"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucifies to me, and I to the world." Galatians 6:14
I'm rereading a book called "Don't Waste Your Life." Written by John Piper. I won't get into details too much on how awesome this book is, and how much I love Piper's writing. I won't tell you how gusto it is and how desperate and serious the message he is trying to convey is. You will have to experience it yourself.
On the bus ride home yesterday I read the chapter entitled "Boasting Only in the Cross."
"The opposite of wasting your life is living life by a single God-exalting and soul-satisfying passion." (43)
"How serious is this word 'single'? Can life really have that much 'singleness' of purpose? Can work an leisure and relationships and eating and lovemaking and ministry all really flow from a single passion? Is there something deep enough and big enough and strong enough to hold all that together? Can sex and cars and work and war and changing diapers and doing taxes really have a God-exalting, soul-satisfying unity?" (43-44)
"Oh, that God would help me waken in you a single passion for a single great reality that would unleash you, and set you free from small dreams, and send you, for the glory of Christ, into all the spheres of secular life and to all the peoples of the earth." (48)
I could end there. There is so much to speak about those three quotes!
I have found the phrases, "unleash you," and "set you free from small dream" to be one of the most true things I've realized this year. All of the dreams I could have for myself, for advancing myself, for 'a good cause,' for entering schools or performing or writing or personality or anything else is, in actuality, a no-dream, a phony. They only drain my energy and delusionate my mind and starve my longings.
Ah, what could my purpose be?
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 16:25
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.
Oh Lord, I want to find my life in your cross, I want to value your grace above anything. do not be my number one, but my only one.
Friday, January 29
Monday, January 18
What we do with old journal entries
I've never kept a 'real' journal. It is too hard and personal for me.
Instead I scribble. I found this entry sometime between Dec. 3 and Dec. 31 of 2009. It is undated.
It is a poem with no title, with two words, "Live loved," written on top and a sentence above that; "Dear Father, thank you for a more abundant life. Help me to accept it." And here it is:
What I can say
about your love is that
it is strange to me. That
I cannot seem to fit it, that I don't
even try it on. What I can say is that
my own embrace refuses to collect it.
Though you give it to me. Though it falls
to me, like white giant sheets
from a widened sky.
I don't understand it. Too perfect,
covering all of me, what I know
never pleases even myself, that
entire body like a box of frustration,
bouncing and springing inside. It takes
it all.
What I can say
is that the life I'm offered sometimes sits stale. Because
I must be broken,
to come ready to be mended.
Nevertheless, your love comes over me.
Instead I scribble. I found this entry sometime between Dec. 3 and Dec. 31 of 2009. It is undated.
It is a poem with no title, with two words, "Live loved," written on top and a sentence above that; "Dear Father, thank you for a more abundant life. Help me to accept it." And here it is:
What I can say
about your love is that
it is strange to me. That
I cannot seem to fit it, that I don't
even try it on. What I can say is that
my own embrace refuses to collect it.
Though you give it to me. Though it falls
to me, like white giant sheets
from a widened sky.
I don't understand it. Too perfect,
covering all of me, what I know
never pleases even myself, that
entire body like a box of frustration,
bouncing and springing inside. It takes
it all.
What I can say
is that the life I'm offered sometimes sits stale. Because
I must be broken,
to come ready to be mended.
Nevertheless, your love comes over me.
Saturday, January 9
The Ministry of Reconciliation
11Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. 12We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. 13If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21God made him who had no sin to be sin[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:11-21
Sweetly Broken (Jeremy Riddle)
To the cross I look, to the cross I cling
Of its suffering I do drink
Of its work I do sing
For on it my Savior both bruised and crushed
Showed that God is love
And God is just
Chorus:
At the cross You beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees, and I am
Lost for words, so lost in love,
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered
What a priceless gift, undeserved life
Have I been given
Through Christ crucified
You’ve called me out of death
You’ve called me into life
And I was under Your wrath
Now through the cross I’m reconciled
Chorus:
In awe of the cross I must confess
How wondrous Your redeeming love and
How great is Your faithfulness
16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21God made him who had no sin to be sin[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:11-21
Sweetly Broken (Jeremy Riddle)
To the cross I look, to the cross I cling
Of its suffering I do drink
Of its work I do sing
For on it my Savior both bruised and crushed
Showed that God is love
And God is just
Chorus:
At the cross You beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees, and I am
Lost for words, so lost in love,
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered
What a priceless gift, undeserved life
Have I been given
Through Christ crucified
You’ve called me out of death
You’ve called me into life
And I was under Your wrath
Now through the cross I’m reconciled
Chorus:
In awe of the cross I must confess
How wondrous Your redeeming love and
How great is Your faithfulness
greetings again to an old friend, and much thought on music
My violin, Ezra Monster Prufrock.
It has been a while since I have been honestly spending daily time with Ezra. Not real practice, nothing that I can say I've improved upon. Maybe "kept in shape" (hardly). It's winter break.
Actually, this year I've been discovering mucho about the violin. About music, about practicing, about ensemble. A lot of great things. And I think something new this year, that wasn't there before, is that I am starting to really adore music. All music. For what it does---all layers---the emotional ways it can sear someone, the fantastic harmonic progressions and melodic lines (The word that plops into my head is 'Haydn'). I started the violin because I wanted to play the violin. Because it was a strange instrument you put on your shoulder. Because I thought that it would be fun to wave your arm up and down to make a sound. I think (yes) that all of us could affirm that the violin is a magical instrument.
But will there be violins in Heaven? I don't think that is a stupid question. I believe in Heaven, that it will be more real than this earth. At the same time, wouldn't our instruments be more real? Or, at least, more perfect. Will we even have the same ones we do now?
I heard someone say recently that Christianity is the only religion (if you want to call it a religion) that sings. Some other religions chant and such, but no singing. And why do we sing?
I googled it:
from Victor Shepard's website (http://www.victorshepherd.on.ca/):
"We sing inasmuch as our psychic constitution impels us to sing."
http://psychology.suite101.com/article.cfm/why_do_we_sing:
"Professor Graham Welch of the University of London has studied developmental and medical aspects of singing for 30 years and says.
“The health benefits of singing are both physiological and psychological. Its physical benefits include increasing oxygenation of the blood stream and working major muscle groups in the upper body.
Psychologically it has the positive effect of reducing stress levels through the action of the endocrine system which is linked to the sense of emotional well-being.”
From the bonding of early humans to the classical recital, the song has played a vital role in humankind’s history and evidence would seem to suggest that singing is good on a communal and personal level."
Another thing I've heard is that singing is a response to something. We sing when something very good has happened to us; we sing when something terrible's occured---and our singing reflects what it is that has happened.
Google "Why do people make music?":
("People who make music out of carrots"...)
WikiAnswers (trustworthy source very?) says:
"Human beings are (almost) the only mammal species that possess both speech and music...But why do humans need music?
"Every single human being, male or female, handicapped or not, young or old, has a desire to sing and dance and to listen to music, just like everybody has a desire for food and drink, for sex and sleep.
"Mankind uses music to express and convey feelings and to develop a feeling of togetherness."
One author has pulled the issue of time duration and effect into the front:
http://cnx.org/content/m13846/latest/
"Words may describe time's passing but music enacts it for us. For instance, the greater the amount of repetition, the more the future is conditioned by what has already happened. If an idea returns literally, it speaks to its transcendence; if it is perpetually transformed, then it changes with the times...
"In a recent article in the "New Yorker" magazine, author Milan Kundera quotes Marcel Proust: "Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book."
So there seems to me a cause for making music and an effect (yes...cause and effect) music has on the musician. What the author is saying is that music actually durates, whereas words are only stagnant..."music is performed unstoppably in time."
Not only that, but that music expresses a relationship between the future and the past, how the future (and the present, only thing being heard) arises, actually developes from the past.
More ramble on this later.
It has been a while since I have been honestly spending daily time with Ezra. Not real practice, nothing that I can say I've improved upon. Maybe "kept in shape" (hardly). It's winter break.
Actually, this year I've been discovering mucho about the violin. About music, about practicing, about ensemble. A lot of great things. And I think something new this year, that wasn't there before, is that I am starting to really adore music. All music. For what it does---all layers---the emotional ways it can sear someone, the fantastic harmonic progressions and melodic lines (The word that plops into my head is 'Haydn'). I started the violin because I wanted to play the violin. Because it was a strange instrument you put on your shoulder. Because I thought that it would be fun to wave your arm up and down to make a sound. I think (yes) that all of us could affirm that the violin is a magical instrument.
But will there be violins in Heaven? I don't think that is a stupid question. I believe in Heaven, that it will be more real than this earth. At the same time, wouldn't our instruments be more real? Or, at least, more perfect. Will we even have the same ones we do now?
I heard someone say recently that Christianity is the only religion (if you want to call it a religion) that sings. Some other religions chant and such, but no singing. And why do we sing?
I googled it:
from Victor Shepard's website (http://www.victorshepherd.on.ca/):
"We sing inasmuch as our psychic constitution impels us to sing."
http://psychology.suite101.com/article.cfm/why_do_we_sing:
"Professor Graham Welch of the University of London has studied developmental and medical aspects of singing for 30 years and says.
“The health benefits of singing are both physiological and psychological. Its physical benefits include increasing oxygenation of the blood stream and working major muscle groups in the upper body.
Psychologically it has the positive effect of reducing stress levels through the action of the endocrine system which is linked to the sense of emotional well-being.”
From the bonding of early humans to the classical recital, the song has played a vital role in humankind’s history and evidence would seem to suggest that singing is good on a communal and personal level."
Another thing I've heard is that singing is a response to something. We sing when something very good has happened to us; we sing when something terrible's occured---and our singing reflects what it is that has happened.
Google "Why do people make music?":
("People who make music out of carrots"...)
WikiAnswers (trustworthy source very?) says:
"Human beings are (almost) the only mammal species that possess both speech and music...But why do humans need music?
"Every single human being, male or female, handicapped or not, young or old, has a desire to sing and dance and to listen to music, just like everybody has a desire for food and drink, for sex and sleep.
"Mankind uses music to express and convey feelings and to develop a feeling of togetherness."
One author has pulled the issue of time duration and effect into the front:
http://cnx.org/content/m13846/latest/
"Words may describe time's passing but music enacts it for us. For instance, the greater the amount of repetition, the more the future is conditioned by what has already happened. If an idea returns literally, it speaks to its transcendence; if it is perpetually transformed, then it changes with the times...
"In a recent article in the "New Yorker" magazine, author Milan Kundera quotes Marcel Proust: "Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book."
So there seems to me a cause for making music and an effect (yes...cause and effect) music has on the musician. What the author is saying is that music actually durates, whereas words are only stagnant..."music is performed unstoppably in time."
Not only that, but that music expresses a relationship between the future and the past, how the future (and the present, only thing being heard) arises, actually developes from the past.
More ramble on this later.
Friday, January 8
I wanna look like Frodo! Yes?
There are not (many) huge things in Branson (other than tourist shows), so my sister Sheanah and I travelled around the little strip mall surrounding Wal-Mart. Whilst we visited a shoe shop, and I fell (figuratively) over these shoes, named after the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings(lovely movie, never read the books---the Blowfish 'hobbit' shoe.
Crazy. I love them. I don't know, is there something in me that wishes to appear like a hobbit? hm, I have been thinking (lightly) on this for the past day. What is it about these shoes?
By the way, hobbits don't wear shoes...
Credits for the images:
(http://www.shoe-envy.co.uk/images/uploads/Blowfish/bf_hobbit_grey.jpg)
http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/ADVGN/406N~Hobbit-Group-The-Lord-Of-The-Rings-Posters.jpg
Interesting shoes:
http://www.davison.com/creators/2009/07/15/unique-shoe-designs/
my quiet time today...
...(which, to say, was not quiet at all. A CD mixed with songs by some of the artists sprinkled in my "favorite music" list.)
This year I commited to reading the Bible in a year. I have caught up thus far, but that had to include a day where I had to read three days' worth in a night. Yeah. But today was---good, interesting...
Genesis 19. Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed.
I think that this passage fascinates people. I have read (a few) different poems on this situation, most specifically, Lot's wife looking back.
So, God's angels have told Lot's family that they need to leave Sodom and Gomorrah, as God was to destroy the city for its wickedness.
Anna Akmatova's take (trans. Max Hayward and Stanley Kunitz):
This year I commited to reading the Bible in a year. I have caught up thus far, but that had to include a day where I had to read three days' worth in a night. Yeah. But today was---good, interesting...
Genesis 19. Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed.
I think that this passage fascinates people. I have read (a few) different poems on this situation, most specifically, Lot's wife looking back.
So, God's angels have told Lot's family that they need to leave Sodom and Gomorrah, as God was to destroy the city for its wickedness.
"By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah...But Lot's wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt." (Gen. 19:23-26, NIV)
Anna Akmatova's take (trans. Max Hayward and Stanley Kunitz):
Lot's Wife
And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
I cannot suppose I know what is going on in Lot's wife's (could we give her a name?) desires or mindset, or anything else.
Maybe I will start out what I know to be true:
The Old Testament God is the same God of the New Testament who is the same God of right now and forever.
Yet, there is the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
Somethings I do not know:
What I mentioned, Lot's wife, what compelled her to look back and what was that difference between her and the remander of Lot's family.
It is not a matter of whether or not I 'agree' with Akmatova's poem. Phonetically it is beautiful (though translated) but I know that, if taken to represent what was going on, very biased. Maybe I too am looking at it with bias.
But already the first two lines have painted a picture that we know not to be true. The Bible is so devestatingly honest of the weakness of man. Yes. The great men were not perfect men. They walked with God---let him guide them, did things out of faith even when they were so weak.
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9)
Akmatova's poem isn't very overdone, but it does have the tint (I think?) of a mocking, ridculous man, overlooking his wife in the back, her eyes following "the red towers of (her) native Sodom." I don't want to propose the opposite in her.
"Looked back." I do not know what is meant completely by it, but---
Like an onion (yes) there are different layers to this. What can looking back say about her trust? Her faith (will God do what he says)? Her desire?
There is also a physical, literal act of turning back and looking. I think that it was C.S. Lewis (I am thinking in his book "The Screwtape Letters") that it is absurd to suppose that what you do in your physical life and the way you appear and act 'on the outside' has no bearing or effect on the spirtual, 'on the inside.'
"Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and in spirit." (1 Corinthians 7:34)
I know that this passage talks specifically about unmarried women, and obviously Lot's wife---wife. At the same time, there must have been a conflict of where her devotion lies.
Hm..more later (as I say). There's so much I could ponder on paper (or computer screen) about what I've read today. I will come back tonight.
{Yes, well, the New Covenant was something I did not fully grasp, didn't fully comprehend (do I think I do now? Is that even possible??) until probably this summer.} I will blog this sometime in the future.
Thursday, January 7
semi-introduction, newsboys, and nonstalgia?
Hello.
Uh---well. This is. New.
I am Hannah. Des Moines is my home. Words are my release. God is my satisfaction.
There. Now, at the moment what has hit me in the face is growing up. "Growing up." Yep. And I do not suppose it is just because I am free from high school come this May. Not that I am (probably) going off the college two hours away, 'on my own,' starting with a new school, new teachers, new people, new church.
Church started this tangent.
It started when I stumbled upon the facebook of a (long, long ago) childhood friend. From the large friendly church I grew up in. Pause. I do not know what it is, but I cannot help but muse...what it would have been like to stay there. Grow up there. There. In that...community---or whatever it was that all of a sudden, like a fist, blew my breath out.
Yes. It was like seeing a finish, from little boy to man. And seeing the rest of them, what had become, almost as if I saw what had become of those little people I grew up with, sensing that I had missed something, as if I had died. Literally, broken away from something.
Now I come against the past. I---and I don't know why, as a rule, as a shutting out?---cannot remember much of my past. Some events I remember, and during the time in my life I can remember being aware of it searing across my brain, almost as if a little narrative had gone off, saying, "You are changed now"---and my pyschological make-up rings, signaling something.
For probably an hour last night I tried, I pushed, to get memories out from that church and the people I knew then. And they came. They had not wiped off. Some embarrassing ones. I remember my insecurities, my rivalries, my mistakes...I wanted (still want) to know more about the people.
12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14
There is definitely more later on this. As for now, it is 3 am and I get up in four hours. Nice to meet you, let's talk again.
Uh---well. This is. New.
I am Hannah. Des Moines is my home. Words are my release. God is my satisfaction.
There. Now, at the moment what has hit me in the face is growing up. "Growing up." Yep. And I do not suppose it is just because I am free from high school come this May. Not that I am (probably) going off the college two hours away, 'on my own,' starting with a new school, new teachers, new people, new church.
Church started this tangent.
It started when I stumbled upon the facebook of a (long, long ago) childhood friend. From the large friendly church I grew up in. Pause. I do not know what it is, but I cannot help but muse...what it would have been like to stay there. Grow up there. There. In that...community---or whatever it was that all of a sudden, like a fist, blew my breath out.
Yes. It was like seeing a finish, from little boy to man. And seeing the rest of them, what had become, almost as if I saw what had become of those little people I grew up with, sensing that I had missed something, as if I had died. Literally, broken away from something.
Now I come against the past. I---and I don't know why, as a rule, as a shutting out?---cannot remember much of my past. Some events I remember, and during the time in my life I can remember being aware of it searing across my brain, almost as if a little narrative had gone off, saying, "You are changed now"---and my pyschological make-up rings, signaling something.
For probably an hour last night I tried, I pushed, to get memories out from that church and the people I knew then. And they came. They had not wiped off. Some embarrassing ones. I remember my insecurities, my rivalries, my mistakes...I wanted (still want) to know more about the people.
Today (or yesterday?) I listened to the song "Something Beautiful" by Newsboys:
What is it about those memories that makes me believe I have missed something beautiful?
12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14
There is definitely more later on this. As for now, it is 3 am and I get up in four hours. Nice to meet you, let's talk again.
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