Gentle World

Give me a gentle world
Where songs are the whispering,
Shimmering sounds
Of running water,
And all else is silence.
Give me a soft gray light
To soothe my sore eyes,
A warm hand
To hold my cold fingers,
And a wild wind
To cool my head.
Give me grass to smell
And dancing leaves.
Give me a gentle world,
If only for a moment,
To clear my mind
And brace me,
That I may fight bravely
In this harsh war I face.

"To My Friends"

To My Friends

Tell me who you are.
Lead me to the world you live in.
I want to understand,
And I want to learn your song.
Your eyes pour out your story
In a tongue I cannot read.
Your hand shakes
With your pain and your joy
From things you’ve seen
And things you’ve been.
I cannot touch that hidden soul.
I cannot reach that light I see
Reflected in your eyes.
I’ll hold your shaking hands,
And I’ll hold your brilliant gaze,
But I’ll never know you.
Yet perhaps, if we throw our lives
Into chasing the same dear light,
We shall not be so colorblind
To the shades of each other’s souls,
And we shall touch the light we see
Dancing within each other’s smiles,
And learn harmonies
To one another’s songs.

Reckless

What if night were fallen now,
What if all were broken down,
What if you denied me hope?

Would I still follow you?

What if these deep things I’ve felt,
What if these dear friends I’ve held,
Pulled the rug I’ve woven long
From underneath my feet?

Would I still follow you?

What if she, that dearest friend,
What if he, that comrade strong,
Looked into my face with scorn,
Laughed and cursed you,
Turned and ran?

Would I still follow you?

What if faith were really all,
All the eyes you left to me?
Are they still too blind to see?

Would I still follow you?

Battered, blinded, scorned and bruised,
Crying for the ripping loss,
Frantic, flailing, as my world,
Toppled, fell, and left me
To shake alone?

Would I still follow you?

What if you had not made
The promises you’ve made?
What if you told me
That when the time came,
You would not own me?

Would I still follow you?

Would I shame-faced, turn away,
Try to forget this love affair,
Try to find some happiness,
Grasp at every wind
As though that wind were life,
And try, try to forget you?

Or would I laugh and hardly know
The agony the world could throw
In my face, in my soul?
Laugh and care not what you did
To me when my life was lived,
If only I had lived for you?

Am I too in love to see
The danger I am in?
Am I too in love to be
Afraid of anything at all?
Am I too in love with you
To care if it could ruin me?

Would I be able to hold back
From leaping from this highest cliff
Into you, the deepest chasm
If I did not know that you would catch me?

Tell me I would still follow you.
Tell me I would still leap.

Make me mad.
Blind me.
Obsess me.
Till there is nothing left of me
But the thing that loves you,
Desperately, and loves all the more
Because you are so good
That you will never let me down.
That is simply who you are.
Nevermind the safety it implies.
You are that good.
Let me smile and fall too deep
To ever be found again.

The night that would hurt me
Falls down in the face of your light.
The brokennes that would break me
Breaks in the face of your purity.
The fear that would make me gasp for air
Is denied its power. You are my air.

You give me hope,
You give me light,
You give me love,
You give me breath.
But these are only unexpected gifts,
Tossed in as perks,
Mementos of their giver,
Who IS my hope,
My light and love,
My breath,
Who’s realer yet
Than all these thousand gifts
He won’t stop pelting me with,
Every moment of every day.

Am I drunk enough on truth
Not to care, if only
My God is glorified?

Am I dangerously deep,
Sunk into this obsession
With your purity?

Am I too lost in you
To be saved by the flesh,
World, and devil combined?

Is this fall into your heart
Irreparable?

Let this kind damage be beyond repair,
Let this glorious fall be unstoppable,
And let these beautiful chains
That bind me to my God
Be unbreakable,
That I may still follow you.

Peace

Slowly, thoughts.
Don’t rush about so hard.
Gently, heart.
You need not break the world
With cries of terror
At its and your own depth.
Look up and see the Light.
Look down and see the Rock.
You are not lost.
You are not standing
On unstable ground.
Cry if you must.
Laugh if you will.
But be still.
Be small.
Be all
His.

Fear

I have one phobia.

I don't mind heights. I don't mind tight spaces. I hate public speaking, but I can manage it. I love thunderstorms. I don't mind snakes or spiders or scorpions... Okay, fine, so I'm abjectly terrified of cockroaches for no good reason. Two phobias, then.

But the thing that really scares me, that debilitates me with fear more than anything else, is -- myself.

(Photo credit.) Some clarification on phobias. I do not suffer from either of these. Yay. (I thought about sticking a dramatic picture of someone looking scared here, which would actually have been relevant, but how boring would THAT be? This is waaay better.)

I come up with high goals and aspirations, and within moments, I'm afraid that I won't be able to live up to them. Or else I'm apathetic and don't care what I become, and then I'm afraid that I'll stay like that forever and never really live. I'm afraid that I will fail. I'm afraid that I will fall into ruts and not have the strength to get out of them. I'm afraid that I will become something that I never wanted, or sit around and grow blind to my faults. I'm afraid of the past, because I can always find something to regret. I'm afraid of the future, because I know there will be things to regret. I'm afraid that I'm too small and too weak to live this great big life that's been given to me, and to survive in this enormous and profound world.

And the hard thing about this fear is that it's pretty darn valid in many respects. Odds are, I will ruin things. Odds are, I will make mistakes that I will bitterly regret. Odds are, I will be a total wimp and fail all these noble ambitions I have. Odds are, the ruts and the weaknesses will come exactly as I expect.

But kiddo (yes, I talk to myself in my blog posts and address myself as kiddo; it's fun; you should try it), that's no reason to be afraid.

I heard an excellent sermon a while back, part of which was about hope. Imagine, the pastor suggested, that hope is a thing, a vase or something. Imagine that you have to put it down somewhere. Where do you put it? Where will it be safe? You can put it here, or there, or on that table or that shelf... or you can put it down on God and leave it there. There alone will it be safe.

Yes, exactly. And peace. And joy. And basically everything else. You can't put it in yourself. You can't put it in another. You can't put it in the world or humanity. They are not safe there. But they are safe in God.

We are told to rejoice in the Lord. We are told of the peace of Christ. We are told to hope in God. And if we really do this, if these vases or marbles or whatever we might imagine them to be, lie safely on the Solid Rock, then the whole rest of the world can go up in flames without our joy, peace, and hope being touched. We can fail and still rejoice, still be at peace, still hope, because so long as God is being glorified, all is well. And God will always be glorified.

"Great," you say. "Now you have taken me to a philosophical place where I can be happy and apparently not care if I'm failing and the world is falling apart. Now I'm not scared of failing. Now I don't care. That's helpful."

Bear with me.

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans 5:1-5)

Not only does the hope, when it rests on God, stay safe and secure no matter what happens. It also does not put us to shame. How does it manage to rescue our sinking, failing selves? Well, there's this thing called the Holy Spirit.

Friends, this is why our own weakness is nothing to fear. Because God's power is made perfect in weakness. It doesn't matter that I can't do this. It doesn't matter that I'm too small for the life I live and the world I live in. All that means is that when God gets me through it, it should be obvious that He is the power behind any success.

How dare I fear? What kind of skewed pride is this? Do I honestly think that I, by my own smallness, can thwart the God of the universe when He has promised to make me His? That my smallness is so big that it can stop Him from having the prize for which He died?

No. I'll reach for the stars and not fear that I will fall. The past is gone. The future is in God's hands. And the present -- the present is the moment in which God is with me, and in me, and all that I need. My hope, my joy, and my peace are safe in Him. And I am too.

Rival the Sun

Rival the Sun

From tender shadows there arose a girl
Whose heart would grasp the highest in the low.
Her fighting soul would serve the loveliest good
She found in sky or earth, in mind or soul.
She sought the light that cut through darkest night,
She sought the love that cut through deepest hurt,
She sought the purity that cut through filth,
She smiled to endure in agony.
From shadows she arose and found the sun
And learned to hope for what she did not know.
She smiled a challenge to the light above:
“I’ll be a light, myself,” she vowed each day,
“Faithful even if I'm not repaid.
I’ll find a way to warm all in my path
With light that’s truer than the world itself.”
Free, she’d work and race and laugh and fight
To rival the sun which gave the earth its life.
Chained, she’d sing in stories, bleed in poems,
To rival the sun by which all beauty shone.
She ran against, yet with the sun each day,
Till finally she ran into its light,
And disappeared, forgotten, in its rays.
Yet she knew not all this, for she indeed
Forgot herself and only lived for light,
Rejoicing to be part of what she loved.

Do it.

I am tired of being complacent. I am tired of thinking, "Well, I could make that person feel included. I could really make an effort to do well with this job. I could go out of my way to be kind. I could maintain my joy even when stressed-out. I could give up what I want for what they want. In theory, I could do what I know is right. But it would be hard. I really don't want to right now. I'm too weak."

As the hands and feet of Christ, called to be salt and light, made new, the beloved of the Lord, what am I talking about? Our own weakness is nothing to stop us. We cannot thwart God by being our own, weak selves. So let's not limit ourselves according to our weakness, but according to His strength. Which happens to be limitless. As Oswald Chambers put it in My Utmost for His Highest, "If you have the whine in you, kick it out ruthlessly. It is a positive crime to be weak in God's strength."

"Well, easier said than done." Yeah. I know. I know. And this is an excuse... how? Really, join me in contemplating this saying for a minute. We're admitting that whatever this thing that is "said" is true. Is right. And we aren't saying that it's impossible. We're just saying that doing it is harder than saying it. Clearly. But if it's true and right, and we know it, then why are we waiting to consider the difficulties of it?

(Photo credit.) Jason Bourne wants to know why you don't try as desperately to follow Christ as he tries to... um, not get killed. Yeah. Uh-huh. That's right. Listen to Jason Bourne.

Friends, can you give me one good reason why, completely certain that something is right, one ought to pause and take into account the difficulties of doing that thing, as if the difficulty somehow affected whether or not one was going to do it at all? Does the difficulty of a right action have any say in whether or not we give our all trying to do it? No. Of course not. So why do we act like it does? Why am I always pausing and reconsidering? Why complain about how hard it is? Jesus told us, "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

The flow-chart is simple. "Is it right? ([No.] Then don't do it.) ([Yes.] Then do it.)" (I'm not talking about the times when the difficulty lies in figuring out which way is right. Such times exist, certainly, but I'm talking about the times when it's clear. When we know.) And if I don't reference how hard the right course might be, that isn't because I don't think it will be hard. It's because I think it's irrelevant.

The thing that I get stuck on most often in trying to do things is not the actual difficulty. It's the perception of it as difficult. I stare at a task, decide that it will be hard, and promptly balk. This is stupid. You decide what's right, cautiously, thoughtfully, and then you do it, even if it kills you.

And why be stingy with our love? Why not be recklessly caring? Why not be endlessly loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, gentle, faithful, and self-controlled? In other words, why not be what we're supposed to be? Why not be like Christ? Because it's hard? True, but that's no reason at all.

Because we can't actually attain to that perfection? Also true. And that too is no reason not to give our all.

Yes, it is hard. And we are wimps. So we'll fail. All. The. Time. But our failure isn't the point any more than our success is the point. And like the football player in Facing the Giants, we'll never know how far we can go unless we stop tracking our progress and forget about how hard it is. Let's not let a fear of failure keep us from giving everything we've got, from trying as hard as possible, shall we? The only real question is whether an action is right or wrong. Once we know that, we basically know what to do. Voices will spring up and tell us that the right thing will be hard, and that we don't want to do it. Why on earth would we listen to them?

It's not about you. It's not about what you can do, and it's certainly not about what you cannot do. So forget about yourself. Forget yourself and run. Run with all you've got for what is right and good and true and beautiful. In other words, for God.