the abnormal of anger.
The longer we live, the more we see the randomness of death, of much-too-young, of way-too-good, of better-than-I, of take-me-instead. Without all that, we’d never reach the sweet spot, of seeing birthdays as grace of life, no me-Me-ME, but instead WEE-Wee-wee.
Without the worst of the worst, we would be thin, in all the places we were designed to grow into thick.
Without reaching the end of our rope, who would see the knuckles of the Hand of Heaven?
The unifier of With and Without is God. Without God, what? With God, what? It is to each, in the seeking to be found, in the asking to be answered, a knowing just for you.
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This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we know some of you were expecting “What is faith without works?” to be included. See, it pays to read to the end.
Uncle P can be reached at eightyoneantiques@gmail.com. Copies of his book can be purchased at Eighty-one, 3507 Ryan Street, Lake Charles.
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