Yesterday, at my Bible study, a new thought came to me.  A new way to look at the cross I have never seen before.  I was so amazed by it, I had to share it.

Jesus dying on the cross for the sins of the world is the most pivotal point in human history.  It’s the the moment where God the Father washed us clean with His Son’s blood and forgave us, allowing us direct access to His presence, something humanity didn’t have since before the Fall.  Jesus’ sacrifice caused the veil in the temple that stood between us and the Holy of Holies to be torn in two, symbolizing this change.  God and man were no longer separated, mankind was now allowed to approach God because our sin was covered by Christ’s blood.

Most Christians know this.  It is one of the most important parts of our faith.  But there’s more to the story…more to Christ’s sacrifice than giving up His life for us.

Christ, being the Son of God, had a connection to God the Father, that no man in human history had ever had, other than Adam and Eve, who walked with God in the garden (Genesis 3:8).  Jesus walked with God in a way that we do today, He had the Spirit of God with Him, inside of Him.  Jesus had a direct line to God.  He could approach His Father anytime, day or night.  He walked with God.  As I said before, no other person since the fall of man had this kind of relationship with God because of sin.  Jesus was sinless, and He was God’s Son, He had Daddy’s phone number, so to speak.

From the moment Jesus was born, until the cross, God was by Jesus’ side.  Let me get my point to you again with a little more emphasis.

Until the cross!

"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

Mark 15:33-34 says:

Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  (NKJV)

Once Jesus had been beaten for our transgressions, bruised for our inequities (Isaiah 53:5), and hung on a cross for our sin, Jesus experienced something that He had never experienced before—complete separation from God.

God the Father turned His back on Jesus because all the sin of the world was upon Him.  God could not look as such sin.  But this was more than just turning His back.  God forsook Jesus.  He left Him, He abandoned Him, He deserted Him.  God and Jesus were separated in a way that Jesus—both as a man, and as a part of the Triune God prior to Him taking on humanity—never experienced before.

Jesus died forsaken by God!

Jesus died alone!

Jesus did this for us!

Jesus feared the cross (Luke 22:42).  He, as a human being, didn’t want to die.  And He, as the divine Son of God, didn’t want to be separated from His Father.  But He did it.  He did it so that we would never have to.

The Bible tells us that Jesus has experienced every temptation we will ever go through (Hebrews 4:15).  He experienced every emotion we feel.  He was human after all.  But up until that moment, when He was on the cross, He never knew what it was like to be completely severed from God.  And neither have we.

Even though in the Old Testament times God was separated from man because of sin, He was still there, we were never completely out of His presence.  Deuteronomy 31:6 says:

Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.” (NKJV)

God promised us that He would never leave us, and never forsake us.

But, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  Without Christ’s sacrifice, if He did not take on our sin, we would experience eternal separation from God.  Not here in human life, but afterwards, as the spirit lives on.  Jesus took more than just our sin on the cross, He took the punishment for it.  While He hung there, He was separated, abandoned,  deserted, forsaken by God.  Jesus was a forsaken God for our sake.

However, Jesus rose again and now sits at the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:32-33)!

Who else would go through all of that for me; who would give me a second chance like that?

My Lord.  My Creator.  My God!

Last year, my sister, Alece Ronzino, did something called One Word.  The idea is to throw away New Year’s resolutions and replace it with one word.  Just one word.  One word to live your life by for the year.  One Word took off and now hundreds of people have resolved to not have a resolution this year, but one simple word.  Because of the success of the concept, her one word has become a community.  One Word 365!

One word.

365 days.

Last year, my One Word was “written“.  It summed up what I wanted out of last year.  And by the end of 2011, I felt like I had lived up to it.

So, what’s my One Word for 2012?  It took me some time to think about it.  I know a lot of words, and each word has the potential to represent what I want out of 2012.  But, it’s not about what I want out of 2012, it’s about what I can be, how I can change and grow.  Both in my spiritual life, and in my life’s desires and goals.  That’s why I have chosen this year’s One Word.

Be

“Be” is a small, two letter word that is easily passed by when you read it in a book or an article.  Kind of like me.  But as small as “be” is, this simple little verb has a lot of strength behind it.  To “be” something means that you “are” something.  You are not wanting, lacking, or desiring, you are.  My word is not “become”.  I don’t want to become.  I already am.  I want to “be”.  “Be” someone new.  “Be” who I am meant to be.

A hero doesn’t “become” a hero; he’s a hero on the inside first.  He needs to “be”, before he can become, and then is a hero.

I want to “be” on the inside.  Be Andrew Ronzino.  I want to stop becoming, because I already am Andrew Ronzino.  Now it’s time to BE!

I start here.  I start now.

One Word 2012: Be

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If you would like to join the One Word 365 community and throw away a resolution and replace it with one word, visit the One Word 365 website: oneword365.com

It’s been a long while since I’ve done a blog post for People of the Second Chance’s Never Beyond Series.  I’ve been quite busy lately, but I must say that I’m happy to kick things off again with none other than the hater of Christmas himself, the Grinch!

This December, my church put on a production of Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” with a Christian spin to it.  I played the show’s antagonist, the Mayor of Whoville, the man who hates the Grinch more than the Grinch hates Christmas.  It was a ton of fun.  Because of the play, I’ve had the Grinch’s story hammered into my brain for the past four months!  And guess what…the Grinch fits right in with the people who deserve a second chance.

The Grinch is a crooked, jerky jockey that drives a crooked horse.  He’s a creature you wouldn’t want to touch with a 39 1/2 foot pole.  Anyone in their right mind would choose to hang out with a seasick crocodile rather than the Grinch.  The three word that best describe him are as follows, and I quote,

“Stink!”

“Stank!”

“Stunk!” 

Here we have this creature that is filled with hate and loathing for Christmas.  Whether it’s because his head isn’t screwed on just right, or because his shoes are tied too tight, or because his his heart is three sizes too small; he can not stand Christmas, can’t stand it at all.  He hates it so much that he is willing to do whatever it takes to stop it.  Even if that means he needs to go down into Whoville and take it by force, which is exactly what he ends up doing.  The Grinch goes to Whoville and takes the material things common to Christmas, but the one thing he can’t take is the spirit of the season.

Christmas is about much more than gifts, food, and family.  It’s about the birth of Christ!  It’s about the day God Himself threw off His divine mantle and became a human being like us to take the sins of man.  Christmas is all about God doing the most unselfish thing anyone can do for anybody, give up His own life so that someone else may live.

Even if you’re not religious and take the stance that Christmas is just a holiday, the spirit of Christmas is still the same.  It’s about bringing joy, laughter, light, and all that is good back into the world.  Even if it’s only for one day, it’s a day were people can feel joy.  And for the rest of us who have good lives, we can take that joy to others who don’t have it for Christmas.  It’s about giving, not getting.  Giving of your time, money, and sometimes even your life to show others what love is all about.

The Grinch got his second chance, because he deserved one, just like everyone else we’ve discussed so far.  He learns that Christmas doesn’t come from a store, but that Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.  This holiday season, remember that Christmas is not about you, it’s about others.  It’s about Jesus, who is Christ the Lord!

If you would like to see my church’s rendition of the Grinch’s story, which is called “How Christmas Saved the Grinch”, you can watch it here (Please keep in mind that it’s a church production, so Christ was the center of the story):

* * *

I’m have partnered myself with People of the Second Chance and their Never Beyond Poster Series.  They will feature 25 posters representing well known historical, current, and fictional characters who are believed to have harmed society.  The campaign draws out themes of forgiveness, grace, and what a pathway to a second chance looks like.

To see my last post for the Never Beyond Series, click here: Mel Gibson.

Well, NaNoWriMo, 2011 is over.  I survived.  I wrote a 70,000+ word YA novel in 28 days, as well as grew as a writer.  All in all, I would call it a fantastic victory!

Today, my new NaNo friend GR Liz mentioned something to me that I never thought about.  She said, “I also still love that your word for the year (written) was used so heavily in your novel.  Really cool parallel!”

One Word, which is a project my sister, Alece Ronzino, started, is something I haven’t forgotten.  My One Word for 2011 is: “Written“.  You can click on the link to see why I chose “written” as my One Word, but it means a lot to me.

It was nice to see that someone else recognized it when I didn’t.  The title of my NaNo project this year is Written in Silence, and the word “written” is in the novel a lot.  The fact the the seconday protagonist, Michael, communicates through writing is a major point in the story.  I guess, without even meaning to, I wrote Michael to be a lot like me.  I talk, unlike him, but I also like to communicate through written word.  That’s one reason why I love to write, it’s how I like to express myself.

This whole year was about getting my novel (not my NaNo novel, the other one that I want to get published), ready to be looked at by agents and editors.  I took a month off from that to do NaNoWriMo and write Written in Silence, but in a way, that year long goal was grafted into the idea of the story I wrote this year; in a way, my One Word never left me!

Thank you everyone for following my journey through this year’s National Novel Writing Month.  I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have.

Until my next blog post,

Andrew Ronzino, an Author

P.S.  I took a victory ride in the carousel at the mall with the other Wrimos at our write-in today.  It was awesome, and very childish at the same time.  The mall Santa was waving at us as we did so.  It was a great moment!  Shout out to all my Wrimos!

You thought that just because I finished the novel that we were done here?  Heck no!  We still have two days of November left, and I intend to use them.  This journal isn’t done yet, folks!

Today, I want to give you the final excerpt to read from Written in Silence.  If you would like to go back and read the other three, you can do so by clicking these links:

Excerpt one, excerpt two, and excerpt three!

Once again, please keep in mind that this is a vomit draft, and the only editing I did to it was enough to make it presentable to my readers.  Enjoy:

She felt him lift his hand and put it around her. His breathing was heavy and ragged, but she was just glad he was alive. She looked into his swollen hazel eyes, the eyes that she fell in love with from the first time she saw them, those deep, soul-filled eyes. He gave her a weak smile, and used his other hand to slowly give her a thumbs up. He was trying to tell her that he was going to be okay.

She didn’t think he was being brave, she though he was being serious. She guessed that in his mind, because he didn’t tell Genesis anything about the OAM, even under torture, it was worth it. He had survived the first round with the enemy, and that made him feel victorious, no matter how much pain he was in.

“Michael, I’m sorry.”

His eyes told her everything he wanted to say, “It’s not your fault.”

She still felt like she could have saved him from the pain.

Michael must have sensed this, because he took her hand and opened it so her palm was facing up. He used his finger and lightly traced letters on her hand, she had to remember each one to get his message.

“Don’t blame yourself.”

Dianna cried harder and gave him a soft hug. He closed his eyes and didn’t reopen them for a while. She sat with her back to the cot, looked at the wall opposite her. She didn’t try to stop the tears now.

After what felt like a few hours passed, Michael stirred. She jumped up and turned. He was trying to get up, she put her hands on his shoulders, trying not to hurt him, to make him stay down. “Don’t get up, Michael. Rest for a while,” she said.

He waved her off and stood up. He looked a lot stronger now, but his face still winced in pain. He took his shirt and put it back on. When he looked at her again, through slightly less swollen eyes, she saw anger and determination back on his face. Not that there was anything he could do about the situation.

He looked around the cell and rushed to the cot. He moved it a little and looked underneath.

“Um, Michael…what are you doing?”

He didn’t answer of course, but this time he didn’t even acknowledge that she had spoken to him. His eyes were so focused on what he was doing that he didn’t respond, in any way that he could.

He seemed to have found what he was looking for, because he bent down and picked something up off the floor. It looked like a small sized rock, the stone matched the kind that lined the walls outside of the cell, much harder than the kind inside the cell, which were just cinder blocks. It must have been left over from the construction of the prison, but it somehow was missed when they cleared the place out properly.

Michael held it up in triumph then walked to the wall. He had the look of unstoppable determination on his face.

Dianna just watched him, she had no idea what he was up to, but whatever it was, she wasn’t going to be able to stop him.

He took the stone and started to scratch at the wall. It barely left a mark, so he continued to scratch at it, and soon he was in a rhythm. She saw that he was writing something on the cell wall, but the scratching was taking so long, that she couldn’t see what it was.

She tried talking to him again, but he wasn’t going to answer her. He just continued to scratch away. Eventually, she was growing tired of watching him, so she hopped onto the cot and drifted off to sleep to the sound of his writing.

When she woke up, it was quiet. She opened her eyes to see Michael was once again sleeping on the floor. All of his wounds were dried up and starting to scab over, his nose still looked broken, but at least all the swelling had gone down. His eyes were black and blue, as well as a few other spots on his face.

She stood up to use the toilet before he woke up, that’s when she remember his project last night. She spun around to the wall that faced the cell door, and saw scratched into it were big, hard to miss letters. The wall now carried Michael’s statement, it was like a loud voice crying out. When she read it, tears welled up in her eyes. It said, in all capital, bold letters,

“YOU CAN’T SILENCE ME!”

No matter how long it took him to scratch it, no matter how painful it felt to do it, on that wall, he wrote the one thing he needed to write.  He had a voice, and no matter what they did to him, they would never shut him up.

-Excerpt from Written in Silence; Chapter 31 “The Writing on the Wall”, by Andrew Ronzino

There it is!  I hope you liked it.

Until my last 2011 NaNoWriMo entry tomorrow,

Andrew Ronzino, the Breaker of Souls

It all started on November 1st.  28 days have passed, and what started as just a few words on a page has turned into the vomit draft of a full length YA novel.  It started as a challenge to reach 50,000 words, but I passed that number significantly!  That’s right, readers of The Paradigm, I have written a novel in under 30 days!

Written in Silence is finished, it may only be a rough draft, but it’s written.  There were some hard spots, and tough moments, but I pushed though them with the encouragement of my family, friends, and readers.  I thank you all!  And look, I even have a fancy certificate:

This is a great victory for me, and I’m happy that I accepted the challenge this year!  I grew a lot as a writer, and I had a ton of fun do it.  In case you may be wondering if I’m ever going to do anything with Written in Silence, I want to.  I very much like the story, so when I get some time, I may fix it up, polish it, and see if I can do something with it, but that will be far down the road.  I have my sci-fi book to publish first.  I’ll try to get a final excerpt to you soon.

The Stats for Written in Silence

So…here are the final stats on my 2011 NaNoWriMo project:

Title: Written in Silence

Words: 71,325

Chapters: 36

Pages: 223 (that’s in Open Office, double spaced, 12 point New Times Roman font)

Thank you again to everyone who encouraged me through this month, and to all my readers, thank you for hanging in there!

Until next time,

Andrew Ronzino, A NaNoWriMo Winner

My church has a café called the Olive Tree.  I knew I needed to get a good chunk of writing done today, but I also knew that I had Grinch rehearsal, the two commitments kind of clash.  So, I took my computer with me to church, then after the service I sat in the café with an omelet and a cup of O.J. and wrote until my rehearsal started at 1:30.

It’s a good thing I did this too, because I ended up staying two hours longer than I normally do for rehearsal because it ran late and they needed to film some stuff for the show…stuff I needed to be in.  So needless to say, I’m glad I took my laptop with me to write, because while I was there I ended up getting a lot written.

I’m so close to the end I can taste it.

Current word count for Written in Silence: 68,605/50,000

Until tomorrow,

Andrew Ronzino, the Journeyman of the East

Today is a double feature, you get to hear about two days in one blog post!  Isn’t that wonderful?

Day 25: Day Off

Yesterday was a day off.  A day off of work because of the holiday, and a day off of writing because it was my day off.  I played Skyrim!  It was awesome.  But that’s about all I did, so not much to say there.

Day 26: The Ending

Today, when I was at work, I had the next section of Written in Silence rolling around in my mind.  I’ve reached the point where I’ve begun to write the ending of the story; the climax, and the resolution.  This ending is going to take a lot of work.  I know how I want to end it, but not how to get there.  My timeline of events isn’t very helpful because all it has are the bullet points.

I don’t know how good I am at endings, so we’ll see how I do with a genre that is new to me.  I’ve never tried a story like this, as I’ve said before, so I’m not sure how the end will play out just yet.  I know I don’t have much more to write, so we’ll see how I get there and how it’ll all work out.

The ending is one of the most important parts of the story, if I screw this up, the entire novel is ruined.  So, I’ll do my best to keep it on the right path.

Current word count for Written in Silence: 64,793/50,000

Until next time,

Andrew Ronzino, the Mystery of the Deep

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers!

Here’s a list of things I’m thankful for:

• Salvation
• Family
• Food
• Family who sends me pictures of food
• Friends
• Friends with food
• Skyrim
• The Paradigm’s readers
• NaNoWriMo
• My love of writing
• Books
• Written in Silence
• Superman
• Batman
• Spider-Man
• Stargate
• Stargate: SG-1
• Stargate: Atlantis
• Stargate: Universe
• Smallville
• Star Trek
• Star Wars
• Tom Hanks
• My job
• Your job
• The infinity symbol
• Ugly people
• Pretty people
• People in general
• My roommates
• The Nostalgia Critic
• The Secret of NIMH
• Harry Potter
• The Eight Dimensions Trilogy
• Epic battles to the death
• That one guy on the bus you never seem to ever want to talk to…or even make eye contact with, but you end up doing both
• Movies
• Any movie made by J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, or Chris Nolan
• Pumpkin pie
• My Wrimo friends
• The Muppets
• The Chipmunks
• Nostalgic kids movies from the 80′s and 90′s
• iPhone
• The Ronziphone™
• Love

I’m thankful for a lot more things as well, but that’s a good list to start with.  I may not do any writing tomorrow, as it will be a day off for me.  I will be playing Skyrim!

Current word count for Written in Silence: 62,350/50,000

Until my day off is over,

Andrew Ronzino, A Thankful Man

I’m going to keep this short and sweet.

I wrote a little today, and reached 60,000 words!

Then…I went and saw “The Muppets”!  It was a great day.  This should sum it up:

Current word count for Written in Silence: 60,359/50,000

Until tomorrow,

Andrew Ronzino, A Muppet of a Man!

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!