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The saloon doors swing open. Conversation stops, the piano player slows, falters, and ceases as Mad Dawg walks in the sudden silence, quietly as a cat, across the saloon floor to the bar, gestures to the bar tender for a drink, and turns to face the cowed onlookers, as, hands hovering over the ivory handles of his matching revolvers, he prepares to unleash a devastating theological rejoinder.

But unfortunately he is so drugged and sleepy he can't remember what the rejoinder was going to be.

Music starts up, conversation and laughter resume. Mad Dawg stalks out of the saloon, saddles up, and rides out of town. Nobody notices.

I don't think God creates us wholesale. I think angel differs from angel not always in degree of glory but in kind of glory, Raphael and Michael being different from each other and both different from Gabriel.

I think the Alamo-girl that grows before God as she lives in faith, seeks to resolve the conflicts and incongruities of her loife and circumstances with her perception and experience of God's Love, as her own "humors" and history and quirks make each temptation and accomplishment unique and different from any challenge any other child of God has ever met or ever will meet, as she chooses, failed to choose, repents and turns again to the Lord and finds and takes to herself His mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, Alamo-Girl joins with God in His creation, redemption,, and sanctification expressed as it never was before and never will be again. Alamo-Girl's new song will be unlike kosta's, Quix's, or the baying and yipping of certain Dawgs.

I used to think all I wanted, all I could or should hope for was to be a dribble of water, itself disappearing into the soil, its presence not seen but deduced by the fertility and green let behind. I don't know where it came from, I suspect being a parent has something to do with it, but I now find each and nearly every individual quirk or trait charming and endearing. I wonder if it makes sense that God would lose all these different testimonies to Him and His Love and examples of the same as each of us is saved, even if only through fire.

I think we each add our own note to the celestial music, and our own refraction to the Divine Light.

And Now My eyes will not stay open.

I don't think God creates us wholesale. I think angel differs from angel not always in degree of glory but in kind of glory, Raphael and Michael being different from each other and both different from Gabriel

But the question is are they in any way aware of their different roles? Do they 'take pride' in them? You see, angels are messengers of God, wholy transparent, not vain in any way. Those who 'took pride' fell along with satan. Dying unto yourself and letting only God shine through you is becoming invisible, transparent, angelic, never drawing attention to yourself, as to who you are. Individual differences retain their role and function for God's purpose only.

The saloon doors swing open. Conversation stops, the piano player slows, falters, and ceases as Mad Dawg walks in the sudden silence, quietly as a cat, across the saloon floor to the bar, gestures to the bar tender for a drink, and turns to face the cowed onlookers, as, hands hovering over the ivory handles of his matching revolvers, he prepares to unleash a devastating theological rejoinder.

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LOL! Mad Dawg, the Zane Grey of Free Republic!

I suspect being a parent has something to do with it, but I now find each and nearly every individual quirk or trait charming and endearing.
= = =

Increasingly the last 20 years or so . . . some from Scripture and some from anecdotal experiences of others . . .

THAT IS THE PICTURE I HAVE GROWN TO APPRECIATE OF FATHER, DADDY, ALMIGHTY GOD. Our "quirks" are no accident. Somehow, they will end up being, indeed already are--for HIS GLORY and will become more so.

This has been and remains a growing edge thing for me because of the tortured relationship I've had with blood dad and stepdad.

And one of the reasons such an understanding has been burned so deeply and vividly into my consciousness is that God has gone to great lengths to . . . VERY FIERCELY do two things repeatedly.

1. Very severely discipline me or anyone else who tried to meld, overwhelm, minimize, obliterate another individual's personhood, unique personality etc.

2. Very emphatically affirm sometimes the smallest detail of the personhood HE CREATED . . . even when I'd gone to great lengths to minimize or ignore or especially to trash such.

I have learned the very hard way that DADDY has intensely strong feelings about our individual personhood, personalities. But then, we are His. He made us AS HE MADE US FOR HIS GLORY AND PURPOSES. Why shouldn't He have strong feelings about such?

What a beautiful post, Mad Dawg. Just beautiful.