Unsatisfied By Average

The Musings of a Stubborn Believer

Category: photos (page 4 of 11)

Love Gives

Ten days out. Long days of school, a trip to the east coast for a funeral, late nights, early mornings, (over and over again) and emails and work and volunteering piling up unmercifully–

Joy is still on the throne.

I can’t explain it. Why we trip down the road at twilight the five of us that remain, and laugh instead of cry.

I can’t explain it except to say that our joy is unutterably full.
And it doesn’t even seem like they’re gone.
They aren’t really… They’re closer than they were when she slept upstairs.
Even if we only exchange maybe one email a week.

The joy of giving far outshines the joy of having.

I can’t explain it.
I feel no need to try.

Almost every table and windowsill in the house boasts their faces in some form.
And almost every conversation includes references to “Lukey and Chantée.”

Something tells me that for some time, that’s how it’ll stay.

If You Have a Crumb [Glorious Fast – Part VI]

“…Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry…”

– – – –


Arms open wide, I try to embrace them all.
Canis Major, Aries, Lepus, Orion, Columba…
All in their undimmed glory against the blackness.
And Venus and Jupiter, brightest of all.

Head tipped back, I spin; take it in.
Try to grip infinity while the earth grips me, twirls me through the universe like a daddy does his child.

And it’s just me. Me and my dog.
On a 36 degree morning. At 8,000 feet.

I break into a smile.

And I whisper to myself; to Him–

No sooner has a child of the Highest yielded to transforming grace, than he is made an ambassador among men.*

No sooner!

– – – –


“But I have nothing.”

If you have a crumb of bread, you have enough.

It doesn’t say you must be a wholesale broker of baked goods.
Nor does it say that those goods must be the finest pastries.
Nor does it say that you’ll need a flawless record of lifelong fidelity to be trusted with the job…

Because no sooner has a child of the Highest yielded to transforming grace, than he is made an ambassador among men.

What it does say, is that this bread, this simple fare passed down to sustain life–

It’s not just bread you picked up somewhere for general distribution.
This was yours.
Your next meal.

“…Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry…”

Beautiful is this truth. A terrible beautiful.

If you have a crumb of bread to eat, (and most people do) you have enough to give away.
And if you would see men free, and full, and overflowing,
you must.

– – – –

At hill’s top I turn, greet the dawn.
Embrace the empty expanse with my whole heart.
This is fullness.


*See page 2.1 of Mount of Blessings…

To Finish the Job [Glorious Fast – Part V]

“… and that ye break every yoke?…”

This is no halfway freedom we’re talking about.

This is undeniably the most audacious face of the conflict–
It’s grace, returning to finish the job.

Because “if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

So it is that the trembling (but oh, so happy) child of God (only recently in chains) awakens one morning to a flurry of activity, and while yet rubbing sleep from the eyes an angel brushes by and says the Commander is waiting…

“For what– 
        For me??”

Yes. Because just getting clear of the door of that prison is’t enough for this General.
Today they’re going back to crush the fortress to a thousand pieces.

And He wants to take me with Him.

So we set out. Me with my little coil of rope, and Him, strong as ten thousand times ten thousand bulldozers. And I look up in awe while we trek– still thinking this is a dream. The One, the Invincible Soldier. The other, the admiring little boy, still in his pajamas…
And He looks down and smiles.

He doesn’t need me.

But He glories in making the weak, strong.
            –in setting them over their enemies.

And after all, don’t I know where the pillars in that place rest, better than most?


Is This Not the Life I Have Chosen?

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]

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

“…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


GYC Europe (From the i of my Phone)

Can’t be weary in this place. Nope.
Even when I am tired. 🙂

I pinch myself over and over. Is this Europe? Is that our logo?
And am I really here?

I am. And it is.

I tingle. We all do. I have seen —I am seeing something great.
Something history will remember always.

It’s a blur. But I’m doing my best to remember every waking detail.

coming home from outreach
friends from home 🙂

Sign Here Please

“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.

Until Next Time…

Mics and pop filters, and preamps slide back into their boxes,
until next time.

They’ve been out, waiting for the “All Clear” from Mastering… just in case.

And now with the Master and the artwork set to meet at the replicators early next week, their job is finished for a time.

Once again our hearts overflow with gratitude…
Once again this project has taken on the pathos of the season slipping away, and the joyful anticipation of another on the horizon.
Once again God has proven Himself faithful through the hands and feet and prayers of people like you.

But this one’s a little bit different.
It’s a plea.

A dollar from every disc goes to a cause we love.
Just which, you’ll have to wait a wee tad longer to find out. 🙂

Pre-orders opening soon…

Neighbors

There are the schedules, the checklists, the trips, the itineraries, the suitcases, the sermons, the songs, and the symphonies of Heaven heard by exhausted servants…

And then there are the rest of the moments that make up life. 
Moments that are often skipped when cataloging mileposts…
The colloquial, the common. The spontaneous… 
The blink-twice-and-they’ll-be-gone opportunities. 
…to love people.
Here’s to those. 
Sabbath night with the neighbors. 
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