Why Do You Do What You Do?

I'm Sorry

I'm so sorry for the way the church has treated you.

Carpenter

Even Jesus was a carpenter.

Dawn Treader

My own plans are made.
While I can, I sail East in the Dawn Treader.
When she fails me, I paddle East in my coracle.
When she sinks, I shall swim East with my four paws.
And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan's country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.

-Voyage of the Dawn Treader; C.S. Lewis

No Greater Love

Let nothing so disturb us, so fill us with sorrow or discouragement, as to make us forfeit the joy of the resurrection.

-Mother Teresa "No Greater Love"

Happiness

I am the only person responsible for my own happiness.

-Nana

Your Love is Strong

Heavenly Father,

You always amaze me.
Let Your Kingdom come in my world, and in my life.
Give me the food I need to live through today.
And forgive me as I forgive the people who've wronged me.
Lead me far from temptation.
Deliver me from the evil one.

Your love is strong.

Together and Apart

God, keep us together and apart.

Most Kind Christ

Oh Most Kind Christ,

Draw us weaklings after Yourself.
For unless You draw us, we cannot follow You.
Give us a courageous Spirit, that we may be ready.
And if the flesh is weak, may Your grace go beforth.

For without You we can do nothing.

And particularly not go to a cruel death for Your sake.
Give us a valiant Spirit, a fearless heart, a right faith, a firm hope, a perfect love.
That we may offer our lives for Your sake, with the greatest patience and joy.

Amen.

Risk is Freedom

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk rejection.
To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow, or love. Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave. He has forfeited his freedom. Only a person who takes risk is free.

Risk, Care, Dream, Expect

Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.

Hold Fast

Hold Fast.

Help is on the way...

"And I will pray the Father, and He will give you a Helper, that He may abide with you forever - the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you." -John 14:16

The Wounded and the Poor

You sit at the table with the wounded and the poor.
You laugh and share stories with the thief and the whore.
When You could just be silent, and leave us here to die.
Still, You sent Your Son for us.
You are on our side.

Beautiful Letdown

I was listening to Switchfoot's album today, and it gave me renewed vision. I was remembering listening to these songs while mowing the lawn in high school. The lyrics still ring true in my life to this day.


Hoping that he's meant for more than arguments and failed attempts to fly.
We were meant to live for so much more - have we lost ourselves?

This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be when the world was younger, and you had everything to lose?

More than fine, more than bent on getting by. More than fine, more than just okay.

Blame it on what you've been through. Blame it on what you're into. Blame it on your religions. Blame it on politicians. We've been blowing up. We're the issue. It's our condition.

Maybe redemption has stories to tell. Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell. I dare you to move. I dare you to lift yourself up off the ground.

4AM, two hours to go. I'm wearing out a lonely glow. I miss you more than I could know. I've got my hands on redemption's side, whose scars are bigger than these doubts of mine.

Where's your treasure, where's your hope, if you get the world and lose your soul?

We're not infinite. We're not permanent. Nothing is immediate. We're so confident. In our accomplishments. Look at our decadence.

They tell you where you need to go. They tell you when you'll need to leave. They tell you what you need to know. They tell you what you need to know. They tell you who you need to be. But everything inside of you knows there's more than what you've heard. There's so much more than empty conversations, filled with empty words.

I am the second man now.

It was a beautiful letdown, when I crashed and burned, when I found myself alone, unknown, and hurt. It was a beautiful letdown, the day I knew, that all the riches this world had to offer me were never due.

Who is Man?

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?

Psalm 8:3-4

Mark of Shalom

Shalom: peace

1. Fast
2. Feast
3. Live in community; seek brokenness together
4. Put your hands in the dirt
5. Live reconciled to one another
6. Deal with the heart, not the surface
7. Be real
8. Be generous
9. See the world through the eyes of Jesus
10. Love God and pursue big dreams

Dream

Everything that we dream will not come to fruition, but the journey of fighting for it will be well worth it.

Run With Endurance

I am sprinting towards the only goal that counts.

Forgive Thy Brother

This painting was given to me by my dear friend, Julie Edwards.

The painting is titled "Forgive Thy Brother".

I don't know quite how she knew how deeply I needed this painting in that exact moment.

Deeply moved.

Trilemma

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him, 'I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, or you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a friend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."

-C.S. Lewis

Silence

Nobodies

Excerpts from Paul Farmer's Book "Pathologies of Power"

Nobodies

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them - will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn't rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodies, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.

-Eduardo Galeano

"The people in a number of the stories are of the kind that many writers have recently got in the habit of referring to as 'the little people'. I regard this phrase as patronizing and repulsive. There are no little people in this book. They are as big as you are, whoever you are."

-Joseph Mitchell

"The most basic right, the right to survive, is trampled in an age of great affluence."

-Paul Farmer

"When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that sseserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others."

-Eduardo Galeano

He is Good

This verse is written exactly in the middle of the Bible:

"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever."

Psalm 118:1

The Folded Napkin

Why did Jesus fold the linen burial cloth after His resurrection?

John 20:7 tells us that the napkin which was placed over the face of Jesus was not just thrown aside like the grave clothes. The Bible takes an entire verse to tell us that the napkin was neatly folded, and was placed at the head of His stony coffin.

"The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen."

Early Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance.

She ran and found Peter and the other disciples, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, "They have taken the Lord's body out of the tomb, and I don't know where they have put Him!"

Peter and the other disciples ran to the tomb to see. The other disciple out-ran Peter and got there first. He stopped and looked in and saw the linen cloth lying there, but he didn't go in.

Then Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus' head was folded up and lying to the side.

In order to understand the significance of the folded napkin, you have to understand a little bit about Hebrew tradition of that day.

The folded napkin had to do with the Master and Servant, and every Jewish boy knew this tradition.

When the servant set the dinner table for the master, he made sure that it was exactly the way the master wanted it.

The table was furnished perfectly, and the servant would wait, just out of sight, until the master had finished eating, and the servant would not dare touch the table until the master was finished.

When the master was done eating, he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers, his mouth, and clean his beard. He would wad up the napkin and toss it onto the table.

The servant would then know to clear the table. For in those days, the wadded napkin meant, "I'm finished."

But if the master got up from the table, folded his napkin, and laid it beside his plate, the servant would not dare touch the table, because...

The folded napkin meant,

"I'm coming back."

Love Never Fails.

The love for equals is a human thing - of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing - the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.

The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing - to love those who succeed where we fail, the love of the poor for the rich, of the servant for his master. The world is always bewildered by its saints.

And then there is the love for the enemy - love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer.

This is God's love.

It conquers the world.