loss and gain

With jet-engine propulsion
You send me down the runway
Of your path for me.
With the loss of my own will
And the surrender to your plan
I can say that I now understand.

I understand the sweetness of
Surrender. The breaking of my own will
and the acceptance of your own
ushers in peace, deep peace, and your grace.
Why did I wait this long?

For too long I sought my own path.
I look back and see the carnage
Of my own will worked out:
The skeletons of broken (but forgiven)
Friendships and relationships.
The fist-shaking-three-year-old I’ve been the last couple of years.
The walls I’ve thrown up at people I didn’t want to work things out with.
The fear I was unwilling to let you work through.
The ugly words, the unspoken words.
The years of wishing my life looked differently than it does.

Oh, that you would redeem the time
And I have faith you will.
You will right all wrongs in the end, even,
especially, those I’ve birthed.
You will give words where needed,
you will give courage for the path,
you will heal the wounds and the broken bones I have no ability to heal.
You will give continued grace to accept and submit to this strange path.
And best of all, you take this three year old into your arms,
quieting me with your love and send me forth.

You send me forth on a mission of your choosing
and I accept. I accept at the loss of my own will.
And I gain. As I look back on the miles and years
of lost dreams and hopes and demands and rights
and friends, in surrender to you, I gain.
I gain your peace, your provision and your guiding hand.

Oh Lord, from this middle seat somewhere above mid-America,
take this broken will and do with it what you will.
Make right my wrongs.
As I let go, I gain everything.
For Lord, where else would I go where I would find anything sweeter?

sometimes hope

sometimes hope
strings me along
asks for audacious trust

i find myself
reluctant to hope
a wispy cloud on the horizon

we’re told to hope
for things unseen
in the heavenlies and here on earth

i want to hope
but i don’t
i don’t want to put my heart on the line

sometimes hope
seems a mocking
cruel, disappointing, shallow friend

sometimes hope
calls us into a
vast wilderness of trust and faith

sometimes hope
burns brightly
sometimes barely flickers like a small flame on an old fire.

written for a friend, with echoes from my own heart.

Unseen to seen

a burning gold strand
cuts across the dark scape
a glimmer in a sea of unseen

a glimmer of what could be
but is not
not yet

the dying yellow
fades into Winter’s grasp
but rises again

rises again in Spring’s
new birth
over and over

this green to gold
and gold to Winter’s
unseen but crushing cold

one day this green will
never again fade
but will rise

a burning gold strand
to a gold crown
set on a Head worthy

a Hope that will turn
the dark to light
the unseen to seen

Stepping out

Stepping out into the pink-grey dawn
A new morning and a new day
Young and fragile as a newborn
But built for potential and strength

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Aspen trees swaying gently in the early breeze
Their leaves tinkering out a heavenward song
They greet me in the young light
And call forth my potential

Potential – what a strange word
A presence not yet present
A being not yet built
But all the plans and hopes and dreams
Fully there and ready to spring

Spring into life
Like this brand new day
Created to embrace the Sun in its rising
Beckoned to put sinews and ligaments to work

To work – to bring to life potential
To bring to life grace given in a needed moment
To give strength at a moment of weakness
Hope where a dark thought would reign

As the grey, fragile morning dawns
My own fragility comes to life
For one more day
Of potential, grace, strength, hope
And an embrace of the Son. 

Never Once.

Standing on this mountaintop
Looking just how far we’ve come
Knowing that for every step
You were with us

Kneeling on this battle ground
Seeing just how much You’ve done
Knowing every victory
Was Your power in us

Scars and struggles on the way
But with joy our hearts can say
Yes, our hearts can say

Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did You leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

Kneeling on this battle ground
Seeing just how much You’ve done
Knowing every victory
Was Your power in us

Scars and struggles on the way
But with joy our hearts can say
Yes, our hearts can say

Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did You leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

Scars and struggles on the way
But with joy our hearts can say
Never once did we ever walk alone
Carried by Your constant grace
Held within Your perfect peace
Never once, no, we never walk alone

Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did You leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

Every step we are breathing in Your grace
Evermore we’ll be breathing out Your praise
You are faithful, God, You are faithful
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

You are faithful, God, You are faithful
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

Matt Redman

Again, Wow.

My personal life may be crowded with small, petty happenings, altogether insignificant. But if I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God. Then, when I stand face to face with God, I will discover that through my obedience thousands were blessed. When God’s redemption brings a human soul to the point of obedience, it always produces. If I obey Jesus Christ, the redemption of God will flow through me to the lives of others, because behind the deed of obedience is the reality of Almighty God.

~ Oswald Chambers 

Wow

The first thing God does with us is to get us based on rugged Reality until we do not care what becomes of us individually as long as He gets His way for the purpose of His Redemption. Why shouldn’t we go though heartbreaks? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us fall and collapse at the first grip of pain; we sit down on the threshold of God’s purpose and die away of self-pity, and all so-called Christian sympathy will aid us to our death bed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, and says – “Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine.” If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.

~ Oswald Chamber, November 1

Today

We do not need the grace of God to stand crises, human nature and pride are sufficient, we can face the strain magnificently; but it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours in every day as a saint, to go through drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.

~ Oswald Chambers

He is not ours; we are His

When you meet God, you cannot put the meeting into words, much less the God you meet. God cannot be an object of our concepts. Concepts shatter like broken eyeglasses, like broken eyes — in fact, like broken I’s. No longer am I I and God my Thou, my object; now God is I, and I am his thou, his object. The illusion that is destroyed is not the self itself but its usual standpoint in which I am I, the center, and God appears on my screen somewhere. This self is illusion, and God shatters it by reversing the standpoint: we appear on his screen. We are his object, not he ours.

~ Peter Kreeft from his book Three Philosophies of Life

This morning

If a man or woman is called of God, it does not matter how untoward circumstances are, every force that has been at work will tell for God’s purpose in the end. If you agree with God’s purpose He will bring not only your conscious life, but all the deeper regions of your life which you cannot get at, into harmony.

~ Oswald Chambers, September 29