Psalm 4:8

"I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety."

healthy apathy?

I've been listening to The Weepies a lot lately. I've always liked their sound, but for some reason they seem to be resonating with me the last few months. The combination of beautiful, mellow music and cynical, apathetic lyrics gives me a sense of mingled hope and mild depression.

I've been struggling with feeling well physically this year. According to my doctor, I've apparently developed insomnia and increased intensity of headaches as a result of being too stressed out and/or doing too much. So sleep is an issue. Obviously that effects my attitude in most areas of my life. I find that I am irritable, short fused and generally pessimistic these days, especially when it comes to my job. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy my job. I have a great boss, fun co-workers and invaluable opportunities to experience some quite interesting work. I've been losing my focus though. Its hard to get through a day without becoming extremely tired and cynical. I have a feeling that protecting my Sabbath will help with this problem. Sometimes I wonder if my body is responding to my recent spiritual apathy or if its the other way around. I feel they are connected somehow though. I think I'm going to drink some Tension Tamer Tea and pray about this for bit, then attempt to sleep.

Below are two sets of words that have been lingering in my head today. I find the contrast between them interesting. The first are the lyrics of a Weepies song called "Not Your Year." I connect with the sense of "[un]healthy apathy" that is conveyed in this song. The second are a few verses from Psalm 3, which is what I've begun to pray for myself these days. Here is a startling demonstration of how the message of the world and the message of God are complete opposites.

One: Not Your Year: by the Weepies

Scattered shadows on a wall, you watch the long light fall
Some impressions stay and some will fade
Tattered shoes outside your door, clothes all on the floor
Your life feels like the morning after all year long.

Every day it starts again
You cannot say if you’re happy
You keep trying to be
Try harder, maybe this is not your year.

Movies, TV screens reflect just what you expected
There’s a world of shiny people somewhere else
Out there following their bliss
living easy, getting kissed
while you wonder what else you’re doing wrong

Breathe through it, write a list of desires
Make a toast, make a wish, slash some tires
Paint a heart repeating, beating “don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give up.”

Two: Psalm 3:3-5

"But you are a shield around me, O Lord;
you bestow glory on me and lift up my head.
To the Lord I cry aloud,
and he answers me from his holy hill.

I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.
I will not fear the tens of thousands
drawn up against me on every side."

Channel Surfing vs. Entering In

It is a hard thing to love other people. There's no fancy way to say that. Love involves giving of oneself. Love involves entering into the story of another. That isn't something that is necessarily fun or easy to do. I think we so often define love in terms of what we "feel." But that isn't how God defines love at all. The Bible says that God is love. So, if I want to know what it is to love perfectly and completely I have to look to Him. Do I dare to do that? In light of this, when I think about perfect love - complete love - words like faithfulness to the faithless, deliverance, provision, and sacrifice all come to mind. I heard two excellent analogies recently from Toby, my pastor, in comparing incomplete love and complete love.

Incomplete love is like channel surfing. We flip through the channels until we find something we "feel like" watching. If the people in this analogy are anything like me, they get bored very quickly and don't stay on any one channel for more than five minutes. Complete love is like getting off the couch and entering into the story rather than just observing from our comfort zone. It's daring to embrace something outside of ourselves. This is what Christ did when He left the comfort of heaven to enter into our story. He isn't a distant observer. He doesn't keep us at arms length. He enters in.

The other analogy is from the Phantom of the Opera. In the end, Christine is given a choice. If she chooses to stay with the Phantom (and ultimately lose herself to him - ultimately this is death) her true love may go free and live. If she refuses, they both will die. Christine chooses to kiss death so that the one she loves may have life. Don't we all long for that kind of love? The kind that's unbreakable? The kind we can trust? This love is Christ. This love is self-sacrifice. This may be an inadequate analogy, but helps me to get my mind around it.

So how does this apply to me? I confess that for the past few months I have been struggling to love certain people in my life. I fail to love them because I fail to enter into their lives. I focus too much on my dislike of them, or the ways that they have hurt me, or my own need for their approval. So I keep them at arms length. I put up a wall. But this is not the way it was meant to be. It's not the way I want it to be. My inner battle has shed some light on my love for God as well. I am finding it difficult to love God when I am struggling to love other people. So I've been asking the question that I posed in my last post, "What does it mean to love completely?" I haven't come up with a finite answer. But I have realized that I cannot love completely on my own. Like most things, this too requires grace from the Father. Knowing this, the question I must ask myself now becomes "Do I dare?"

John makes me hopeful when he exclaims, "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! And we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him s he is." (1 John 3:1a, 2b)

I dare.

(Channel surfing photo by Jeroen020)

the psalms: a corporate poetry reading

I have been on a bit of a poetry kick lately. I've been reading more poetry, writing more poetry, and mulling over those poems more than usual. Poems help me to think about things with a different set of eyes. They force me to internalize and unpack the ideas on the paper. I like that.

Tonight at Paidea (our church bible study) we looked at the Psalms. I have read the Psalms many times, and have often camped there for extended periods of time. But it was different to look at the book in a different context; the context of genre, setting, and purpose. Toby made a great point about the poetry of the Psalms. You can't read poetry the same way you read your history book so you can't read Psalms the same way you read Exodus. It makes a difference to recognize the genre of the writing. Poetry almost invites the reader to read between the lines. It is intimate. It is compact. It has rhythm and theme. Poetry taps into emotion differently than prose. So it is with the Psalms.

I also found it interesting to consider that the Psalm-poems were (and still are) used as a tool for corporate worship. It wasn't as if the Hebrews sat quietly in a corner of Starbucks with their espresso and their poetry scrolls and pondered the sentiment behind David's laments. No! The Psalms were sung publicly and corporately. Can you imagine the whole assembly singing together the words of the psalmist, "How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?" And in the next breath saying together, "But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me." (Psalm 13:2,5-6)

It gives me chill bumps to think about it. I love poetry, and I'm coming to love God's poems more as I read them again with new eyes.

The Psalms are all about God and bringing our "stuff" to Him. He is the theme and motif. Toby said tonight, "If you finish reading a Psalm and you didn't encounter God in it, you need to read it again."

I think the church could use a few more corporate poetry readings. This is God's poetic Word. Lets read it together. Pass the mic.

(Photo by greentheory)

its time for milk and cookies

Today is Friday Eve. It was the first sunny day after a week of desperately needed rain. When I walked outside this morning the rays of sunlight streamed through the trees and warmed the wet ground, singing the prelude to Friday in loud voices. This whole day has been straining to reach its true purpose: ushering in the weekend. I like Friday Eves because I get that itch of anticipation for something good that is coming. Its the feeling you get as a kid on Christmas Eve. The tree is packed with presents just waiting to be opened. The kitchen smells like cinnamon buns, homemade cookies, and coffee. Listening to Daddy read Luke 2 fills you up with joy - a Savior is coming!! Christmas Eve was almost better as a kid than Christmas Day because of the deep joy that comes from waiting expectantly for something good; waiting for something very good.

That's how I feel sometimes on Friday Eves. Tomorrow brings the introduction to evening fellowship, the possibility of new beers on tap at Barley's, good homegrown music, new friends, sleeping in on Saturday, enjoying a day at home, time to read good books, walks in the park, time with the family of God, and ahhhhhh REST. I can't wait for Friday. I love Friday Eve because it says, "Get ready! The weekend is almost here!"

I've been reading Isaiah this month, and it strikes me as a book full of expectancy. Isaiah is always saying in effect, "The Lord is doing something. Look for it!" Sometimes, he speaks of exile and judgement, other times of restoration and redemption. But the voice of Isaiah never fails to call the reader to expect God to move. I want to live with a sense of expectancy on more days than just Friday Eves and Christmas Eve. I want to live each day full of hope, knowing and even expecting God to show up and do something good. He is so full of goodness.

God says in Isaiah, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." (Isaiah 43:18-19)

I feel like eating milk and cookies before I go to bed, just like on Christmas Eve. (It helps that I'm listening to Over the Rhine's Christmas Album, "Snow Angel.") I can't wait to wake up on Friday morning. The Lord will do good things tomorrow!!

"And I - in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness." Psalm 17:15

(photo by Zesmerelda)

a bottomless well

"Fear of man will prove to be a snare but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe."
Proverbs 29:25

I sometimes wish this were an easier truth to swallow. I wonder why its so hard for us to believe it. Why do we care so much what other people think? Why do we constantly try to draw our worth from empty wells? I've had conversations about this with several people in the past couple of weeks and it has got me to thinking on it. The fear of man certainly is a snare. It makes us do things we don't want to do. It makes us believe lies about ourselves - about our identity. Worst of all, I think, it feeds self-absorption. Sometimes I will avoid people because I don't want to have to think about what I think they think about me. This is such a hard thing.

I had a long conversation tonight with my roommate about what it means to really let our identity rest in Christ. We went round and round in this conversation until finally she said, "I know I need to fall more in love with Jesus, and I want to but I just keep messing it up. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough." This strategy always goes horribly wrong because every phrase begins with "I."

The reality is that our relationship with Jesus begins and ends with Him. He loves us first. We mess up again and again, but he still loves us. He is unmovable; unchangeable. When we do love Him, it is because He first loved us. We are changed because He transforms us. We are saved by grace through faith and that is not of ourselves - it comes from Him. He is the beginning and the end of all things, even our relationship with Him, even our loving Him. This is why Proverbs says "whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe." He's not going anywhere.

Recognizing this great truth again tonight is water to the dry places. Perhaps this has been a bit of a ramble, and perhaps it hasn't made much sense to anyone who's reading this. But it has helped to point me to the bottomless well of living water that is opened up right in front of me and right inside of me.

We can't live in the past. We can't live in perpetual "regret." But we can look to Christ. If we didn't love Him yesterday, we can look to Him today. We can let Him use the past to change us in the present and hold our hand as we walk into the days to come. Our God is so full of unfathomable goodness. I need to remember that more often.

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. "

"Sir," the woman said, '"you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?"

Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life."

John 4:10, 11, 13-14