Friday, April 30, 2010


Watched "Joe Vs. the Volcano" for the first time last night. It's the first film I've really liked Meg Ryan in, and I was struck by a lot of the lines in it.

"I start thinking about myself, and I get bored out of my mind."

"Only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement."

"Dear God, whose name I do not know, thank you for my life - I forgot how BIG...thank you, thank you for my life."


The whole movie made me think of the times I've thought I might die, and how at those times I realized how silly most of my hopes/fears/concerns really are and how little really important things I do, mostly because like Joe in the movie, because I'm afraid of what the world might do to me, afraid, in part, of death and the suffering that leads up to it. Why is it that it seems to take actual dying to wake people up to how much they've been ruled by the fear of death, and how most of their lives they've done neither what they should have or what they wanted to because of that fear? I don't want to live like that!

It all brings to mind the verse in Hebrews that says that Jesus shared in our humanity and in his flesh by his death destroyed the one who had power over death (the devil) so that free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

My Lord Jesus, you've bought us a free pass out of fear, but I don't always feel it. Please put it in me as a conscious thing, and let your Spirit within me burn away all my fear.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Read through Ephesians this morning and it was the first time in a long time I really "got" it. You know when your reading is illumined by the Holy Spirit, it's totally different than all those times when you're just slogging through it like a textbook.

Friday, April 16, 2010

We knew more than what we could tell
the lips had faltered, the voices fell
and under disapproving eyes
surrendered what made us alive
below the waters we felt the voice
in tension made the tacit choice
ignoring sores ate from below
the Spirit spoke, we would not show
the chatter raged, the noises grew
bereft of what makes good things true
until the Son came with His blood
touched lips, and loosed a telling flood.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Now's the time to make an enemy
to hell with infidelity
lay rough hand on politeness when
he edges through the door
There are no obligations due
seducers making whores
Some smiles are meant to meet with hate
some enemies are made too late
some things can't be let through
Let your spirit be my wedding vow
and your love my golden ring
be my jealous one and I
will fight to be for You.



I just finished "The Etruscan" by Mike Waltari. It's something of a Hosea story set in pre-classical times (without the repentence). The main character's wife from the beginning sleeps with his friends and has children by them, and ends up sleeping with different people pretty much any time he's not around. It got me thinking about how horrible, how world-destroying infidelity is. My worst nightmares are of infidelity, my own and others - and dealing with those fears I am more and more convinced of the proverb "Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fading, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." I am jealous and suspicious, but I am so glad that I have a wife who fears the Lord and who I trust. And I began thinking of my double standards, how I in a wife's position to my own Lord, with the Love of God towards me, am not as virtuous as my own wife, and how horrible that must be for my Lord. The adulteress eats and wipes her lips and says "I have done nothing wrong". How many times have I smiled back at the world? How many times have I let it kiss and compliment me and returned those compliments, done things to earn its approval, and been alone with it when I shouldn't have been? You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Oh God, you are our only husband. Forgive me and make me what I'm not. You've got a pure love, feed it to me until it's what I'm made of.
To be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God.