Various Articles

Years 2004 and 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009

Personal Narrations

in the Salt Lick Journals

Joel Akin

Passions Narration is like a tree that lies in the forest. To most it is a fallen tree and nothing more but to some it is a legend, a ledger, a written record of season come and gone. For in the ledger of the tree are rings and if you can read their song they will tell you of the sighing and the sowing. The good years and the bad.

And really is that not the way we are? We are people who have fought battles in our seasons. We are composed of a ledger called our heart. And it, like the tree, keeps records of our sowings. And if we are careful we will find that someday there will be someone there for us who will take our heart. Carefully open it up and read its contents.

Now some of you are afraid because you’ve done so many things badly. You’ve written season in your life that are filled with pain and hurt and you’ve rubbed others the wrong way or felled others with your strength and stunted others growth. You felt like the king of the forest and yet your heart knows. And that record is there for the day of judgment that you might know that there is a God who knows and sees.

Sometimes I wonder what mine says. Is the record complete? Is it all there waiting for the day when I stand before my Lord and King? Will I be judged fully and then be hit with an axe so that the heart can be tossed into the sea of forgetfulness?

Or is it possible that God will see a treasure. A treasure so vast that He will say “Well done thou good and faithful servant enter thou into the joy of the Lord.”

And when I think of that, more then anything, I then try not to worry about the body with its pain and suffering. I creak and I groan and it seems there is a never ending story of suffering. But I also know I have a heart. A passion narration story that goes on and on. And I know there is a God who watches over my heart and my story.

And in that there is hope for there is a God who has said that he will never leave me. And that never leaving part is the one thing that gives me hope. For the narration of these stories I write in the pages of my life are written with one ever present friend. God. And if I can say to you this “Trust in Him” for I have found a friend who has never forsaken me. And in that story it is worth the pain that I suffer. For God has held me close amidst the valley of my tears. And someday, when I least expect it, that valley shall be brought high. And all those things I thought God had forgotten and ignored, including my pain, shall be seen. And he shall wipe away the sore and then help me to live.

So in life and in my stories that you read remember that I am a dreamer but you are now part of this dream. Not a nightmare but a wish, a hope of things yet to come. Where our hearts and their records carry the hope of the Lord Jesus Christ and we are brought forward into a time and a place of joy for all eternity.