honesty
Strangely enough, it was while I was driving home on a wet, dark night with a lonely radio that I realised.
Sometimes it takes years to understand your own reactions - why your reflex to a shout is to cringe/flare/run, how to shield others from your own floods of emotions. Often those thoughts only come after hard thinking, acknowledgement of watery buried memories, and painful wounds.
How is it that gains gotten through such difficulty can end up so ill-used?
Having finally understood what is wrong, how could one yet refuse to make the choices to change?
And still it happens all the time.
Watching the lights flicker past, diffusing onto the wet asphalt highway, it’s pretty often that I find myself reflecting over recent situations resulting in heart-ache and pain as I drive home. Sometimes it’s the broken or neglected friendships; sometimes it’s the hateful words like bloody arrows, whose power you only recognise in the aftermath of misconstrued battle…
Time travel isn’t an option. Living in the past is even more regrettable. And not to learn from the past is stupid.
Growth… happens even though gravity exists. Deal with it - change is good if it’s upwards!
“Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech— unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart.
Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
- (2 Corinthians 3:12-18)
Change. =)
hitting reality.
<between time and space by rose on the grey>
The blur of everything passing in fast forward has suddenly cut to an agonisingly slow motion - the moment your heart pounds, your breath shakes as you formulate your next strategy, circling the opponent.
The ball is in motion.
Any split second now, you will be required to face up and deliver the best you have - the sweat, the training, hours of practice drilled and honed into your bones.
The future hangs on your present performance.
If you were lacking in diligence while you practised, it will show in the depth of music produced. If you neglected to give your body breaks, it will show as you haul yourself through the marathon.
Not everything is a sprint; not everything can be done with short bursts of high energy.
And this is a time like this.
Are you awake still?
Do you know why you must win?
Do you understand the importance of your discipline?
Are you convinced of the rewards of success?
Now is never a time to give up, even if you have lost before.
The fight at hand is in the present - not the past - and you have the power to change it.
Carpe Diem.
camera flares
And it’s at times like these that I think in starry nights and colours faded from vivid reality; I dream in vague blurry bokeh lights of music notes in prose’d lyrics, of secret desires hidden blossoming into beauty, of real-time transformation and fragile new life growing from broken shards.
I see the world pass in an angry motion of vehicle noises, gunfire and shouts - nothing that the heart hopes for.
I hear the strife of confusion, and contention of selfishness - both you and me - and our souls cry out for peace, on opposite sides of the same wall.
In a rash of misery and grief, in the midst of our loss, the despair is nearly palpable.
But at this time?
”He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?” - Micah 6:8
To remember always in Christ - we are never alone in our pain.Isaiah 53
He has been through it all, bloody and excruciating torture of body, heart and soul - even despised, mocked and scorned by those He came to save - and He emerged from it all victorious still.Hebrews12:1-3
And so our prize is assured, so long as we choose to turn and run this race.Phil 3:12
All our troubles
And all our tears
God our hope
He has overcome
All our failure
And all our fear
God our love
He has overcome
All our heartache
And all our pain
God our healer
He has overcome
All our burdens
And all our shame
God our freedom
He has overcome
All our troubles
And all our tears
God our hope
He has overcome
All our failures
And all our fear
God our love
He has overcome
God our justice
God our grace
God our freedom
He has overcome
God our refuge
God our strength
God is with us
He has overcome
- take heart - aftermath | hillsong united
Hope is coming for me.
***
In short: loss in the family. Please pray :)
you make me think
<!— Focus, unfocus. No, it’s still not clear - you need to readjust the lens.—>
Have you ever played in a gushing river on a hot summer’s day? You splash and you laugh and yell, and sometimes you glance up to check that your parents are still there - that the tents are waiting for the starry, tired nights, and food attending the campfire for the energy lost now in momentary revelry.
Suddenly, though, you realise that the current of the river has pulled you downstream into deeper, colder waters; further from familiarity, further from comfort of company. Sharply, reality readjusts your vision and you scramble up the pebbled riverbed towards safety.
But you know, that’s not what I’m thinking about.
Do you ever feel those moments of hyper-reality, where everything around you hushes in the realisation of a moment?
Once, in the middle of green-blue surf, fresh in the power of wind and waves, arms and belly and legs aching from paddling out to the greater calm - you need to match the velocity of the water to catch it.
Another time, driving solo down never-ending asphalt through countless towns of nameless people, passing untold stories and lives; or through backhills of the suburbs at a hundred kilometres per hour, watching a brilliant fiery sunset from the corner of the eye; or passing through the red desert plains with the dark blue dome deepening into night above - life is a journey meant to be explored.
But that’s not really what I’m thinking about.
It’s a tug-of-war that we are playing sometimes; a game designed to throw the other off balance so that one may be declared the victor.
Or you could say it’s a conversation of words and actions and emotions played behind the scenes, a drama largely unseen to anyone else.
But what have you dreamed of? In your quietest, most secret place in your heart - what do you believe could happen? Where do you want to go?
Sometimes it is our responsibility to keep our dreams on track… and realise where the wild current will hurl you in an incautious second. Will it dash you over the rocks of a waterfall? Will your Titanic hit an iceberg and sink from lack of foresight and insight?
So be careful where your imaginations lead you. It is far better to avert disaster and distraction, than to attempt repair of shattered remains.
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.”
(Phil 4:6-8)
hope (live)
It was a quiet day, a morning of little import. The sun was streaming through the window, and outside the tender leaves of grass were green in the brittle cold of winter’s grasp. I stirred my foot to wind closer a warmer swirl of blanket.
you bring peace to the restless
first corinthians thirteen.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three… but the greatest of these is love. (v13)
.: love > hope
love > faith.
Which is why:
v2: Though I have all faith… but have no love, I am nothing.
faith - love = negative number, since love > faith
In other words:
v1: Speak however eloquently and beautifully you want. Without love, they are only words - annoying, empty, harsh and without merit, useless, not complete/full, not used to their full potential.
v2: Do whatever good works you want, but ministry and service for God is ultimately pointless without love (love for God, love for people).
v3: Sacrifice and generosity are useless without love (for God, and for others).
v4: Love doesn’t show off. When one loves, one does not think more of oneself than they should; love is not arrogant. When one loves, one does not want what belongs to others, or is not theirs to have.
v5: Love, when shown, is well mannered and not rude (thinks of others’ feelings); love is not selfish, but seeks what is good for others; love is not easily provoked - love is when one is secure and can trust in God; love thinks no evil, but believes the best of others.
In sum (v12): love is the perfection of one’s character.
God’s definition of love is so much better than just a feeling…
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
first john chapter four, verses seven to eleven
Take my life, I lay it down
At the cross where I am found
All I have I give to you, oh God
Take my hands and make them clean
Keep my heart in purity
THat I may walk in all you have for me
Here I stand, arms open wide
I am Yours, and You are mine
… Lord have Your way in my life. (Arms Open Wide, by Hillsong United)
a love that never fails
And when the rains fell, the water crept around the skirts of houses and buildings and threatened to drown them.
My nose is no longer soft, and those strawberries are memories left in days long gone - in heat and bright daylight, the burning steering wheel as I careened away home.
The hours of light are growing shorter again; and softly, hesitantly, the leaves begin to drift from trees as cars blast past in rude polluted air. Watching a brown/grey skyline from tall apartment balcony, I watch for something - anything - that tells me you are coming closer, that life will continue, that everything will be worth it.
It is only in the following days I feel afresh (while driving at forty kilometres per hour through freeway roadworks, silhouetted in blue; fleeing from ten hour shifts with aching feet and legs; sitting in doorways of peeling paint; escaping in moments of pure music) that everything we are given can be taken away.
And if we are accountable for what we are given, surely we should (a) treasure what we have, (b) be generous with what we have, and (c) be faithful with what we’ve been given, including freedom and air to breathe.
Re-posting this video ‘cause I like it. In the midst of flood, earthquake, tornado and fire - you can never have too much reassurance.
HOPE OF ALL HEARTS » PLANETSHAKERS (via planetshakerstv)
what will your legacy be?
do you remember that time
For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!
I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
(Galatians 5:13-26)
if for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain
then I’ll take up my cross
like a wheat grain in the rain
that greater may be wrought through my loss.
fact not fiction
While the rain beats upon the roof like an aimless drumbeat, I curl up in my sister’s bed and wonder why I need to get up and do anything.
why home time is good
I don’t know where tomorrow will lead, but I do know that I have a Saviour.
Sometimes it’s good for a perspective change - to smell the roses, get bitten by mosquitoes and find a different (more productive) repetitive task to do (e.g. knitting)… to do things which long left undone.
Broken internet is good for time away from the ever-calling voices of the world.
one thousand.
It’s not good bye. I don’t think I could handle believing that none of you will be around in my future.
(ps. tumblrites, a tip - click on the actual post link to see the photos at a better size.)
It’s not the end. Stay with me.
an old story, no longer current
A short story you can read if you want… and the grammar is retarded on purpose.
why i missed the quiet
Away from the rush, the ebb and flow of time and people and machinery, away from disturbing, depressing thoughts and guilt unending, away from red-splotched anger and raging screaming, away from numbness from alienation and distracted entertainment to escape screeching silence (if you ignore it, it accuses and pierces your innards).
Your love is a sanctuary from all these things.
Inside, I can spread myself and wriggle comfortably, lifting my hands to the light of hope.
I can make daisy chains with the whispered thoughts you sent in encoded black type - letters of love - and string them around my room, planners and diaries, reproduce them on lecture notes as reminders.
In the music of your grace - I love you despite it all - I can add my quavering harmony: I am Yours.
Even when driving through the grey rain, the bright sunshine, the crushing salty waves, the icy winds, the dark lighted cities and the frail morning mists, you speak in terms too glorious for me to comprehend. After all, you see drug addicts as beaming toddlers once free of guilt, and convicted darkened criminals - they are my children.
And you love… your love is the most powerful force of all. You knew that, and it is still, just as You are.
If my heart understood 1 Corinthians 13, surely I would let you down less. It still doesn’t make you love any less, though. This I know to be true.
rainfall
the sky opens up over me and you
and you don’t seem to mind that we’re soaked through
Rain falls quietly at first, falls and hits the cement ground with a solid pop - just barely audible.
From lofty heights and roaring winds, where the heaviness becomes unbearable - water molecules hurtle through the chill afternoon air like bullets, missiles shot from the heavens. Their trajectory bends in the wind, sometimes, like ripples on a vast air lake.
And below, as gravity forces unwilling billions and trillions of molecules to remain within atmosphere, the grey cities reflect the charcoal skies. Not even the dogs are out today - not a cat, not a bird, and certainly I’d rather not be.
But I see that humans are out in force on the main road within their shiny lighted automobiles, creating transient light shows on slithery bitumen that none care to watch. Out to work - I know I may be late, the traffic light will be going red soon, the road is just visible past my windscreen, and why is that car so slow???
A month ago, rains in the outback desert gifted the front of my car with thousands of splattered locust. Four months ago, rain accompanied an impending cold (both disease and temperature). Two years ago, rain was a gift, an answer to prayer.
Rain is not controlled by us: not by our temperament, not by our intelligence, nor by our natural instincts.
“ For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,
And do not return there,
But water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower
And bread to the eater,
11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”
Seek the LORD while He may be found,
Call upon Him while He is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
Let him return to the LORD,
And He will have mercy on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.
8 “ For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.
9 “ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
>isa 55:10-11; 6-9.
and I will be still and know You are God… foundations are made to be stood upon.
Grace is beautiful…
nb: shooting chemicals into the skies doesn’t mean ultimate control of weather :)
