i must go on boasting in my weaknesses

"If I may speak of my own experience, I find that to keep my eye simply on Christ, as my peace and my life, is by far the hardest part of my calling....It seems easier to deny self in a thousand instances of outward conduct, than in its ceaseless endeavors to act as a principle of righteousness and power."

-John Newton

i. Perhaps some of you wonder why i never capitalize my own personal pronoun. It is an attempt, albeit a somewhat feeble and perhaps simply metaphorical one, to remind you, and more importantly me, that in reality i am nothing without God above. i have a very real sickness that attempts daily and even hourly to supplant Jesus from His rightful place in my life. It attempts to act, like Newton put it, "as a principle of righteousness and power." Yet what power have i? What righteousness have i? Nothing to call my own except filth and putrescence. My birthplace, my family, my upbringing, my education, my abilities, my health, my friends--these are all realities in my life which i had and have no responsibility for bringing about.

i must decrease. He must increase. i must realize that this mighty God, this Savior of all, this Righteous and True King still has the whole world in His strong hands. Without Him, i am less than worthless. i am intrinsically negative to the people around me and the universe at large. Yet with Him...

"From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king."

-Tolkien