A Time for Everything under Heaven

How Faith faces Death

How Faith faces Death

Reflecting on the current situation and status of our country we must seek an answer why faith is facing death within our society and family circles. Although it is true that sometimes death brings us the realities and confronts us with issues that need resolution we need not allow death of our faith to occur to make us realize what we have lost. 

Faith is needed in all circumstance of life but the truth is faith is needed even more so when we face a death of a persons, a principle or a country for only faith can revive the momentum to bring back the relations between truth and lies as well as strength, hope, joy and comfort that we have lost has now been regained or restored. Without faith we will surely fail. 

We have to face the death of our morality, our principles and our country before it’s too late. We had to look death straight in its eyes and look beyond the death itself and focus on the hope that lies there for it is hope that gives us faith. We should make no promises that we can’t keep but we must promise to act upon what is best for our lives, our morality and our country. 

The death of a country or morality is a grave matter. No pun intended but because the penalty of death is infinitely the destruction and loss of our moral compass, our freedoms and our ability to govern ourselves we have no choice but to fight death because of its irreversible nature and a final step into eternity. 

The unfortunate consequences for sin is agony. The ultimate result for surrendering or quitting the fight is domination and dominance over everything we have lived for as all will be taken to the grave. There will be no light for good judgment, no fairness or justice to see and there will only be what death can enable for we shall bear the fruits of death rather than the fruits of life. This is how serious it is to have faith and fight the face of death. 

We know just as God had given his children life, God had also taken it away. Let faith win this struggle between life and death and show the world it is not the time to diss or dribble the time away and do nothing. The only way we can defeat death is to worship God again with love, hope and glory.

For everything under the stars and heaven there is a reason. Time will sometimes reveal those reasons, but it is often only in eternity that they will be known. Faith finds comfort in the power, in the goodness, and in the purposes of God, even though we do not understand them at the moment. There are no alternatives to facing death if one wants to live. 

Do not fear death. Do not remain quiet and surrender to death. Do not fail to speak your words of wisdom against death and do not ignore the words that are spoken about the coming of death. Most of all, do not live your life in the bondage of this fear called death.

My First job as a Bodyguard

My First job as a Bodyguard

The first time I was hired as a bodyguard was back in the seventies when the drug world was going crazy and the disco places were jumping with weirdness and bizarre drug related demonstrations of love, peace and yes violence. Violence towards the peace makers and the ones who wanted no part of fighting a war or even fighting each other. 

The mood was mixed between aggressors and victims and sometimes the victims became the aggressors.  It depended whether or not they were liquored up or not how violent they became. Alcohol mixed with drugs can be a lethal or unpredictable combinations and awareness was the key.

I was never a great fighter. Hell, I wasn’t even a good fighter but I did learn a few things to survive. I knew that my body was hard wired to protect itself from harm if you know how to use your hands, your feet and your eyes. Knowing how to use your senses was the first step to becoming vigilant and aware of your surroundings and when you are taking the job assigned serious, you make sure that keeping on your toes is your normal instinctive style. 

If you let your natural instinct guide you it will be beneficial to you and your body to let your senses take over at times. We all have a natural instinctual defense mechanism and it’s basically a three step process – startle (awake) – flinch (react) and push (away the danger). This is of course determined by your mindset to do the job and do it right. 

We also have to talk about the 3 D’s.  Detect, De-escalate and Defend.  So if we pay attention to these settings, have the correct body language and choice speech that says that you don’t want to fight you can avoid a large portion of altercations.  It is better to know if something bad is going to happen 10 yards away than it is to find out when the bad guy is in your face. That was what I was getting paid for; to avoid conflict and making sure she was safe at all times. 

The job was given to me by an influential businessman who owned a few nightclubs in the city and wanted to give his girlfriend the protection she needed to run on of his clubs at night. I had done some other security work for him when I was self-employed as a security contractor and he liked the way I did the business end as well as my mindset to do it right. No shortcuts and all business. 

She was indeed a beautiful lady. Her attractiveness would draw the men out of the crowd instantly and her protection need was not inside the club but rather once she was done for the night and wrapped up the bankroll, deposit and then home for the night. It was during those times she was vulnerable as the man didn’t trust anyone else with his money except her. 

She was a shaker and a mover. She was a woman with a figure like Marilyn Monroe as her real blonde hair stood out in the crowd where the strobe lights were hitting the dancers and as she shakes her ass for the customers and moved around and mingled with them all. She had a name but liked to be called by nicknames and her personality was as outgoing as it can be. Some said she was flirting but to me, she was making money.

 My job was simple to some extent. All I had to do was escort her out the door, walk her to her car, follow her to the bank night deposit and follow her home. Basically I was being paid for paying attention to her along the way home. All that was done because there were dynamics in place that created conflict in the business world that started over who owned the proceeds from the vending machines inside the joint and who gets what share of the profits for the beer, liquor, and backroom gambling. 

The biggest conflict was over the vending machines and its profits. They were subleased and the organization that owned them were pure business men who relied on their regular cut and sometimes tried to bully or gouge a little bit more than agreed upon. 

This caused some ill feelings and sometimes resulted in fights but nothing that couldn’t be handled between them to keep it from spilling out in the street or public. I always worried more about that bunch than any others who may have expressed some kind of anger towards the boss or the boss’s lady.

The businessman also had an obsession with this woman. He thought every man out there wanted her and he wanted to make sure nobody got close enough to steal her away from him. I couldn’t say anything about his obsession but he made it clear I was to not ever fail him to protect her in so many words and suggestions. 

The best way I could protect her was to have a plan each and every night I watched her. I had to keep a mindset that was focused on her and her movements. I had to avoid making a routine that was predictable and switched between front door and back door randomly.

Inside the club she mingled and socially active but once it was near closing time, I had to step it up a little and makes sure the car, a very expensive Cadillac, was brought up to the back door or front door by one of the valets and secured. Then I would walk her to the car, insist she lock it in front of me, get in my car I parked behind her and follow her to the bank with the bankroll. 

This usually took place between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m. in the morning and it was dark in the city. Rats and mischief crawled around and all you had was your senses, your alert levels, your presence and your gun. It was a mindset of fear management and the fear of letting the businessman down was more than normal. 

It had huge repercussion for me if I failed him. I could only imagine the stress of the woman who carried the loot and felt his obsessive watch over her more intense than I did.  The club was closed on Sundays and that was my day of rest.

           

The First Time the Sun Went Down on Me

The First Time the Sun Went Down on Me

We all have a time when you feel the sun went down on you. It is an emotional moment where your inner spirit has been diminished to a point of surrender. The moment you feel the sun going down on you is the critical time for you to gather your strengths and face the world with every ounce of energy, faith and confidence you have inside of you. In no shape or form must you allow the sun go down on you. 

Life has its ups and down. Life is never black or white and although there are times when you feel you heart, your soul become cold or frozen, there is always a chance you can pull yourself out of this abysmal feeling by looking up and finding the light again. Never quit and never surrender yourself to the forces of others. Keep your eyes wide open and make your heart see the purpose you serve on this earth.

There are choices to be made in such times of darkness. Surrendering is giving up the fall you are taking to never see the light again. The oxymoron of such instants is the fact you are actually blinded by the light to make good decisions. Quitting life means disappearing from the reality for who you are and where you belong in such a vast universe.   

My sun went down on me when I was a very young man facing the uncertainties of a war. A very unpopular war and a war far away. I felt like I was trapped in a vacuum for there were no choices to this dilemma created by our government and its lust for war. In all reality, I felt the sun was going down on me and I was falling into the darkness never seeing the light again. 

The light is what kept me alive and losing the light would mean me dying. It would have caused me to disappear from the world I have known for the last two decades and without it, there was no reason to go on and struggle this uphill battle or fight to see the light. 

Don’t fight with the Devil and don’t stay focused on the bad things in life. Focus on the goodness of God and he will sort it out for you before the end is near. It created a real life crisis and the situation called for faith and not hate. It called for you making up your mind what your priorities were in your life and fighting for them. If you take the time to sort it out, you will make your life much more peaceful than before.

Don’t let the sun go down on me means not becoming angry and frustrated with yourself or others. It means to settle those things that bother you the most and then resolve them. It is not always clear what is right or wrong but letting the sun go down is not the answer.

Knowing I was going to travel to a faraway place caused me to have a major depression. However, I had to learn that when you are traveling to that particular place, you can say your are going down but that you will never quit life and do everything you can to stay alive to go back home when your time is done.