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The Musings of a Stubborn Believer

Category: lessons (page 5 of 12)

The Blind Cannot Lead The Blind [Glorious Fast – Part II]

September 4, 2012 / / 6 Comments

“…to loose the bands of wickedness…”

If hacking chains is exhilarating work, it is also gut-wrenching. Tear jerking.
Soul taxing–

And full-filling.

It is neither for the faint-hearted, nor for the half-committed…

But it is brilliantly, brilliantly rewarding.

Little wonder then that many an eager recruit has taken to the field with clumsy grip and misfit armor to seek fame in such brave exploits. Only, without first counting (or even knowing) the cost.

These first six words betray one of the best-kept secrets of the dark side.

As regards [im]morality*:

License is bondage.

Lust is an iron chain.
And many, many beautiful people are wearing such fetters.

But these, my friends,
These are the first chains to go.

Only, they will never fall helpless before the faith (or the fervent fuming) of the faint-hearted,
or the half-committed.

From these same six words rings out to every soldier sharpening his sword for such a battle, this thundered imperative- a charge commanding every anguished drop of a soldier’s undying commitment:

Be. thou. pure.

Be thou pure.

Because only purity is stronger than vice.


*Strongs: [“wickedness” from 7561; a wrong (especially moral)…]

Chosen Hunger [Glorious Fast – Part I]

August 31, 2012 / / 6 Comments
“Is not this the fast that I have chosen?”

I know what it is to be hungry.

A little bit.

You know, where every sensation is heightened, (stub your toe and see.) and you carry with you an ache that won’t. go. away…
Hunger is both a gift, and a tragedy.
And normally, we go to great lengths to avoid it…
But to choose to be hungry… 
We call that fasting. 
To choose to carry the ache everywhere—
To embrace the heightened sensitivity to seemingly unrelated woe,
Could this be what it means to have fellowship with Christ in His sufferings?
And could it be that personal vulnerability, and brokenness, and weakness born of raw hunger are prerequisite to being a channel for life and liberty?
Could it be?

Is This Not the Life I Have Chosen?

August 30, 2012 / / 6 Comments

I watch the scurry from my seat behind the wheel, past noses of three cars poised to launch. 

We’ve gotten pretty good at our “preflight.”
These engines idle; these craft of steel and fiberglass wait in precise formation, just barely holding short of the drive. We’ll leave almost simultaneously. Five of us. Still pre-dawn. To three destinations 100, 200 miles apart. But we’ll be back in a few hours.
I sigh, close my eyes. Rest head to head rest.
Then I look again.
Looks like a carrier deck.
How fitting…

–  –  –  –  –  –  –
This is war. 
I’m most cognizant of it when the sun sets and the moon rises. But sleep won’t come. 
By day, we work. 
-changing carpets in our rental, working the relentless wedding list, building, cleaning, weeding, planting, designing, then dropping everything to operate an ambulance… (and did I mention my laundry?)
By night, we watch, we war…
-pacing, pleading, juggling strategies. praying. reading. writing. leading… hand holding.
And then we repeat the oft-quoted words of a valiant friend: “I can rest in Heaven”
 
Is this not the life I have chosen?

I’m going back to Isaiah 58. 
verse 6, verse 7, verses 8 and 9…
Because this is the life I’ve chosen.
And I’m going to pull it apart piece by piece… Every agonizing, thrilling little detail. 
Because I can’t be satisfied until I watch “light break forth as morning”
in the darkest soul I know.

You can come with, if you’d like…
starting tomorrow.

Almost Obedience [of lights, lanes, and a lecture]

August 3, 2012 / / 3 Comments

It’s pouring rain. 
I’m half in your lane because the only way I can keep out of the standing water is by straddling the yellow line. 
I’m all lit up, and have been watching your headlights oncoming for the last three miles– 

and you’re going to play chicken. with. an. Ambulance.


?!!


–As my dad would say:

“Work with me.”

I have to laugh.
We rumble along. I just raise my eyebrows as they go by, me fully in my lane, driving in deep water.
(because we prefer smart driving to brave.)

The rain slows and we pick up pace again. And three drivers in a row have their cars in park a half mile before I get there, and the next driver just crosses the white line enough to spit gravel everywhere and endanger my windscreen.

I can’t resist a little lecture in the moments before we meet and part.

Eh hem…, driving with one wheel barely over the white line still verily qualifies as being on the road. Especially at that speed, bro. And driving with all but one wheel on the other side would too. Know what I’m saying?


[car streaks by]


This ‘almost off the road’ thing is really a misnomer. 
You’re either on the road,

or you’re… off. the…

Hey…

And suddenly, it is as if He is sitting in the passenger seat, pointing towards the next car– the one that is almost stopped, and almost all the way off…
It is as if He turns a kind face from it to me, locks with my eyes and just raises His eyebrows a bit and smiles a little, that smile that betrays a bit of something like sadness and a whole lot of Love– That smile I’ve seen too many times to count…
right. 
So… whose idea was the lecture. mine, or Yours?

–  –  –  –  –

His, I think.
I suddenly see how they are one and the same. The guy who blazes past, and the guy who almost stops. Both still on the road.

And I think of the times I mostly obey…

God’s Fortress

August 1, 2012 / / 4 Comments

“…It’s not even American young people and European young people working together–“

“We’re Adventist young people.”
I sit and listen, fidget while tingles play tag up and down my spine. I brush tears away; squeeze fists together tight till my forearms bulge. 
I’m watching stone walls generations old crack before my eyes.
I’m watching the sun dip low on the heyday of materialism, secularism, postmodernism. 
Yes, even on the continent.
I’m watching a generation wake up and decide all those things are empty and they’ve had enough.
I am one of them.
Oh, and I don’t mean to say we’ll win without paying the ultimate price.
But I am saying, it’s as good as over. 
We can’t lose.
. . . .
I recline early, book in hand under soft glow of christmas lights that grace my office year-round. (Jet lag in my favor, I’m bright and eager at 0200)
My eyes hesitate at the end of this phrase, retrace and return. Revel:
“The church is God’s fortress”
 Acts of the Apostles p.11 | photo: JN


Sign Here Please

July 16, 2012 / / 6 Comments

“By signing, I would have been giving away comprehensive and exclusive rights to all of my music, everywhere in the universe, for perpetuity! No!”

We still laugh every time we remember it.
Our incredulous friend-since-childhood, turned celebrity and world traveler. And us.

We’d just finished sharing a stage. And now under discussion was the paperwork so often required for such appearances…

– – –

Comprehensive, exclusive, universal… For perpetuity.
My rights.
Sign here please.

I bristle. Don’t you?
The last thing I want to do is give up my rights.

But do I really have any?
Oh yes, “We hold these truths to be self evident…”

But on the cosmic stage…

On the cosmic stage, I’m a criminal. And I already gave my rights away.
But I still claim them. My right to myself. My right to my powers. My right to pleasures…
It’s all death. And they’re not even really mine…
I don’t even have the right to life.

Unless Jesus Himself gives me His.
The right to His power, His pleasures, His life… Himself.

It’s crazy. But He offers it anyway.
And so we trade.

That’s when I sign away my claims to myself.

Sign here please.

You bet.
My rights, comprehensive, exclusive, universal, for perpetuity.
I release my claims to myself.

Christ claims my powers, my gifts, my breath,

I claim Christ.

Only One

July 8, 2012 / / 8 Comments

I’ve learned something about love.

It feels the pain of strangers.

Somewhat overwhelmingly so, at times.
Or maybe it is that it knows no strangers.

Under a tiny sliver of moon in the sultry south I sit on a red-brick retaining wall, and ponder:
This joy that’s mine, this peace, this hope—

These become torture, when I recognize in the eyes of a stranger the fingerprints of pain, and I can’t do anything about it. Because as quickly as they come, they go…
And there are hundreds of them, and there’s one of me.

Only one.

And I can only be in one place at one time.
(ruthless limitation.)

But then I remember:
There’s just one of me, but then, there are the footprints.


They can’t go where I’ve not gone,
but they can stay after I leave.

Jesus, let me leave only prints You could claim as Your own…

– – –

I have only one life to live.

And that one, I intend to give away.

There is a Sanctuary

July 4, 2012 / / 7 Comments

These days begin early, pass quickly, end when the sun is gone.
We move from strategy session to our intersecting orbits around home base, and mulch gets spread, and ditches get dug, and flowers get planted, and tasks disappear from our corporate checklist in the cloud.

Sunrise (literally) finds me on my knees in the cactus garden burying drip irritation for the moss roses.
By 10:00 I’ve moved on to a sunny spot in the lawn, me surrounded by bags of irrigation parts for the Anniversary Garden
At noon, it’s in the office with me. Answering the emails from early risers in Europe. By 2:00 I’m in full swing with the laundry room all torn apart, sanding and finishing cabinets. By 5:00 I’m back in the office, for more emails, more ProTools, more design concepts for the next album cover…

By 9:00 I’m exhausted.

But I’m learning something…
I’ve been learning slowly over days blurring together. Over knees in gravel, knees in mulch, knees in grass wet from the morning’s artificial dew…

Days ago, I grunted out animated passion with every striking of the pick to gravel.
“I. Don’t. Just. Fight. For. Myself…“

Moments later, huge raindrops from a benign looking cloud drove me temporarily into the shed doorway, and I stood, arms folded, watching rain stream down.

And I realized:
Full days notwithstanding;
Long lists notwithstanding… Speaking engagements coming up, Europe travel coming up, design and replication deadlines coming up, the wedding coming up–

Whenever I pause, wherever I pause…
Wherever my knees touch the ground,
there is a sanctuary.

Twice a Crime

June 7, 2012 / / 14 Comments

To deprive Christ of His bride by flirting with His enemy–

This is high treason. 
But to shrink into a corner when the morning illuminates the sin, 
And to refuse the open arms of the God Who is Love because
I’m filthy dirty. And guilty.
And I’m not good enough, 
And He deserves something better; someone better.
And that someone else could make Him so much happier…

This is twice a crime. 
Let Him be the judge of all that.
Just let Him love you.
“I have loved thee with an everlasting love…”

Light Up Your World

June 6, 2012 / / 2 Comments

My phone rings and it’s my friend with the ever-cheerful chuckle.
(Even at 11:00 pm.)

The onions are all out drying on the lawn up at Grandma’s house… And the thunderstorm is at the county line.

The thousands of onions.

Might I lend a hand?

But of course. I peep through the blinds. The clouds west blink like they’re being hotly pursued by an army of strobes.

I jump in the waiting truck. And we race. Pallets, and crates, and two hay wagons full of onions. And just as we run the last of them into the shed, the wind slams into us in all its Oklahoman glory. And the showers of blessings begin to fall. And we jump into cars to keep our pajamas dry…

I’m suddenly seized by the urge to watch the light show.
So I duck into the house just long enough to grab 5D and tripod, and return to the hilltop alone…

It doesn’t take long. I’ve sat for 10 minute waiting to get the shot before. I only dare stay for 10 minutes this time.

But the light is so captivating…


I suddenly understand why Jesus said “Let your light so shine… that they may see… and glorify your Father.”


Because light in the darkness rarely goes unnoticed.

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