Hi everyone. If you are currently following TiAja’s blog but have not received your personal invite to follow the new blog for 2010 consider this as your formal invitation. If you have already received and accepted your invite please ignore this portion of the message.
I am sincerely praying and fasting that 2010 is your breakout and breakthrough year of abundance. <Click on the link>
Now hit the Networkblogs<follow> button. One last thing… Expect2bBlessed!
TiAja
Dearly beloved,
Thank you for taking the time to read and distribute my blog to others in 2009. It was my humble attempt to share thoughts, to stimulate conversation, to inspire a thirst for the inner journey, but more importantly it was a small glimpse into the heart of God — how He views us — how He ‘so loves’ —us! I realize 2009 was filled with personal success as well as personal tragedy, with monumental highs and unexpected lows! Many of you reached your mountaintop in 2009 even as others had their hopes dashed and retreated to the shadows in anticipation of catching their second wind. But make no mistake; God is calling you to fulfill His promises for your life. You may think your gift is insignificant but God never consigns gifts without the expectation for them to bear fruit for your life. Listen carefully… 2010 is the year of fulfillment! You are running out of time and as it was with Jonah God is running out of patience. This is because your gift solves a world problem. Your gift unlocks someone else’s blessing. In fact, someone is going to give up on life in 2010 if you refuse to step into your destiny. This is why I have been led to create another blog simply titled: Expect2bBlessed! This blog will be solely dedicated to each and everyone’s personal success. It will have a “twitter-type format so that we all can have a voice in the effort to support and encourage one another as we move from the comfort of the couch through the doorway of destiny. Success never happens in the middle of the night, it happens in the light of day. 2010 is your year, our year. It is my sincere prayer that twelve months from now we will look back on 2010 as our own special “leap year.” Expect2bBlessed!
Happy New Year!!!!
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. Rumi
It is your season of light in the middle of your season of darkness. It is your spring of hope in the midst of your winter of despair. It is paradise in your heart accompanied by the paradox in your soul. It is heaven in your prayers along with the hell in your practices. We have Face book but no face time. We communicate more efficiently but not more effectively. Modern medicine has extended life but has not increased its quality. Women have greater rights but possess no greater righteousness. Men possess greater power but have less strength. Our children have greater access to information but lack common sense and wisdom.
This is where the two world’s touch… where one age ends and the promise of another begins. But this world cannot afford another decade like the one we are so quick to leave behind. It cannot handle the birth of another 9/11 without first giving balance to the world through the life of a Mother Theresa. It can ill-afford another Katrina without offering humanity another Dr. King. It cannot endure another Sudan without humanity foremost embracing its Savior.
Today… Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Take down your musical instrument and play a love song to a lonely hurting world. Let the beauty of what you love become what you do. The world is waiting for your gift. God is waiting for you to embrace His guarantee. He has sped up time in this dimension for that reason and now you must keep pace with the times or fall further behind your own promise. You do not need a New Years Resolution; you need to wake up from your slumber and become what God has called you to become. You must no longer inhibit the anointing on your life by walking with those who fellowship with darkness. Ten years have passed without your involvement. Ten years have passed without your voice being heard. Ten years have come and gone like a breeze with secrets to tell you. Where will you be ten years from now? Are you where you said you would be ten years ago? And what do you really want? Awake from your decade long slumber and move boldly into your destiny where the two world’s touch. There are truly hundreds of ways — to bless —to kneel and kiss the ground.
Happy New Year!!!
Train a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not turn away from it. Proverbs 22:6 GWT
My God! What have we done? What are we doing? Our children are dying mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, and our only prayer to you Father is for a bigger house; a larger storeroom. Is this why we blindly drive by the public schools in our neighborhoods everyday in our new cars with the license plates that arrogantly boast about Your goodness, mercy and grace? Meanwhile the majority of the children in those schools don’t know You. And so, they instinctively re-enact the scripted training the public schools, the social engineers, the commercial media has taught them.
Script #1: Kill or be killed!
Script #2: It’s a jungle out there!
Script #3: It’s a dog eat dog world!
Script #4: Survival of the fittest!
And so, our children try to survive by any means necessary. Which essentially means that if I need to sell drugs in order to get that new car with the 24-inch rims then so be it!
If I can’t afford those Jordan’s you’re wearing then it’s okay for me to kill you for them (the street credo)!
If I‘m not motivated to learn then nobody’s going to learn!
If you don’t give me what I want then I don’t want anything to do with you!
I don’t have to respect you just because you’re an adult; you got to give respect before you get respect.
Everybody’s cheating and breaking the rules!
I’m not a snitch. Stitches for snitches!
Can you see the results of this scripted training? Do you hear our children’s conversation? On You-tube, My-space and Face book? Have you ever read their text messages; how they talk to one another? What they talk about? Our children are receiving training one way or another. Our children are getting an education one way or another. The question is whose training and whose education are they receiving? The recent murder of an innocent bystander Derrion Albert in Chicago has received a lot of media attention but soon his senseless death will fade from the headlines and from our personal consciousness and regrettably from our collective conscience much like the other 36 homicides in Chicago schools alone, which have received little or no media scrutiny.
In the next few days, we’re going take a serious look at the training of our children from a biblical and world perspective. Somewhere . . . somehow . . . we lost sight of the charge God has given each of us to train our children. Not just our biological children, but also all children. What is imperatively clear is that our children need us. They so need us. They are like orphans without a home who are circumnavigating this life without a moral compass. They are stepping into their future while being completely ignorant of their past. Who does this to someone they profess to love? What manner of people allows their children to abort babies without ever ascertaining the spiritual cost? What manner of people watch with almost abject indifference their children gambling their health away by not exercising, over eating, and consuming cocktails of over-the-counter medications and illicit drugs? What manner of people are willing to fill up town halls and express outrage over health care yet sit eerily silent while our children kill one another in our public schools? What manner of people allows their children to drop out of school at an alarming rate of 50% per many local school districts? Parents what have we done? Church what are we doing? Public school administrators in what direction are we going? Mr. President, State Senators, Local and State Congressional leaders where is this political bus taking us?
Is there still time? Does any one out there still have hope? Does any one out there still believe God is bigger than our precipitous problems? Does anyone out there still believe God can fix our nation? My God! I pray so.
To be continued…
“We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe; can we not take the leap?” Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a dream inside of you. You don’t remember how it got there because at this moment it seems more like a distant dream than a desire. There was a time you inspired others with it. There was a time when you anticipated the new day with childlike excitement because of it. There was a time when your dream spilled into your conversation and escaped into your vocabulary. There was a time when everyone admired your boldness and courage for living your dreams. There was a time your eternity was vertical.
Now you live life horizontally. Where the higher force is absent and dreams disappear from the world. All the dust you have gathered is gone; your dream has become one of the forgotten languages. Thousands of books have been written to reconnect you to the vertical but your mirror remains completely uninfected.
Now what?
You weren’t meant to live a life from paycheck to paycheck. You weren’t supposed to blame everybody else for your failures. You were the one who was going to read more. You were the one who was going to love more. You were the one who was going to smile more. You were the one who was going to give more. You were the one who was going to achieve more. You were the one who understood. You were the old soul. You were the one who was curious. You were the one who participated in everything. And certainly no one or anything could stop you. You became the great attraction, the unending journey. A wonder of wonders. Unique. Unparalleled. Unprecedented.
But now the inner flame is hidden and your next moment is coming out of negative emptiness. Now there are days and nights of dreamless sleep. You are very near to greatness. One step and you are safe. One leap and you are there. Hesitation is natural. Your dream is such a big declaration and you feel so small, but you cannot keep it within you. You cannot hide it. You are just like a pregnant woman – how long can you hide your pregnancy? One day you are going to give birth to your dream. Each flower declares it! Millions of stars declare it! Each morning the sun declares it! You cannot hide Truth or beauty or what is good. For these are the fundamental trinity of existence.
Now what?
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. Psalms 8: 3-8 NIV
What is man that God is mindful of him? The Holy Bible teaches us that man was created “a little lower than the angels”.
However, this is the ancient Greek translation. . .
ηλαττωσας αυτον βραχυ τι παρ’ αγγελους δοξη και τιμη εστεφανωσας αυτον Psalms 8:5 Greek OT: Septuagint
But in the original Hebrew it translates:
For thou hast made him a little…
m`at (meh-at’) Almost (some, very) few(-er, -est), lightly, little (while), (very) small (matter, thing), some, soon, very.
lower…
chacer (khaw-sare’) to lack; by implication, to fail, want, lessen — be abated, bereave, decrease, (cause to) fail, (have) lack, make lower, want.
than the angels…
‘elohiym (el-o-heem’)
angels, exceeding, God (gods)(-dess, -ly), (very) great, judges, mighty.and hast crowned…
`atar (aw-tar’)
to encircle (for attack or protection); especially to crown — compass, crown.him with glory…
kabowd (kaw-bode’)
weight, but only figuratively in a good sense, splendor or copiousness — glorious(-ly), glory, honour(-able).and honour…
hadar (haw-dawr’)
magnificence, i.e. ornament or splendor — beauty, comeliness, excellency, glorious, glory, goodly, honour, majesty.
If we take the liberty to extrapolate from the Hebrew translation it would read:
What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than Yourself . . . Elohim (or God). . . and have encircled him with your divine protection, copious splendor, beauty, magnificence and glory.
Thus, the truth about humanity is . . .
Temporally, we have been wonderfully crafted in God’s image.
Positionally, we are just a little lower than God Himself.
Exponentially, we have been given stewardship over all creation.
So how have we wandered so far from our original design? With all the hundreds of religions in the world why is humanity still living so far beneath its privileges (or position)? 
How does racism and prejudice penetrate a human heart which is`atar (aw-tar’), encircled (for attack or protection) from evil? Is it like a cancerous cell already indigenous to the body but is sparked by a free radical cell revolt? 
And why would human intelligence ever defer to evil?
How could humanity enslave and kill and judge members of its own family?
Why would humanity dishonor what God has hadar (haw-dawr’) with magnificence, i.e. ornament or splendor — beauty? 
Why is God so mindful of us? 
Could it be because at our best we are ‘elohiym (el-o-heem’) angels, exceeding, God (gods)(-dess, -ly), (very) great, judges, mighty?
(Part 6 of 6)
Race is the least important aspect in determining character, yet it is often the most significant factor in how we are perceived.
Biologically, we are brothers and sisters. Genetically, we share a common mother and father. Ancestrally, we are one family. Spiritually, we are all children of God. Our variation in skin color is merely adaptation. Our variation in genetics is hereditary. Our variation in culture is learned behavior. Our variation in intelligence is environmental as well as individual. Our variation in perception is experiential. Our variation in our capacity to love is metaphysical.
We are not born hating. We are not born racist. We are not born conservative or liberal. We are not born democrat or republican. We are not born Christian or Muslim. We are born human.
So what does it mean to be human . . .
What does science say?
We are blessed with the ability to know our mother. We are conscious of more than our selves. And just as a child sees a mother, the species’ vision clears and sees mother universe. We are getting glimmers of how we are related to space and time. We can ask, what am I? What is this place? And how am I related to it? Physicist Jim Gates
The critical unique factor is language. Creativity. The religious and scientific impulse. And our social organization, which has developed to a prodigious degree. We have a record of history, moral behavior, economics, political and social institutions. We’re probably unique in our ability to investigate the future, imagine outcomes, and display images in our minds. I like to think of a generator of diversity in the frontal lobe
– and those initials are G-O-D. Neuroscientist Antonia Damasio
What does religion say?
Humans are the creatures towards whom God turns special attention. Humans have the capacity to control and dominate other creatures; The question of human identity is connected somehow with our unique relationship with God. Reverend Dr. Llewellyn Smith
Though we are made of dust we are nonetheless made for God. The Veritas forum – University of Virginia
What does politics say?
The capacity of rules to make people safe has diminishing returns. In the end, each additional rule adds very little and may take away more than it adds. But the developing and deepening of human potential, through education, habituation and the experience of freedom, is limitless. It is what human beings are designed to do. Humanpolitics.org
What does the global human consciousness movement say?
There is, of course, no end to the magnificence and horror in the human drama. Across the continents, humanity rises to every challenge, sinks to any depth. We cherish each heartbeat and murder at will. We bless nature’s miracles, yet trash the hood.
We accept this polarity as human nature and we move on in our ‘glassy essence’. All the while our righteousness lords over other life; yet we beseech gods for mercy. Our angers flare to violence and we demand justice. We covet ceaselessly, give generously. Our wallowing is legion, yet we take art and science to Olympian heights. Tony Balis 9/11/2001
So what is the Truth?
(Part 5 of 6)
“People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.” Rumi
We are all Africans. We originated in Africa. That is proved by the continent’s rich genetic inheritance. Africans are more diverse than the rest of humanity put together, because they are drawn from the pool of humans who did not leave. As many anthropologists point out, two Africans from the same village could be more divergent from each other than either is from a non-African. The question is whether this new scientific reality and understanding of human genetics will reinforce prejudices or help end them.
What would it mean to the religious communities throughout the world for science to proclaim that we are only a couple of thousand generations removed from Adam? What if scientists could correctly illustrate in genetic detail the physical appearance of Adam? Would it matter to your belief in God if Adam were a black African man?
Photo of a San Bushman
There is agreement that Y-chromosome Adam would have looked much like a San Bushman of the Kalahari, with an epicanthic fold over the eyes, a hairless cocoa body, and a loose graceful gait. The descendants of Adam would have eventually migrated to East and southern Africa and would have been scattered with hunter-gatherer groups. They probably would have spoken click languages similar to the San.
Imagine this…
Some 99% of the human genome is shuffled from one birth to the next. The Genographic Project traces the 1% of the genome which is not shuffled—mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) through the maternal line and the Y-chromosome through the paternal. These allow geneticists to work back to our common ancestors. Our mtDNA appears to coalesce in a single woman, who lived on the African savannah 150,000 years ago. Our Y-chromosome survives from a single man, who lived in the Rift Valley of Kenya or Tanzania 59,000 years ago. So Adam and Eve did exist—90,000 years apart. The discrepancy is because, unlike the biblical Adam and Eve, this couple only represent the last common Ancestors we can trace genetically.
If you can suspend religious reflex for just a moment and indulge me you too can bear witness to something very beautiful . . . The thought that we all share a common mother and father. The thought that we are all one family. The fact that we are brothers and sisters. Not just spiritually, but biologically.
How do you truly feel about this? Be honest with yourself because we have to get past this stick point in our evolution as human beings. For God’s sake and our own, we have to look at ourselves so we don’t blame others for the ugly things that still reside within us. Like racial prejudice. Like racial hatred. Like racial stereotyping. Like historical memories and images of racism that still burn like effigies within our minds and hearts. No matter how deep we have buried them they are still there. We cannot pretend that Jim Crow laws and racial segregation, which daily strangled our parents like some prescribed angel of death, somehow passed over our households as a harmless mist. We are not intellectually immune to our memories. And this is why we have become static water. This is why we must empty ourselves into the flowing rivers of life. For this concept of race is killing our humanity. It has proved to be a very serious cancer of the soul.
(Part 4 of 6)
“I know of no great men except those who have rendered great service to the human race.” Voltaire
The essentialist concept defined race as a division of the human species based on differences in physical features that are determined by heredity. Thus, traditional race concepts gave an inaccurate picture of human variation. The picture is inaccurate because these concepts suggest that each ethnic group has a significant level of uniqueness. However, the genetic variation in populations such as Europeans and Asians are actually subsets of the variation in the African population.
Humanity has lived in Africa far longer than anywhere else, which has allowed the population in Africa to accumulate more of the small mutations that make up human genetic variation. Because only part of the African population migrated out of Africa, only part of Africa’s genetic variation moved with them. For this reason, most genetic variation found in people living outside Africa is a subset of that found among Africans. For instance, Asians and Europeans possess almost the same set of variations. Most variations found in Asians and Europeans are also found in Africans. However, Africans also possess many variations that are not found outside of Africa.
This is contrary to traditional thinking. The purpose of not teaching these truths as primary education is obvious. There is too much historically invested in keeping humanity divided. Many would rather believe in the concept of race and any perceived differences between groups because they can continue their fallacious argument that some people are genetically superior to others.
You can see the contending forces of good and evil, love and hatred throughout the world. Many would like to cling to the belief that our differences are oppossing forces in the world which affirm God’s desire to separate humanity into races, but this too is a lie. How is it both possible for God to create mankind in his own image and there not be unity in man? All hatred, violence, ugliness, disease, prejudice, poverty, and chaos are manifestations of humanity being a divided house. For hatred and division is love energy moving in the opposite direction.
(Part 3 of 6)
We have a stake in one another … what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and … if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done for the people with whom we share this Earth. BARACK OBAMA, speech, Dec. 1, 2006.
Every river is constantly emptying itself into the ocean. The problem is only with those who have become ponds, closed, not open to flow, having forgotten that contributing to the ocean is their destiny. For to be a pond is to commit suicide, because there is no growth anymore, no new spaces, no new experiences, no new skies.
To be human means we are all stakeholders in this earth project. To be human means you must drop the static state and become a changing, moving, flowing river. It does not matter when you reach the ocean. What matters is that you continue to the ocean. And this universal truth has been forgotten. It has been forgotten because mankind has been conquered and is now a divided house. And the greatest division is still based on the color of ones skin. The greatest division is still based on ones so-called race.
Skin color is a pond. Race is a pond. And humanity is the flowing river emptying itself into the universal ocean which is God. But this is why human progress has stagnated. This is why there is still so much division and strife. This is contrary to what God dreamed for mankind. Falling into the ocean was already predetermined, it was so from the beginning. The whole beauty of being human is predicated on this beauty, this freedom.
The color of ones skin was also predetermined. The whole beauty of human variation was determined from the beginning. All skin color whether light or dark are simply adaptations to the sun. Skin color is merely small water droplets which contribute to the sustainability of the river.
Skin color, one of our most visible physical features, has long been used to divide people into racial categories. Anthropologist Nina Jablonski, Ph.D. theorizes that variations in human skin are adaptive traits that correlate closely to geography and the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, not race.
The Human Genome project opened many doors and helped modern science understand many of the mysteries and fallacies surrounding human genetics and variation. What Scientists now know is that a certain amount of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) from the sun helps the human body use vitamin D to absorb the calcium necessary for strong bones. However, too much UVR can strip away folate (folic acid), an essential nutrient to the development of healthy fetuses. Skin pigmentation developed as the body’s way of balancing its need for vitamin D and folate. Those closer to the equator had darker skin to prevent folate deficiency. They measured skin reflectance (a way to quantify skin color by measuring the amount of light it reflects) in people around the world. Their actual observations of skin reflectance closely parallel their predictions.
Skin color is simply the realization that the human race is more like the river, whether in a dewdrop or in the ocean itself, skin color and variation is all from the same source. For every dewdrop contains a piece of the ocean in it, and the ocean itself is made up of dewdrops.
(Part 2 of 6)
TiAja's Blog 