The Lark Ascending

"The Lark Ascending" by George Meredith HE rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,
All intervolv’d and spreading wide,	5
Like water-dimples down a tide
Where ripple ripple overcurls
And eddy into eddy whirls;
A press of hurried notes that run
So fleet they scarce are more than one,	10
Yet changingly the trills repeat
And linger ringing while they fleet,
Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear
To her beyond the handmaid ear,
Who sits beside our inner springs,	15
Too often dry for this he brings,
Which seems the very jet of earth
At sight of sun, her musci’s mirth,
As up he wings the spiral stair,
A song of light, and pierces air	20
With fountain ardor, fountain play,
To reach the shining tops of day,
And drink in everything discern’d
An ecstasy to music turn’d,
Impell’d by what his happy bill	25
Disperses; drinking, showering still,
Unthinking save that he may give
His voice the outlet, there to live
Renew’d in endless notes of glee,
So thirsty of his voice is he,	30
For all to hear and all to know
That he is joy, awake, aglow,
The tumult of the heart to hear
Through pureness filter’d crystal-clear,
And know the pleasure sprinkled bright	35
By simple singing of delight,
Shrill, irreflective, unrestrain’d,
Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustain’d
Without a break, without a fall,
Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,	40
Perennial, quavering up the chord
Like myriad dews of sunny sward
That trembling into fulness shine,
And sparkle dropping argentine;
Such wooing as the ear receives	45
From zephyr caught in choric leaves
Of aspens when their chattering net
Is flush’d to white with shivers wet;
And such the water-spirit’s chime
On mountain heights in morning’s prime,	50
Too freshly sweet to seem excess,
Too animate to need a stress;
But wider over many heads
The starry voice ascending spreads,
Awakening, as it waxes thin,	55
The best in us to him akin;
And every face to watch him rais’d,
Puts on the light of children prais’d,
So rich our human pleasure ripes
When sweetness on sincereness pipes,	60
Though nought be promis’d from the seas,
But only a soft-ruffling breeze
Sweep glittering on a still content,
Serenity in ravishment.
For singing till his heaven fills,	65
’T is love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes:	70
The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine
He is, the hills, the human line,
The meadows green, the fallows brown,
The dreams of labor in the town;
He sings the sap, the quicken’d veins;	75
The wedding song of sun and rains
He is, the dance of children, thanks
Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,
And eye of violets while they breathe;
All these the circling song will wreathe,	80
And you shall hear the herb and tree,
The better heart of men shall see,
Shall feel celestially, as long
As you crave nothing save the song.
Was never voice of ours could say	85
Our inmost in the sweetest way,
Like yonder voice aloft, and link
All hearers in the song they drink:
Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,
Our passion is too full in flood,	90
We want the key of his wild note
Of truthful in a tuneful throat,
The song seraphically free
Of taint of personality,
So pure that it salutes the suns	95
The voice of one for millions,
In whom the millions rejoice
For giving their one spirit voice.
Yet men have we, whom we revere,
Now names, and men still housing here,	100
Whose lives, by many a battle-dint
Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,
Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet
For song our highest heaven to greet:
Whom heavenly singing gives us new,	105
Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,
From firmest base to farthest leap,
Because their love of Earth is deep,
And they are warriors in accord
With life to serve and pass reward,	110
So touching purest and so heard
In the brain’s reflex of yon bird;
Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,
Through self-forgetfulness divine,
In them, that song aloft maintains,	115
To fill the sky and thrill the plains
With showerings drawn from human stores,
As he to silence nearer soars,
Extends the world at wings and dome,
More spacious making more our home,	120
Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

How Great

I'm so bored of little gods
While standing on the edge of
something large
While standing here, so close to You
We could be consumed
What a glorious day

I give up, I lay down
Rest my face upon this ground
Lift my eyes to Your sky
Rid my heart of all I hide

So sweet this surrender

How great Your love for us
How great our love for You
That grace could cover us
How great Your love

How marvelous, how brilliantly
Luminous, You shine on me
And who can fail to give You awe
To fear You, God, so sovereign and strong

What a glorious day
What a wonderful day, today
What a glorious day
What a wonderful day, today
Glorious day

In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. Free me from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hands I commit my spirit; redeem me, O LORD, the God of truth.

Psalm 31:1-5

Grace for me

This jar of clay and all its weakness;
Somehow inside dwells Your fullness.
Even though I’m not yet flawless,
You are forming me.

Your grace for me is all I need
All I need is here
Your grace for me
Is all I need
All I need is here

Everything that I desire really may not meet my needs.
Help me to seek first Your kingdom.
You’ll provide for me.

Your grace for me
Is all I need
All I need is here
Your grace for me is all I need
All I need is here

Valleys come and tears aren’t dry yet and there are things I don’t yet see.
But I’ll rejoice despite of hardship; You’ll watch over me.

Your grace for me is all I need
All I need is here
Your grace for me is all I need
All I need is here
Your grace for me is all I need
All I need is here
All I need
All I need is here in You

Help-Portrait

Help-Portrait is a pretty cool organization. Here is what they did last year.

Habakkuk

Living by faith is a bewildering venture. We rarely know what's coming next, and not many things turn out the way we anticipate. It is natural to assume that since I am God's chosen and beloved, I will get favorable treatment from the God who favors me so Extravagantly. It is not unreasonable to expect that from the time that I become his follower, I will be exempt from dead ends, muddy detours, and cruel treatment from the travelers I meet daily who are walking the other direction. That God-followers don't get preferential treatment in life always comes as a surprise. But it's also a surprise to find that there a few men and women within the Bible who show up alongside us at such moments.

The prophet Habakkuk is one of them, and a most welcome companion he is. Most prophets, most of the time, speak God's Word to us. They are preachers calling us to listen to God's word of judgement and salvation, confrontation and comfort. They face us with God as he is, not as we imagine him to be. Most prophets are in-your-face assertive, not given to tact, not diplomatic, as they insist we pay attention to God. But Habakkuk speaks our word to God. He gives voice to our bewilderment, articulates our puzzled attempts to make sense of things, faces God with our disappointment with God. He insists that God pay attention to us, and he insists with a prophet's characteristic no-nonsense bluntness

The circumstance that aroused Habakkuk took place in the seventh century B.C. The prophet realized that God was going to use the godless military machine of Babylon to brings God's judgement on God's own people--using a godless nation to punish a godly nation! It didn't make sense, and Habakkuk was quick and bold to say so. He dared to voice his feelings that God didn't his own God business. Not a day has passed since then that one of us hasn't picked up and repeated Habakkuk's bafflement: "God you don't seem to make sense!"

But this prophet companion who stands at our side does something even more important: He waits and he listens. It is in his wait and listening--which then turns into his praying--that he found himself inhabiting the large world of God's sovereignty. Only there did he eventually realizing that the believing-in-God life, the steady trusting-in-God life, is the full life, the only real life. Habakkuk started out exactly where we started out with our puzzled complaints and God-accusations, but he didn't stay there. He ended up in a world, along with us, where every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

Laugh without smiling.

Go ahead. Try it.

Best Story Ever.

Here is the understanding of the Jesus story in a nutshell:

God is real.

God is not a white man sitting on a cloud, but is the very source of life and love and beauty in the universe. God is love. (1 John 4)

Love cannot be confined, so love creates. (Genesis 1)

Human beings are meant to be co-creating, image bearing, creation tending embodiments of God in the world. (Genesis 1:27-29)

We screw it up. (Genesis 3-present day)

Two thousand years ago, a man named Jesus tells people that God is not done with human beings, not finished with Creation. He said it like this, "The Kingdom of God is at hand." He tells them that God's future world is not like this one. There won't be any more war or poverty or racism in that world. No more sin and selfishness to mar God's good world and destroy relationships. No more power-hungry human rulers like Caesar to rule over them, but God alone. No more death, disease or famine.

So they kill him.

But He doesn't stay dead. He rises from the dead like he said he would, and the world is changed forever.

One of Jesus' best friends put it this way, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God... The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us."

That force of life in the universe..that power that holds molecules together and that causes plants to shoot up out of the ground...whatever it is that keeps the trilliions of cells in our bodies working together to keep us breathing... God. God puts on human skin and tells us that it's not over yet. Creation is not done. Someday all things will be restored (Matthew 19:28, Revelations 21, Romans 8, Ephesians 1:10). We believe that in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, God has dealt sin and death the decisive "death-blow", and is now beginning is grand project of restoration. This is "good news", it is "gospel".

Jesus is God's plan for the healing of creation, and when we live our lives "in Christ", we become a part of the "new creation" that God wants to bring into the world (2 Corinthians 5:17).

What You've done

I’ve tasted Your glory and I left it there. Your poured out Your Spirit and I didn’t care. Still you loved me. I’ve lived for myself with nobody to blame. I took what You gave me and squandered Your grace. Still You loved me.

Nothing compares to what You’ve done for me.

I could live for the broken and share in their pain. I could die like a martyr or live like a saint just to love You. I could sing like the angels and gather Your praise: Be blessed beyond measure and give it away just to love You.

Still nothing compares to what You’ve done for me.

My heart has been broken; I’ve laid out my shame. Because of Your mercy, all I can say is I love You. So I’ll tell of Your story, I’ll carry Your name. I’ll live for Your glory Lord, I’ll share in Your pain just to love You.

Nothing compares to what You’ve done for me.

Nothing can separate us. Not death or life, or depth or height, or unseen power now or ever!

Wonder

Speak up sir and clearly state your name
Did you say you are the Son and came to save
How in my right mind should I believe
That a life exists beyond what I perceive

Change all my fear to faith in you

I'm forgetting all I know and I'm leaning on Your love
Yes, I see now...All Your Wonder
My mind will now make room for all the truth that is in You
And I see now...All Your Wonder

Let me journey to the unveiled place
Where my selfish wills and ways become untraced
Suddenly my vision's getting clear
When I see the answers reasons disappear

Hebrews and Hyphens

It seems odd to have to say so, but too much religion is a bad thing. We can't get too much of God, can't get too much faith and obedience, can't get too much love and worship. But religion --the well intentioned efforts we make to "get it all together" for God--can very well get in the way of what God is doing for us. The main and central action is everywhere and always what God has done, is doing, and will do for us. Jesus is the revelation of that action. Our main and central task is to live in responsive obedience to God's action revealed in Jesus. Our part in the action is the act of faith.

But more often than not we become impatiently self-important along the way and decide to improve matters with our own two cents' worth. We add on, we supplement, we embellish. But instead of improving on the purity and simplicity of Jesus, we dilute the purity, clutter the simplicity. We become fussily religious, or anxiously religious. We get in the way.

That's when it's time to read and pray our way through the letter to the Hebrews again, written for "too religious" Christians. This letter deletes the hyphens, the add-ons. The focus becomes clear and sharp again: God's action in Jesus. And we are free once more for the act of faith, the one human action in which we don't get in the way but on the Way.

Cool Video

Look at this sweet video.

Pictory

Pictory is a website that combines stories and pictures. I really suggest bookmarking it. Spend time looking through the showcases. They are really powerful.

http://www.pictorymag.com/

Hate, Murder, Judgement, Mercy

Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.

"Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?"

The Lord said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

This is part of the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis Chapter 4. I only have one older sister and I have never really grown up with her. I don't think I have ever hated her. I know for a fact I have hated other people in my life though. I have never hated someone so much that i wanted to murder them though. There is a part in Matthew chapter 5 where Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.

What I got from this statement is that hating somebody is the same as murdering somebody. After Cain kills Abel, the Lord said that Abel's blood was crying out to him. I wonder what that sounded like. I also wonder the pain that God goes through when he hears that. This really convicted me not to be hateful towards others. I don't want God to hear that sound.

It is especially hard for me to show mercy for people who I felt have wronged me. My basic reaction is have anger and resentment stored up inside me. By being merciful however, I can be an example. 1 Timothy 1:16 says "But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life."

I'm going to end with Hebrews 4:16. "Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."

The Gift

I’ve got a gift and it blew me a way
From the far eastern sea straight to here

And suddenly
You’ve done it all
You won me over
In no time at all

Green trees were the first sign
The deepest blue, the clearest sky
The silence came with the brightest eyes
And turned water into wine
The children ran to see
The parents stood in disbelief
And those who knew braced for the ride

Like God himself is coming home to say

I, I can do anything
If you want me here
And I can fix any thing
If you let me near
Where are those secrets now
That you're too scared to tell
I'd whisper them all aloud
So you can hear yourself

Children

An awesome example of 1 Timothy 4:12

http://charitywater.tumblr.com/post/366957421/campaign-to-watch-beans-n-rice-for-a-month

So last night in bible study, we talked about having faith like child from Matthew 18. Now since my car decided to swallow my study book, I can't remember the questions that it asked. One of the questions I remember however, asked: What qualities does a child posses that makes us want to have faith like a child? My answer went along the lines of a child is humble, willing and eager to serve their parents/master. So when i stumbled on the link above, all the qualities i listed applied. My mind pretty much exploded when I saw this. Because of this child I got a glimpse of why a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Freedom!

The following was inspired by Romans 3:21-31.

Being considered not-guilty is through faith. We don’t brag about the fact we don’t have to do anything for it, but are so happy that God has given us a free gift that we continue to live out the life He wanted us to in the Law. But does this happen? Mostly we take our free gift of being not-guilty and keep it selfishly to ourselves. We are afraid to tell others or step outside the box and live out our free gift (befriend those that no one would befriend) because we are afraid of the repercussions of this world. We don’t live the life that this gift of freedom gives. We should feel free to live out a life for God but we feel so trapped because of the world around us and the controlling ideas of addiction it entices you with. You don’t need a cell phone, the internet, a car, a boyfriend or girlfriend to be satisfied or more importantly free. These things can be good, but also addicting.

God gave Himself so that we all could have freedom in Him. Do you really know what freedom is? Do you think it is your parents being gone for the weekend or not having to go to work which provides an escape to do whatever it is you want? This isn’t going to make sense to those who do not believe in Jesus Christ. They will see freedom in doing what they want which is influenced by what the world thinks freedom is, but true freedom comes only from Jesus Christ. God gives the free gift of being considered not-guilty which allows a person to live a life of freedom, because living a godly life, though at times difficult, is freedom.

For those reading this you might agree and start reading a certain book of the Bible and praying more. Let’s say that you make it a week reading your Bible and praying but in the process you get board or do not “feel” that God is with you. And this is only after a week! It is time to question how caught up in this world you are! Why do you need results now? Is it because we have fast food restaurants where we can get food 24/7, or cell phones that help us never miss a text, or ipods so we can listen to any of our favorite songs whenever we want? All of the following are instant rewards. You want it you can get it! It has to happen today or tomorrow at the latest.

You are stuck in the addiction of being entertained and satisfied by your own worldly means. God gave freely so you could be free. Are you able to leave your cell phone at home or walk through a hall full of people without using your ipod? Is this freedom? Is it freedom not being to go somewhere without your cell or ipod? Is it freedom to always have something like music or the tv on in the background when you are working on a project totally unrelated to those? It sounds like you are in a prison of technology and “me.” You are unable to turn of the television or radio and sit in a room or go on a walk in silence with nothing there to distract you. Get away from all of the music, movies, rings, and dings of this world to a place of silence and freedom that Christ Jesus gave with His life. Jesus is not saying that you have to be Amish, but just take half an hour to an hour each day to get away from this prison that the world labels as free. Be free in God. It is the only way.

It is a free gift to freedom, but it isn’t easy. It means denying what this world values. Cell phones and ipods are not bad, but they can be addicting. If you are a Christian how much more time do you spend listening to your ipod, watching television, or talking/texting on your cell phone in comparison to praying and reading your Bible? Be honest! Freedom begins in putting the importance of God in front of your television, cell phone, and ipod. As you begin to do this like stated above you may want to stop because you aren’t “feeling” freedom from God. Don’t stop, great things like freedom are worth working for. If it was easy everyone would do it, but freedom takes work. Begin with 15 minutes a day four days a week. Get away from technology and spend your time in silence either reading your Bible or praying.

If you go for one month begin to build upon it. This may mean going from 15 minutes to 20 minutes or four days to five. It doesn’t matter just add on. If you don’t make it for a month take away. Freedom is worth struggling and working for, and as you continue on this path you will grow in freedom with God that eliminates these illusions of freedom (ipod, cell, television, ect.). There will be days where you see you are no longer dependent on having your ipod with you or “needing” the television on in order to do your homework. There will also be days where it isn’t as easy, but freedom is worth it. Jesus came freely and died for us so we could have freedom in this world through Him. It is the free gift of being considered not-guilty and part of His family. All are invited. Do you want a life of freedom?

The Last 10 Years

I remember 10 years ago I had just started school in Colorado. I had moved from England and probably had an accent. I was in the process of making friends. There was no way my little 8 year old mind could predict what would happen in the coming decade. I became permanently saved. I accepted Jesus as Lord in my heart and mind. I pursued Him and followed Him. I became friends with Him. Jesus says this, "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." He is the best friend that I have. A friend who is selfless, who promises me eternal life. John 4: 14 is a great verse. I urge whoever is reading this to look it up.

A new decade approaches and my 18 year old mind cannot predict what will happen this decade. There is only one thing I will know, i'll be 28 when it's over. And with that, I leave the rest to my Lord.