Ron Brackin

When God asks a question, it is always rhetorical.

Homeowners' Association: the means whereby people who own homes are able to transfer their rights to the neighborhood control freaks.

In the world, success is measured in terms of legacy, what we leave behind. In God's kingdom, success is measured by what we send on ahead.

When a friend of mine boasted about living in a gated community, I thought he meant Folsom, and I wondered whether he knew Charles Manson.

SUPPORT LITERACY! A child who cannot read cannot text.

One of the biggest obstacles on the path of peace, or even peaceful coexistence, between Israelis and Palestinians was placed by the international community and media when it redefined Hamas as an "organization." One result is that outsiders try to reach a solution based on the assumption that Hamas has structure and leaders. It does not. It has no "political wing" or "militant wing." Hamas is a loosely-knit band of terrorists. Its leaders are whoever has weapons, plans, and influence. Hamas is thuggish and cowardly. Those who fly the green flag are not military combatants. Nor do they represent, or care a whit, for the Palestinian people, as evidenced by their strategy of hiding in and fighting from schools, clinics, hospitals, and people's homes. After what passed for an election some Hamas terrorists were further redefined as politicians and diplomats, though they were neither politic nor diplomatic, evidenced by the fact that many "govern" from Israeli prisons. Prior to the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, Hamas had been emasculated and nearly eradicated by Yassir Arafat, who rounded up, disarmed, and imprisoned the terrorist "leaders," leaving its remaining members to return to their homes. Arafat ensured that members of Hamas had no place to hide among the Palestinian people. And that is the only way the terrorist cancer in Gaza will be excised today. In the absence of Arafat, the task falls by default to Israel, which would do better to enable the citizens of Gaza to purge themselves of Hamas and reward them for doing so than try to get rid of the bad apples by blowing up the barrel, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor.

The words 'good' and 'love' have become so trivialized in our culture--not that our definitions were so accurate to begin with--that, in times of distress or disappointment, we struggle to believe that God is either.

Harpies, n. A disease transmitted to humans by birds with human faces.

The Holy Spirit never uses guilt or shame to persuade us to give. For that matter, he never persuades us to give in the first place. That's called manipulation, a device employed by a different spirit.

If wool shrinks when you wash it, why don't sheep get smaller when it rains?

When a lady accessorizes in here in Texas, she's selecting caliber, not color.

I am old enough to enjoy a bit of nostalgia, but wise enough to know that there haven't been any "good ol' days" since Eden (the garden, not the prime minister).

OMG, I think I__e become a feminist. I mean, I__e always been in favor of women voting and being paid the same as men for doing the same job. But then, the other day on the train, I didn__ get up and give a woman my seat. I thought about it. But then I thought it might insult her, might imply that I considered her weaker than a senior citizen, maybe even inferior in some way. But that__ not what prompted me to fire up my laptop. I was brushing my teeth this morning and thinking about romance. People do that when they get older, I suppose. Romance is one area where men and women are still different__nisex lavatories and fashions notwithstanding. And here__ the difference: a romantic woman envisions a knight on a white horse; a romantic man envisions a dragon in a dark cave. Think about it next time you brush your teeth.

God clues us in to the fact that, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." In short, God is not logical. This is not to say that he is illogical, only that he is not limited by logic. Simplified, "logic" is connecting the dots. We identify the dots we consider relevant, then connect them into lines and patterns. God, on the other hand, may see that, beneath one of the dots is a stack of a trillion more dots, each of which may be combined with the others. Little wonder that our ways and meanings frequently fail to match God's ways and meanings. Great wonder that, when they don't, we tend to fault him.

God cautions us in Isaiah 55:9 that his ways are not ours and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts (undoubtedly one of the grander understatements).God is warning us that he is not logical and that believing him to be logical will lead to all kinds of disappointment.Logic has been defined as 'the science or history of the human mind, as it traces the progress of our knowledge from our first conceptions through their different combinations, and the numerous deductions that result from comparing them with one another.'Doesn't sound much like God. Yet, we so often strain our relatively minuscule brains to conceive, combine, compare, and deduce. Then we fault God when his conclusions disagree.The repetition of this useless exercise leads to a form of insanity which ultimately manifests in denial of the existence of such an illogical God.

If one man challenges a statement and another cannot prove it, it does not necessarily follow that the statement is false.

Writing is a solitary occupation, except for Presidential speeches and sitcoms.

One of the difficult things about growing older is that you start losing so many friends. On the other hand, the older you get, the less time you have to wait until you see them again.