Foreword
Set Six
There comes a time in life when one must simply grow up and take complete responsibility. This is that time. The transition is never easy, but it is vital that it happen. Prayer, love and faith can ease the challenge, but the task ahead must be accomplished for life to proceed.
Of course, I'm not the first one to figure this out. Nor, comfortingly, am I the only one to grapple with the experience we colloquially call "growing up":
When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.
So wrote Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:11.
Curiously, that first verse is right before the one that captured my eye and imagination perhaps four or five years ago; enough so that I wrote it down in a list of favorite quotes. 1 Corinthians 13:12:
At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.
And continuing with the presagement, the next verse speaks another truth:
So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Strange then that a few years ago it was verse 12 that caught my eye, but it is in this past year that verses 11 and 13 have rung true. in this year I lived the experience of both verses' reality.
And so it is that I turn to 2006 with a heart buoyed by hope. What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger, and after all of this, I know that I'm still alive; thus, by logic, I must be stronger. But I am also wiser. Wise enough to know my own strength is not enough. I know now that I must be man enough to bend knee and call upon Someone Else for help and support.
If you dig through the dominik.net news archives and look at the entry for August 1, 1999, you'll find this:
God is the ultimate sponsor!
I'm merely telling myself things I already knew, it seems; yet English is a paltry language. In other tongues there are more words to express the concept of knowing than just know. Perhaps in 1999 I intellectually knew the truth, but I had not yet come to the greater understanding that is born of experience. Then I knew as a child knows, now I know as a man knows.
Thus I confidently say, with Jesus and His Mother holding my hands, I know 2006 will be a beautiful, wonderful and glorious year.
Happy New Year!
Dominik Rabiej
January 1, 2006
Mattawan, Michigan
Dedication
This collection is dedicated to Roman and Ewa Rabiej, my parents whose love and prayer continue to shape and guide my life more than they know. Happy 30th Anniversary; thank you for knowing how to love, in all senses of the word know.
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