Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound...

As written by Donald Miller in his book Blue Like Jazz

What great gravity is this that drew my soul towards yours? What great force, that though I went falsely, went kicking, went disguising myself to earn your love, also disguised to earn your keeping, your resting, your will fleshed into mine, rasped by a slowly revealed truth, the barter of my soul, the soul that I fear, the soul that I loathe, the soul that: if you will love, I will love. I will redeem you, if you will redeem me? Is this our purpose, you and I together to pacify each other, to lead each other toward the lie that we are good, that we are noble, that we need not redemption, save the one that you and I invented of our own clay?
I am not scared of you my love, I am scared of me.
I went looking, I wrote out a list, I drew and image, I bled a poem of you. You were pretty and my friends believed I was worthy of you. You were clever, but I was smarter, perhaps the only one smarter, the only one able to lead you. You see, love, I did not love you, I loved me. And you were only a tool that I used to fix myself, to fool myself, to redeem myself. And though I have taught to lay your lily hand in mine, I walk alone, for I cannot talk to you, lest you talk it back to me, lest I believe I am not worthy, not deserving, not redeemed.
I want desperately for you to be my friend. But you are not my friend; you have slid up warmly to the man I wanted to be, the man I pretended to be, and I was your Jesus and you were mine. Should I show you who I am, we may crumble. I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.
I want to be know and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me. My love, do I know you? What is this great gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? Why do we not connect? Will we be forever in fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow words, come into the knowing of each other? In this God's what of meriting grace, of teaching us of the labyrinth of His love for us, teaching us, in degrees, that which He is sacrificing to join ourselves to Him? Or better yet, has He formed our being fractional so that so that we might conclude one great hope, plodding and sighing and breathing into one another in such a great push that we might break through into the known and being loved, only to cave into a greater perdition and fall down at His throne begging for our acceptance. Begging for our completion!
We were fools to believe that we would redeem each other. Were I some sleeping Adam, to wake and find you resting at my rib, to share these things that God has done, to walk you through the garden, co counsel your timid steps, your bewildered eye, your heart so slow to love, so careful to love, so sheepish that I stepped up my aim and became a man. Is this what God intended? That though He made you from my rib, it is you who is making me, humbling me, destroying me, and in so doing revealing Him.
Will we be in ashes before we are one?
What great gravity is this that drew my heart towards yours? What great force collapsed my orbit, my lonesome state? What is this that wants in me the want in you? Don't we go at each other with yielded eyes, with cumbered hands and feet, with clunky tongues> This deed is unattainable! We cannot know each other.
I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away.
I will give you this my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God's own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my hear, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me, And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.
I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again.
God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand the gravity that drew Him, unto us...

That was long. But its what has been on my mind.

I am washed by the water...

WELL. I'm kinda disturbed by what my heart does to me. It's nothing bad but while my physical and mental being is standing still my heart does donuts around it.

I was at CIY again this past week. It moved me. A lot. I don't understand how. I don't understand why. I don't even know why I went this year. I really don't. Yes I wanted to get closer to God and CIY is a great way to learn how to do that. But my intentions were to really just hang out with friends and get out of the house. Honest. I feel terrible for saying that. But it was true. I knew the first night though, as we were seating ourselves in the auditorium, that something was going to be different.

The first year I went it was extremely weird, because it was the first time I spent a week away from home with people I didn't know. I was kinda an outcast and a kid made me cry because he was tougher then me and he proved it when I was being a freak. Hahaha (it's okay to laugh! Go for it! I just did!) Last year was different in the fact that I was learning to sing some sappy songs, I was single, and there were going to be a lot of girls. And I had a cool looking haircut. Don't get me wrong. Both years were ridiculous and definitely helped me with my walk with God. So that's good.
But my intentions weren't the same this year.
We watched a movie called Love Costs Everything about the persecuted Christian church. It was devastating and beautiful all in the same bundle. It was heart wrenching and amazing. I had to do something after watching it. But every time I say that I feel like I'm putting them up as candidates for charity. "we have to pray for them! We have to donate! We have to help them!" don't get me wrong. I'm not saying those are bad things. They aren't. By all means we should donate prayers, money, supplies, and effort to make they're lives easier. However... They don't need our help...
We need theirs...
They have everything they want and need.
God.
That's all that sustains them through back breaking work and constant threats. Yet us dumb American's need the new Ipad 4. Or 5. Or 6. Or which ever one they just made. AGAIN.
They're happy.
We're not.
Something is seriously screwed up here.
I pray that God makes us American's content with everything we have. I pray that He makes us not want anything but Him. We're spoiled rotten brats. And we think we don't need any help. When in reality we need as much help as possible...
Amen..

If Jesus could only wash my feet...

I almost cried more then five times watching a movie the other day. AND. We are out of celery... Again.

Hot tea is wonderful because it's wonderful.

I've been thinking about stuff lately... Some of it completely irrelevant to anything going on in my life, or your life, or anyone else's life for that matter. Isn't that just wonderful? I've been thinking... The same thing that possessed those guys in the Bible to start loving and taking people into the body of Christ is in each one of us. I think it's the Holy Spirit... but no one knows.

I've been listening to weird music, for example I just listened to the entire four and a half minutes of Love The Way You Lie by Eminem and Beyonce. And if you know me then you know that I rarely listen to music like that. I listen to Cady Groves when I'm working and Romance On A Rocketship before I go to bed. ANYWAYS. I'm kinda torn because I see all these musicians and singers wasting their lives away on nothing. The one thing I want is to be standing with all my brothers and sisters lifting our weary gaze to heaven and screaming out our empty songs to the beautiful God who created our hearts.

I don't know what I'm getting at. But it feels deep at the moment. Kinda like that moment when you're a little kid in a big kid pool. And you know if you keep walking out the water isn't going to get anymore shallow then it already is... If that makes sense.

I was at a concert in a bar. John Mark McMillan to be exact. It was a while ago and I have no idea why I'm bringing it up now. ANYWAYS. I was standing there with a bunch of strangers who were drinking beer listening to them and the entire audience singing "World, I've overcome you world!" Over and over again even after John stopped playing and everyone was off stage. It was heart-wrenching. Literally.

Everytime I hear Eminem's songs I pray that one day a man of his influential status would learn of Jesus' beauty and love and come to know Him and sing songs in His home for forever.

It kills my inside feely thingys when I think about the fact that no matter what there will be people left here on earth when Jesus brings me home, and the fact that I can't sing with them for eternity is even more sad. But I want to sing a song with Eminem in heaven. And Beyonce.... And Cady Groves...

This was completely random and somewhat pointless.
Enjoy!