tragedy and beauty

unfurling paper, and bleeding onto the floor 

one can't even feel anymore 

the finality has come and lingers here like a shadow of death in the heart

so many things unspoken

frail words collapse under the weight

oh the weight, of tragedy and beauty

onlookers see and try to believe, saying they understand

pain is our own however

to believe otherwise is to have never stood where I stand

to have never held what I held 

and nothing in me begs to explain...

yes, the pain is our own

and when we start to see God.

John Bunyan's great poem

Chris Davis, our pastor at Whitton, has used this poem in a couple of sermon's lately and I thought I would share it with the world. It is an amazing little piece of food for thought showing the contrast between legalism and the Gospel's good news.

Run, John, run, the law commands
But gives us neither feet nor hands,
Far better news the gospel brings:
It bids us fly and gives us wings.

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Post 100: Don't Fret

From Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost For His Highest" concerning psalm 37:8 which says "Cease from anger and forsake wrath; Do not fret--it only causes harm."

"It is one thing to say 'Fret not,' but a very different thing to have such a disposition that you find yourself able not to fret. It sounds so easy to talk about resting in the Lord and 'waiting patiently for Him' until the nest is upset--until we live, as so many are doing, in tumult and anguish; is it possible the to rest in the Lord? If this 'don't' does not work there, it will work nowhere. This 'don't' must work in days of perplexity as well as in days of peace, or it never will work. And if it will not work in in your particular case, it will not work in anyone else's case. Resting in the Lord does not depend on external circumstances at all, but on your relationship to God Himself....

   Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way. Our Lord never worried and He was never anxious, because He was not 'out' to realize His own ideas; He was 'out' to realize God's ideas. Fretting is a wicked if you are a child of God.

  Have you been bolstering up that soul of yours with the idea that your circumstances are too much for God? Put all 'supposing' on one side and dwell in the shadow of the Almighty. Deliberately tell God that you will not fret about that thing. All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God. "

- Oswald Chambers

dreams

Tonight my country elected the first black man to the office of President of the United States, the single most powerful position on the planet. For that I am proud. I am under no delusions that the sin of racism is dead, but it is yet another sign that we're moving in the right direction. I don't have to support the candidate himself (or the one who lost) to admit just how historic and beautiful the election of a non-white person to the highest office of the land is. I believe that in my lifetime I will see the first woman president too. The world is changing, and God is still in control, and I feel blessed to live in this time, even amidst the horrifying injustice that exists all over this world. I, and everyone reading this, was born in this era for a reason. May we make the best of it and be the change we want to see in the world.

simply put...

today, Nov 3rd, was a good day. I was able to have some interesting conversations about God and feminism in class, able to see Emery totally rock out (even though the crowd was no good) at Martini Ranch, and spend time with Clint and Jake. I was able to read an amazing article for my Women, Societies, & Cultures class that really caused me to think, I was able to begin reading G.K Chesterton's Orthodoxy, which I already love. These are small gifts from God that remind me that it's good to be alive. I savor them more these days... today I was writing in my journal next to a beautiful desert thinking about the future and a peace that can only come from above came over me. My heart has suffered greatly in the past few months, but even now I can see the light cutting through the darkness...

Thank you Lord for my life.