My Fifty Second Year

Greetings Dear Reader,

As I come to the end of my fifty-second year I ponder what the story of my life really is.  Thirty nine years ago I was on the verge of taking my own life.  I was miserable and felt alone in the world.  I was on the edge of heavy drug use and believed that my life did not matter.  I had planned my demise and would have gone through with it.  God had other plans.

A man looked into me and singled me out.  He took me aside and told me he knew of my desire to die.  He said he saw the pain in me and that I was planning to end my own life.  I had told no one of this and was astonished that he knew.  He then told me that who I was could change many lives if I wished to change them.  He told me that I could offer the hope I so desperately needed to others.

That spring night in Georgia saved my life and my soul.  The man that reached into me and saw more than I was passed away this year.  I have pondered often the ways in which I have honored and dishonored his investment over the years.  I think about what I want now as I turn another page and begin a new year of life. 

I want to honor his faith in God and in me.  I want honor the faith of my Grandfather too.  I want my children to do the same.  I want to reach into the lives of others in the same way.  Yesterday as I watched the movie Les Misrables I was overcome by the way in which Valjean is motivated by the act of grace and forgiveness given to him.

I wept as I heard this man transform and love others above himself.  Imagine if everyone reacted to the grace given them in this way.  Imagine if we could respond to the misery of life by reaching deeper into others.  Imagine if we allowed nothing to stand between us and our potential to do good to others.

Valjean has the chance for riches, vengeance, and safety.  He rejects them all for love, mercy, and grace to others.  How can I not follow Christ in the same way when so much grace has been given to me?  How can I now expect others to do the same?  He must increase and I must decrease.  The link below will allow you to hear this amazing piece of music.

What Have I Done?

What have I done?

Sweet Jesus, what have I done?

Become a thief in the night!

Become a dog on the run!

Have I fallen so far

And is the hour so late

That nothing remains but the cry of my hate,

The cries in the dark that nobody hears,

Here where I stand at the turning of the years.

If there is another way to go

I missed it twenty long years ago.

My life was a war that could never be won

They gave me a number and murdered Valjean

When they chained me and let me for dead

Just for stealing a mouth full of bread.

Yet why did I allow that man

To touch my soul and teach me love?

He treated me like any other.

He gave me his trust.

He called me Brother.

My life he claims for God above.

Can such things be?

For I had come to hate the world.

This world that always hated me!

Take an eye for an eye.

Turn your heart into stone.

This is all I have lived for.

This is all I have known.

One word from him and I’d be back

Beneath the lash, upon the rack.

Instead, he offers me my freedom.

I feel my shame inside me like a knife,

He told me that I had a soul.

How does he know?

What spirit comes to move my life?

Is there another way to go?

I am reaching, but I fall,

And the night is closing in,

And I stare into the void,

To the whirlpool of my sin.

I’ll escape now from the world

From the world of Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean is nothing now.

Another story must begin!

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a home owner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store."