This will be brief (like I hadn’t said that before and ended up writing a short story). As of late, my depression has been winning out, and my inspiration has been buried by it. But today, I find myself running a comparison of two of my favorite Bible heroes and me.
Something to note here, I am only a microscopic version of them, but I find them interesting, and I can relate—my 1st from the Old Testament Solomon. He was the youngest son and chosen. I was the youngest and chosen to lead our family. He prayed for discernment between right and wrong and, in his life, had trouble with both. I likewise with temptations of being hard in business and too many women in my life. Although I avoided casual and concubine sex with several wives and loving only about 200 out of 1000, I had virtually no casual sex and loved and married three of them with a child from each. God tried to warn Solomon of too many women, especially from Egypt. He just didn’t listen. And on a much smaller scale, did the same thing.
He was a builder. I was a builder. He ran roughshod over people and did what it took to get the project of God’s temple done to specs. I built cool stuff and was just as demanding of my workforce. He shrewdly took advantage of his business connections, sometimes to the point of screwing them. And I drove a hard bargain and sometimes took advantage of my leverage. He paid a fair wage to his own kind. I discarded non-performers like chaff. He led from the front. I led from the front. He had wisdom I had some, on occasion and folly and leaning on my own understanding and made serious business blunders. He loved God. I loved and pitied Jesus like he was one of us but couldn’t wrap my head around the Trinity thing. That being like the Old Testament that Jesus had to teach us 100’s of years later.
He loved his family and knew the importance of his ancestral role and family honor. His dad was a hard ass but was compassionate and a man after God’s own heart. My dad was much more subtle and private about it but knew God and related to Him and was a complicated man and conflicted man My dad worked hard and built a prosperous business the hard way. David, Solomon’s father, slew many people, took all their stuff in the name of GOD, and gave it to Solomon, so he could pay cash and get a good deal on the materials and labor to build the temple ( I’m using a bit of liberty here filling in some scriptural silence.) I drive hard bargains with cash when I can, and my dad left my mom and me a fair amount of cash when he died. I built several churches; He built the ultimate one.
No one knows what happened to him; it was recorded in the Annals of Solomon but got lost and never found. I’ve found a lot of my history that records my finer moments and my follies and believe that my annals will be lost somewhere as well. But I will just fade away like General Macarthur once said, “I’m in neither category of great men by a void in space from here to the nearest star in our galaxy.” Maybe the two huge concrete crosses I built will prompt someone to ask questions about who built these. I hope those don’t go the way of the temple being destroyed, be it modern-day Babylonians or Antifa.
So that’s why this guy is my Old Testament hero. He was very flawed but an amazing man who loved God. I’m not worthy of even mentioning his name and mine in the same sentence.
My other hero comes from the New Testament, the Apostle Paul. He was educated in the school of the Pharisees and did pretty well and was destined to be one and learned great knowledge of the religious and secular kind. I went to UF, and l learned business accounting and passed the CPA exam. He did side jobs as a tentmaker, a skill he learned along the way. I play sax on the side to earn my way through college and drove dump trucks and a sand dredge for my dad.
Later in life, after tormenting Christians with his pharasitic knowledge and power, he had an epiphany on the way to Damascus and was blinded by the light. I saw Jesus while lie crying on the floor, fearing I wasn’t going to make payroll, and my second wife and I were on the skids. I was blinded by welders burn ( temporary blindness when not adequately protected by welding visor) from patching up my aging fleet of dump trucks.
He persecuted Christians. I persecuted people around me, hurling my anger at them like the stoning of Paul’s day. Paul turned around his life and began preaching the Gospel. I found a little church in Fort Drum, Florida, and revisited the Bible and let Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit take over my life even if it was, in my case, a little, where Paul was all in.
Paul wrote amazing words of the Gospel and passed down the words for us, and when he was older and nearly blind, he had a scribe edit and write down his words. Since my stroke, it is hard for me to follow the curser because of my blindness in my left eye to write, so my scribe is my devoted wife who also types, edits, and posts my blog, which is drivel compared to the books of Paul.
He had a plaguing problem with a thorn in his foot that he often prayed for God to remove (may have been gout). I have gout, and fortunately for me, a medication that keeps it under control, but my thorn is seizures that I have to fight off with medications and even rebuking that evil in the name of Jesus to make the evil that accompanies them. Jesus and I fight this battle at least once a week, and the power of His rebuke is the power that saves me and completes the void where the meds calm me physically while Satan attacks both mind and body.
Paul was either imprisoned or in the form of house arrest for doing the right thing and preaching the Gospel. I spent an afternoon in jail for making payroll instead of paying sales tax to the state of Florida, which I bounced a check on. I am now under virtual house arrest in paradise in my homestead and write this insignificant blog with a little gospel thrown in haphazardly.
Paul was a saint. I’m way short of that bar. Paul said he was the worst sinner and killed Christians early on. Except for killing anyone, I’m right up there with him. I even was a murderer one time when I was young and afraid, and my 1st wife and I killed this poor little boy that lived in her womb within months after Roe versus Wade made it legal.
Now my life begins anew. I these past and future years, with my friend Paul’s words and my buddy Solomon’s wisdom, the journey has been and still is a bumpy ride. As for me, Jesus and Paul, I’ll catch up.
Tales from Depression and Dealing with it. 