Tissue

I know you don’t know me

But I sit behind you

Two desks back in History Three-ten

And I would not say something

But it has been hanging there

For three weeks straight

I am sorry

If I made your cheeks

Turn red

Memories

Rejected Hero

I wrote this three or four years ago. Now reading it again, I see how it could be improved, but I will humbly re-post it (for the moment!) in it's imperfect glory...


"Tomorrow, tomorrow," the young lively boy did cry. "Not now, not now---tomorrow you can save my life." He went about, laughing at the fire. Skipping and playing but would not stop to kneel and pray.

Then I spotted a young woman flirting with her wine.
"Tomorrow, tomorrow," the shallow girl did cry. "Not now, not now, tomorrow you can save my life."
She opened her mouth to give forth a smile but where lie the teeth lived black decay, for I saw lust had eaten life's happiness away.

A rejected hero, I walked past the naive youth and corrupted woman when I came across a feeble hunchback who sat gnarly like a wizened oak.

Surely he would listen.

Surely he would let me save his life.

His faded grey eyes lifted to meet mine
as I stood before him frozen in time.
In clenched fist he held his life
In the other he held eternal life

"Today, today," I mummered in the hush. "Right now, right now, only today can I save your life."


And nothing was said for quite some time but a battle was growing louder with strife.
And I felt the strain of one hundred years of pain.
Then I watched his fingers peel away
As I watched the weight drop of ten thousand days of struggle and rubble.


Then a light drop of the knees

A never ending kissing of my feet

A flood of waters flooding the ground.

The sound of life and freedom at last to be found.

The wandering victim has found life's end
The man has taken the time to take the Saviour's hand.

As Christ loved the Church

"It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love."--Dietrich Bonhoeffer



"[Marriage] is a parable of permanence written from eternity about the greatest story that ever was. The parable is about Christ and his church. It has been a great honor to take this stage with you. What exalted roles we have been given to play! Someday I will take your hand, and stand on this stage, and make one last bow. The parable will be over, and the everlasting Reality will begin."--John Piper to his wife

God blows my mind. It starts with such a small, shallow desire, and God takes it and causes it to bloom into a magnificent unfolding of His bigger, beautiful plan. He graciously takes my childlike prayers and shows me how His plans are all I've really wanted to begin with and more. Oh the beauty of the gospel--God revealed to us, God with us, God's love and grace and person expressed to us through the work of the cross! His gospel expands our vision and puts everything in perspective. As C.S. Lewis once said, we are far too easily satisfied. We desire bread and He gives us the bread of life--and that even of Himself.

God is Good

God is still good when what He does doesn't look like our definition of good. No really, He is GOOD. Not just good in the "well, the Bible says He's good" way, but in the really-truly-good-good way. Sometimes this is obvious, but sometimes I get the "vegetables are good for me" mentality, where God's will is going to be good FOR me, but not something I will really take joy in. Lord, give me eyes to see Your goodness!

You can never go wrong

With Andrew Bird. Oh boy.

Wisdom Needed

This is going to sound cyriptic, and to be honest, so stereotypically bloggish that it'll probably sound corny. But I need to vent in a visual way, so I'm sorry. Somehow making it public makes me feel better about it. You can skip over this if you want.

When is holding onto a dream an act of faith, and when is it just plain being foolish? How do you determine if something is from God, or if it is just you stamping God's name on it? Why is it so hard to know? Why is it so hard to maintain a kind of pious "numbness" to everything, standing on tiptoe and never falling too far to the left or the right? What do you do when after everything seemed to serve as a confirmation, then everything comes to a halt--as if God was dangling something in your face, and just as it drew close enough for you to touch it it was gone? I know God doesn't tease us. I know He isn't try to drive me insane. But His silence, this confusion, not knowing what is going on and not knowing how to react and what to hope for--it drives me insane sometimes. I want to love Jesus more, regardless of whether He calls me to lay Issac on the alter and drop the knife, or to ready myself knife in hand until He tells me "enough, this is for you to keep."