Family

My wife is watching me cry, and she has no idea why I’m crying. She found me where she finds me most mornings upon waking; in my chair, clicking away on my laptop, but this morning was the first time she found me crying.

Some of us had it easy growing up even though we had it hard. Some of you will know exactly what I mean, while others will scratch their heads, wondering if I am being purposefully vague. I am not. At least I am not trying to be, but it’s the best way I can encapsulate the thoughts rushing through my head, and the emotions welling up in my heart.

My brothers and I grew up poor, in a dangerous neighborhood, having been spirited away from the only home we ever knew and brought to the United States without knowing the language, or understanding the culture. It has become home. I am grateful that this country opened its arms to my family when we had nowhere else to go, and even though the first few years were difficult, to put it mildly, we still had each other. We still had family.

Seven of us lived in a two-bedroom apartment, both grandparents, both parents, myself and two little brothers, and we managed to survive, lean on each other in times of need, and make it through the hard times by sticking together. Yes, life was hard, but having family made it easier, more bearable, giving you a sense of permanence even when everything around you was in chaos.

I was blessed not because I had things, or lived somewhere fancy, or bought clothing from stores with actual labels inside them because I had none of those things growing up. We lived in a glorified ghetto, my grandma sewed my clothing, and I have no memory of ever having had toys save or a set of lawn darts the next-door neighbor gave us because they didn’t sell at his garage sale. Even during the worst of times, however, we still had family.

I have always thought of the Hand of Help orphanage as a family. I realize this sounds odd given that it is literally an oasis for children without parents, but there are different types of families, and I’ve always thought of the orphanage as just another kind of family.

This morning I was proven right, and it’s the reason my wife found me with tears rolling down my face.

Allow me to explain: one of our own, a member of the Hand of Help family is gravely ill and requires life-saving surgery. It is a complicated and costly procedure that could only be carried out in Austria. It’s not US costly, but costly nonetheless.

Yesterday, my brother Daniel started a GoFundMe to help with the cost, and this morning, when I clicked on the link, I saw names I recognized who had given to this cause.  Some of these are names I hadn’t seen the better part of a decade, children who had at one point stayed at the Hand of Help orphanage, but are now grown, with families of their own. They are scattered throughout Europe, North America and beyond, but they have not forgotten from whence they came.  

A member of their family needed them, and they are stepping out in force to prove that family will always be family, and when family needs you, you answer the call.

God will provide for this need. There is no doubt in my mind regarding this, but what had me chocked up was who He is doing it through.

I have often said that I will never ask of you what I myself am unwilling to do, or have not done already. It is a simple philosophy, yet one that has served me well throughout the years.

I will post the link to the GoFundMe in this article so you can better understand the need, and if the Lord leads you to give toward this cause, know that it is a worthwhile one. We too are family, the family of God, and when one is hurting we all hurt. When one is in need, if we can meet it, well, it’s just what family does. Pray about it, and do as He leads. 

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

GoFundMe/HelpDumi

While We Bicker

I don’t like joining things. I am not a joiner. My wife convinced me to join a gym a while back, and as a form of silent protest, I’ve never gone. Not once. It’s not a recent thing. I’ve always been this way. Even while growing up in a less than genteel neighborhood in Southern California, when I refused to get jumped into one of the two local gangs, even though it meant getting harassed by both of them.

I was a teenager, so it wasn’t so much the moral objections that kept me from joining, it’s just that I didn’t like the idea of joining anything, be it a gang, or a book club.

When you start to think about it, however, pretty much everyone is segmented into groups, cliques, gangs, or tribes. Whether it’s fans of certain sports teams or vegans versus carnivores, folks who drive diesel and those who drive gas, being part of one group or another has become inevitable.

When we bring it around to the spiritual, there are those of the light, and then there are those of the dark; Two distinct groups, in stark contrast, and at odds with each other. This is natural, normal, and not something I have an issue with. Having mulled this over for some time this morning, I think my bone of contention is the splintered groups within what ought to be one solid, resolute, well-purposed, and energized army of light.

Yes, within any army you have regiments, battalions, brigades, and divisions, but they all have one well-defined common enemy. They all receive the same marching orders, show up on the same battlefield, and face the same way. They do not make war among themselves, while the true enemy marches ever onward. The 8^th division doesn’t try to take out the 6^th, and the 6^th doesn’t try to take out the 12^th.

Wouldn’t it be a sight if when you showed up for battle, the opposing army just started fighting among itself? All you’d have to do is watch as they exhaust themselves, get battered, bruised, wounded, and wearied, then ride in to finish off those who are still standing.

While we bicker amongst ourselves like over-indulged children, souls are still perishing. While we attempt to assert dominance over our fellow brothers in arms, the darkness is still advancing. While we attempt to throw down the gauntlet and insist that everyone pick a side, join a team, or form a clique, the devil’s minions are single-minded in their desire to annihilate Christianity altogether.

Before anyone else asks, I’ve already picked a side, and I picked it long ago when I surrendered my life and pledged my fealty to Him.

This isn’t Twilight, we are not pubescent teenage girls, and I don’t have to declare if I’m team Edward or team Jacob. I’m team Jesus. If you are anything other than team Jesus, I fear there’s a world of hurt on the horizon for you.

I’ve been in ministry for over thirty years. I’ve seen it all, and then some. I’ve seen people appropriate words of prophecy, I’ve seen people plagiarize my writings, I’ve seen others monetize what we offer for free, and through it all the word of Jesus echoes in my ears: “Whoever is not against us is for us!”

One day there will be a reckoning, and we will all stand before the God of all things, to answer for what we did, what we didn’t do, the spirit in which we did it, and the intent with which it was done. All men are accountable for their own actions, just as I am accountable for mine.

Clean hands, pure heart, clear purpose, and faithful execution; these are the things I can strive for daily, and the things for which God will call me to account if I fall short. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

A Common Enemy

It’s always fascinating to watch what strange bedfellows hate can bring about. Although hate is not as powerful as love is, it can be just as unifying. People who would have nothing in common in any other context are united in purpose because they are fueled by hate for one thing, one group of people, or one faith. These are individuals who would otherwise be at each other’s throat, but because they have found a common enemy, they have chosen to call an armistice and focus their attack on that which they hate.

I can’t say I’ve ever hated anything or anyone that much. Yes, there have been people in my life who bore false witness about me, who betrayed me, who sought to destroy everything in my life for no other reason than to hoard the ashes of what remained for themselves, but I’ve never once considered aligning myself with someone I despised in equal measure just to get at them.

Ever so slowly, the rabid enemies of all that is good and decent are beginning to lock in on a common enemy. They are beginning to see one particular group of people as the source of their discontent, and are cobbling together an alliance of the hateful, the fringe, the disenfranchised, and the outright insane.

It matters not that the individual they now call a brother in arms would likely cheer their being thrown off a roof in a different context, as long as they burn with hatred for the Christian and the Jew. That’s it! No further litmus test required. As long as you hate the right people, you are, for the time being, a useful tool, and you will be tolerated until you are no longer useful.

If one knows what to look for, if they can discern the telltale signs, they soon come to realize how sinister and diabolical what is currently taking place is, and also how prophetically accurate. The selfsame people screeching endlessly about hate having no home here, have revived the murderous hatred of old.

It’s a trick as old as time, and it’s lasted this long because it is effective. Accuse the other side of the things you are guilty of doing, do so vociferously and consistently, and they won’t have time to realize what you are doing in the shadows until it is too late.

There are far too many people looking for someone to blame for their hurt, even though most often their hurt is self-inflicted, and the puppet masters are doing their best to offer them a target upon which they can pour out their angst and frustrations.

For the most part, the church is as clueless as clueless can be, unaware of the forces aligning themselves to make war against it. We are like that nerdy kid in school who’s just excited to be befriended by the jocks, never wondering why, and ending up shoeless, in a locker, with snot running down his face.

The godless do not want to be your friend. The fact that you wave a rainbow flag at a parade to showcase your tolerance does not warm the cockles of their hearts. You are a useful idiot; someone they can point to when trying to shame those still standing on battlements into silence.

If history teaches us anything, it’s that hate will always find an outlet. This will not end well. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Urgency

Anyone halfway decent when it comes to sales or marketing will tell you that in order to make the potential customer pull the trigger, in order to get them to hand over their hard-earned money, you need to create a sense of urgency. Whether it’s limited quantity or a twenty-four-hour sale, there is a subconscious switch that gets flipped in many a brain, and acquiring the thing that is in limited supply, or getting it for the discounted price only available on that day becomes paramount.

 There’s a furniture store in our neck of the woods that has been having going out of business sales for the better part of a decade now, and every once in a while they’ll sprinkle in a twenty-four-hour blowout, just for fun.

We are hardwired to react to the sense of urgency. This is why televangelists insist that you pick up your phone now, right now. Don’t wait until tomorrow or the day after. They know that if you don’t react to their pitch within a certain window of time, chances are you’ll go on to other things, or come to your senses about putting a donation for a new private jet on your credit card.

Same goes for late-night infomercials which tell you that the first hundred callers get an extra special bonus prize, even though that same infomercial has been running for the better part of the new millennium. Either they’re just burning money running ads that no one responds to, and they haven’t hit that magic first hundred caller benchmark yet, or something is fishy in Copenhagen.

Why is it, I wonder, that we react so predictably to faux urgency, yet are altogether disinclined to show the same tendencies toward things that matter?

I understand that part of it, perhaps not a small part, has to do with coercion, but there are certain things in life that we ought to innately prioritize due to their importance.

Even though some folks can’t seem to live without the magic slicer, a junky piece of plastic that will likely spend many a year in the back of a drawer, untouched and unused, they’re perfectly comfortable with not giving serious thought to their spiritual man, eternity, and the hereafter.

The flippancy with which some people wave off such topics, rolling their eyes and muttering whatever will be will be, or it will all pan out in the end, is frightening and disconcerting to behold.

Perhaps we’ve downplayed the reality of hell for so long that people no longer feel a sense of urgency when it comes to eternity. Perhaps we’ve sugarcoated everything to such extremes, that people have come to believe all souls go to heaven, and everyone can pick one favorite pet to bring along.

The household of faith has failed at relaying the urgency of it all, even though this particular urgency is neither manufactured or imagined. We have failed at driving home the point that all flesh is like grass and all the glory of man as the flowers of the grass. We are vibrant and full of life but for a season, then wither, destined to return to the earth to whence we came.

There is no fountain of life, magic elixir, or immortality potion. Though many are searching for these things, it is a fool’s quest at best. There is but one way, one truth, and one life, and all must enter in while they still have breath. When we are dust, it is too late. If that doesn’t create a sense of urgency in those not yet regenerate, nothing will. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Life's Melancholy

I’m getting older; we all are. Each of us marches to the same drumbeat of time, and with each passing day, we are closer to the end than we are to the beginning. For those of us who know what awaits, who yearn for the day to see our Lord and King face to face, the end is not a frightening prospect, rather a joyous one.

There are, however, moments of melancholy that overtake us, when we begin to ponder certain aspects of this fleeting existence, simply because of context and the implications thereof.

I hadn’t seen my dad in close to three years. Getting up the courage to take on a transatlantic flight was far easier when it was just the wife and I. Now, with two toddlers in tow, it’s not only more challenging but also cost-prohibitive.

Anyone who has ever traveled with children can attest to the fact that it is taxing, and grueling, especially on what amounts to a good twenty-four hours of connections, flights, and layovers. By the time you get to where you’re going, the only thing you want to do is sleep, and when you’ve finally gotten caught up with your rest and acclimated to the time difference, it’s time to go back home.

After a bit of back and forth, trying to work out times and dates, my dad finally decided to come and visit. He wanted to meet his youngest granddaughter, get to know her older sister, and just relax for a spell. He’s been with us for a couple of weeks, and it’s been good to catch up, spend some time together, and just talk.

Both my dad and I come from the stoic sort of mindset. We don’t call or text every day, we don’t flood each other’s inboxes with sappy clichés, we are men, father, and son, and our reciprocal affection need not be spoken of endlessly. It exists, it is there, we shake hands, hug, shed a few tears, then get on with the tasks at hand.

Even so, I couldn’t help but be overcome with a sense of melancholy as I sat on a park bench with my dad, and reminisced about this journey called life. We discussed everything from how we’d left our homeland, to how hard the first few years had been, to how God had seen us through all the valleys and hardships.

One of my dad’s favorite sayings that whether in the valley or on the mountaintop, God remains unchanged. He is the same God whether you are going through a trial, or are glorying in your victory.

The reason for the melancholy I was feeling was because I realized this could very well be the last time I would sit and reminisce with my dad this side of eternity. In less than a week, he will be flying back to Romania, and only God knows what the future holds both for us as individuals, and this world as a whole.

What I know for certain is that we have the memories of the times we shared in the present regardless of what the future holds.

This present life is a fleeting thing; A breath, a sigh, a single drop in an ocean of eternity, and far too many get so busy, they put off making memories until it’s too late. Know what matters in life. If you have acquired this singular piece of knowledge, you’re ahead of the pack by a good margin.

Some people discover what matters only when it’s too late, some never at all, and this is why so many go through life godless, sick, empty, and fearful. 

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea Jr.

Rewriting History

Recently the governor of Illinois signed a bill into law mandating that public schools now teach homosexual history. As one can expect from a jelly-spine church still suffering from the meat sweats due to the last successful potluck, there has been very little pushback or uproar.

It is a foregone conclusion that this faux history will be painted in the best possible light, and by the time they’re done putting together the curriculum, it was someone in the homosexual community who discovered everything from the cure to polio, to electricity, to the combustible engine.

It will not be a teaching of history, as much as a rewriting of history.

How far back will they go? Will the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah be included in the lesson plan? Somehow I highly doubt it.

Will the correlation between the homosexual lifestyle and the spread of aids be made clear? Again, highly doubtful.

What this law is intended to do is not to teach history, but to normalize an abomination. It is not to highlight accomplishments made by those with specific proclivities, but to conclude that save for the homosexual community we would still be drawing stick figures on the walls of caves, and cooking our meat on hot rocks in the midday sun.

Whenever a society normalizes the aberrant, there is always something more aberrant waiting in the wings to be normalized.

To say that this is an exaggeration is a nonstarter because we have seen it play out in real-time over the past few years.

We went from normalizing homosexuality to normalizing transgenderism, to lobbying for the age of consent to be lowered to 10, and branding parents who have a problem with their preteen daughters seeing fully grown men in wigs in the girls’ bathroom as bigoted.

Every news story that paints the sexually aberrant in a negative light gets squashed instantly, and so we never hear of little girls getting assaulted in public bathrooms, grown men exposing themselves to children not old enough to understand what is happening, or old men grooming teenage boys to be their playthings. Nothing to see here, move along, and keep your mouth shut!

If you talk about it, you guessed it; you’re a bigot.

Nobody wants to have an honest conversation, because the perverts and the pederasts have become a protected class, and we are sacrificing our children’s innocence on the altar of inclusivity and tolerance.

They’re already teaching children who should have no other concern than whether or not the fireflies they caught in the mason jar will survive the night, about anal intercourse and oral copulation. How much further into the depths of darkness must we descend, how much more of our children’s innocence must we surrender before the church pushes back?

We keep comforting and consoling ourselves with the mantra that light will always prevail over darkness, but for this to occur, the light must show itself, it must make itself known, it must shine bright; If the light is absent darkness reigns. Where is the light? Pray tell, where is the light?

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Blessed

As is the case with so many things in our modern era, we have redefined what it means to be blessed. Most have come to equate being blessed with having stuff, possessions, toys, trinkets, and baubles which devalue over time, if ever they held any value, to begin with.

If we can afford the newest car or the trendiest clothing, or to shop at Whole Foods, then we consider ourselves blessed, and make sure everyone within earshot knows it too.

I live in a small town. The kind of town where most of the longtime locals know each other, and people still have conversations in the checkout line at the grocery store. Yes, the younger generation is like everywhere else, glued to their screens, drowning in their hedonism and self-importance, but the old folks still like to chitchat.

As I was standing in line last night, waiting to pay for a few gallons of water, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between two of the local ladies who had just run into each other. Even though I’d caught the conversation halfway through, it seemed as though they were trying to outdo each other in how blessed they had been of late.

While the first had gotten an increase in her Social Security, the second one was really blessed because her husband’s 401K was headed to the moon. New vacation condo in Boca seems to have trumped new car for the other one’s birthday, and each time the word blessed got wedged into the wording for good measure.

As is the case with much of society’s ills, I blame the church in no small measure for our lack of understanding in regards to what being biblically blessed means. Granted, it’s hard to sell a generation of excess on the idea that being blessed is not being able to afford the payments on a new plasma television, but rather being reviled, persecuted, and spoken evil of falsely, for His name’s sake.

Between the ‘look at me’ disease, which shows no signs of stopping, and most people’s all-consuming need to be liked by everyone, the notion that suffering loss of possessions, reputation, position, or influence for Christ’s sake is where true blessing lies is anathema.

We equate being blessed with the material world, rather than with the spiritual, and every time we happen upon Christian television we are reminded by someone who’s trying to talk us into sending them some money, that this is the case.

How have we gotten it so wrong for so long? Because we forgot what blessed means. When words lose meaning, we can interpret them whichever way suits us best. To be blessed is not to be comfortable, or to have excess, or to be granted your birthday wish at fifty. To be blessed, by dictionary standards, is to be made holy, or consecrated.

Makes a lot more sense when we understand the true meaning of the word, doesn’t it?

When you are persecuted for His name’s sake, when you are reviled for His name’s sake, when men say all kinds of evil against you for His name’s sake, you are being consecrated. You are being made holy. Therefore, rejoice and be exceedingly glad, because not only are you being consecrated here on earth when these things occur, your reward in heaven will likewise be great. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.