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In a market dimly lit.

I am a little nervous about posting song lyrics. I think if anyone who reads this is annoyed by it I shouldn't perhaps. But I like this band. And this song. It is so curiously written. And it makes me smile.

"the bird that plucked the Olive Leaf
has been circling like a record never-ending in my mind
where the needle's worn the grooves too deep,
and scratched the wax that's blistered from the heat besides
so from any movement in the room-
if my cat walked by the arm skipped!
but to my surprise, my interrupting cat improved
a sound already so severely compromised

the needle's worn the grooves too deep

I'm a donkey's jaw on a desert dune!
beside the bush that Moses saw
that burned and yet was not consumed!
she's the silver coin I lost,
I'm the sheep who slipped away
we pray the fingers crossed
but you listen patiently anyway

I wrote a little song for you
with a melody I'd borrowed put to words that didn't rhyme
to repeat what you already knew
as the stones thrown at your window tapped a syncopated time
you kept a distance out of fear you'd break
but what good's a single windchime, hanging quiet all alone?
the music our collisions would make
is a sound that turns the road-that-leads-us-back-home
into Home.

the music our collisions make!

I had a rusty spade but I'm not the fighting sort!
if I was Samson I'd have found that harlot's blade
and cut my own hair short!
then in a market dimly lit I come casually to pay
you see my coins are counterfeit
but accept them anyway

so spare me your goodbyes,
your waving-handkerchief-good-byes
given my tendency to err so on the sentimental side
I'll spare you my goodbyes,
the truth belongs to God,
the mistakes were mine"

- mewithoutYou


Oh curse those mistakes! I am such a hindrance to myself and this song reminds me on the last line that even I cannot make the truth anything but God's

Number one stunner.

So lately I have had a few conversations with friends about how we were brought up in our predominantly southern baptist churches to believe that our one greatest mission on this planet, as people who believe in God and Christ, is to convert other people.

I am beginning to hate this.

I mean, it is pretty awesome when you talk to people about the God you love and who loves you and they start seeing that your love is true. And they start wanting it.

That is beautiful.

But this should not be our first desire...

We are called first to love.
Not to convert.
Not to Enlist.
Just love

Yes. In loving someone, you may help them gain a relationship with God.

But our purpose is just to love.

We have heard and hear people saying we have to "further the kingdom of God"

But if you look at how Jesus talked of the kingdom of God. He said it was already here. Already at hand. We don't need to build it.

Jesus said the basis for our faith, the commandment everything hinges on, is "Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength."

And joined with that, a supporting clause, is "Love your neighbor as yourself"

We are to Love as God loves us.

But first and foremost, we are to Love God.

Goodness Gracious

I would like to start with a statement.

Grace is something I have never understood.

There I said it. It has never been "amazing" to me. Until recently. Welll. In the past year. I did not understand the concept of grace. I never considered myself graceful. Haha. But. You see.

We are living by and through grace.

Every breath is given freely. By the amazing-ness of grace.

The due payment of our disobedience is death.

We all have disobeyed.

Yet. Without a request and in the face of refusal , God has given us life.


Through his grace.

Mine!

So...again...still reading "Velvet Elvis". Off and on. And this time. I have been thinking a lot about claiming truth. I mean claiming the things you inherently, in your soul, know to be true as God-given truth. I mean God created everything and is creating everything. So there may be truth around us. We are to be crafty as christians. Jesus was constantly using subtle sentences to completely shake up the leaders of his time.

And he always connected his point with scripture or with the daily events. The writers of scripture were so technical in how they worded things it is eerie. Like how John uses the word love to connect Jesus to Isaac. Its crazy. Early christians claimed the political propaganda and phrases of allegiance like "Caesar is Lord". "There is no other name on or not of the earth that can save a man but the name of Caesar"

By replacing "caesar" with "Christ" or "Jesus" they were committing treason and also they were being very crafty in how they portrayed their beliefs. They knew they were risking death by doing and saying these things but they were so gutsy about it. It's unnerving how gutsy they were compared to us today. Well at least compared to me.

They went out of their way to be so politically incorrect. I love it.

They claimed those slogans...and changed them to be truth.

I wish I needed a cane.

I read "Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell...Off and On. Haha. I get in places where it seems to speak to me. It is a very good book. But I get tired of it sometimes. Today though, it was definitely what I needed to hear. Rob Bell has a way of putting things that can hit you hard sometimes. And the following resonated with me.

He talks about wrestling with scripture. Seeing it in the context of who it was written to. And how that applies to our present situation. Really contemplating on what that scripture could mean.

"The rabbis have a metaphor for this wrestling with the text: the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32. He struggles, and it is exhausting and tiring, and in the end his hip is injured. It hurts. And he walks away limping. Because when you wrestle with the text, you walk away limping.

And some people have no limp. Because they haven't wrestled. But the ones limping have had an experience with the living God."

-"Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell

Sun And Moon

Daniel broke the king's decree,
Peter stepped from the ship to the sea
there was hope for Job like a cut down tree,
I hope that there's such hope for me
dust be on my mind's conceptions
and anything I thought I knew
each word of my lips' description,
and on all that I compare to You
[the preference of the sun was
to the south side of the farm
I planted to the north in a terra-cotta pot
blind as I'd become, I used to wonder where you are-
these days I can't find where you're not!]

mine's been a yard carefully surface level tended
foxes burrowed underground
my gardening so highly self-recommended,
what could I have done but let you down?

the sun and the moon,
I want to see both worlds as One!

mine's been a vivid story, dimly remembered
and by the hundredth time it's told, halfway true
of bad behavior well engendered
what good is each good thing we think we do?

[find a friend and stay close and with a melting heart
tell them whatever you're most ashamed of-
our parents have made so many mistakes,
but may we forgive them and forgive ourselves]

the sun and the moon are my Father's eyes

-mewithoutYou