The Rob BlogIt's Better Over Here.

There’s this vision I have.

I’ve had it for several years now.

It’s me, crawling across a rocky, barren desert. The horizon is expansive and there are dark, angry clouds hanging low in the sky. Before me is a line on the ground that stretches as far as the eye can see…

I’m tired. I can’t breathe and my throat is so dry I can’t swallow. My tongue is swollen and my eyes sting from the sweat that keeps streaming down my head. My clothes are torn, and my body is covered in bruises, scrapes and cuts that are bleeding. Every muscle aches, but I continue to crawl…

It seems like I’ll never get to that line, though I know I have to. Something tells me that I’ve lost a lot along the way…my dignity, my pride and a slew of other humanity soaked conventions. So I crawl and crawl…slowly.

Finally, I put my hand on that line.

I don’t really know at first what I’m supposed to do next, and then I feel something. A pair of hands, gently but surely reaching under my chin. Slowly, the hands lift my sweat-soaked head and I find myself staring into the eyes of my savior, Christ Jesus. He is kneeling in front of me. He’s smiling kindly, without a hint of the mischief that I know he’s capable of.

“Look at you,” he says softly.

I began to whimper first. My tongue is so swollen I can barely speak.

“Look at me what?”

“You made it.”

“I made it? I made it where,” I ask.

“To the end.”

He slowly stands me up and I look out across the barren wasteland. Far down the line, I see a few more weary souls crossing the line. There are much fewer people here than I expected. Somehow, I thought Heaven would be full.

Then I realize this isn’t about Heaven.

“Rob. I’m so very proud of you,” He whispers.

It’s about life.

And I begin to sob.

People Making Bad Decisions

I spent some time on the phone today with an old friend. He doesn’t get on the internet much, so I have no fear of him reading this, and to be honest, I’d still write even if I knew he would read it.

It was in some ways, a very nice call. This is a dear old friend of mine, and we love each other like brothers, even though we don’t keep in touch like we should. We know how to make each other laugh and we dig music in the same ways. (He’s a very talented musician) In other ways though, it was a very sad call. I listened as he nonchalantly told me how he was divorcing his wife. he simply “didn’t love her as much as she loved him” and “if they’d lived together first, they never would have gotten married.”

I knew that they had been having some trouble, but I had no idea things were so bad. To make things worse, I could tell that his mind was made up and no amount of argument would change it. To make matters worse, he began telling me about another old friend and how he had gone off the deep end, cheating on his wife multiple times and then getting fired for looking at pornography on a school computer where he was a teacher. (There were other things too, far worse.) Now, he apparently was back with his wife, but wasn’t being faithful, hitting on girls 20 years younger than himself.

It hurt listening to the stories, and I simply had to shake my head and fight back the anger.

It wasn’t the cheating or the divorce that angered me. That may surprise you, so I want to make myself clear. I don’t think that divorce or cheating on your spouse are acceptable. But here’s the thing… people in this life make mistakes. They sin. They fall. We all do in some way. So, I was sad, but not angered by those things. No, what angered me was the way that they seemed devoid of shame. Somehow, cheating and debauchery were completely acceptable.

I wonder sometimes where shame has gone.

It’s tough to imagine pride without shame, but somehow, we have that in spades around here…