August 2011
5 posts
Poem #5: Cancer is a Bitch
This one is pretty old, but it’s a favorite.
CANCER IS A BITCH
When she was here the cancer was…well…cancer Like your car going underwater and knowing you will drown Like opening a bag of chips and realizing it’s half full of air LIke a mute quadriplegic playing bingo She was the ticking clock on the face of a microwave counting down and freaking you out with that...
Poem #4: Wisdom Discovered
WISDOM DISCOVERED
I remember the lake. The lake in my first neighborhood. It was a small lake, but at the age of nine a small lake appears to be a big lake. I would ride my bike to the lake like I was on an adventure, like I was out on my own, a quest for something greater than myself, like something from The Goonies.
I remember the autumn days of sitting on the wooden swing by the lake, looking...
Poem #3: Caught Up
CAUGHT UP
I’m caught up in the ocean these days Like the tide pulls the breakers away Returning them to where they ran from
Like a rebellion
I’m caught up in the ocean these days Like being in incomprehensible darkness With creatures lurking Like shadows
I’m caught up in the ocean these days Like a flashlight illuminating Only a few feet in front Leaving much
Undiscovered
...
Poem #2: This Town
THIS TOWN
This town knows nothing. Holes in floors of minds, dust on cerebral blinds Ready to give up because mommy and daddy did And nothing will change the product, the kid.
Especially if mommy or daddy is gone Or never was there at all, never able to call Just an accidental on-purpose mistake A result of a choice poorly made
Though never planned The kid’s not a waste, NEVER a blank...
Poem #1: On Purpose
I started writing some poems. Here is one called On Purpose.
When my eyes could barely see And my mouth could barely speak I would stand in the sand and watch my tiny toes sink Into that dark, gray, sinkhole, sometimes up to the ankle Knowing that the role I play at this very moment Is no blank in the universe, no missing plank in the bridge, But a role that takes stage after stage after stage...
June 2011
3 posts
“If the Holy Spirit is not only a preacher that convicts people of sin and grace (John 16:8–11; 1 Thess. 1:5) but also a gardener, an artist, and an investor in creation who renews the material world, it cannot be more spiritual and God-honoring to be a preacher than to be a farmer, artist, or banker. To give just one example, evangelism is temporary work, while musicianship is permanent...
The Hunger Games
So I’m reading The Hunger Games trilogy right now, and I can’t put it down. Now that the casting is out for the first movie, I’ve got some opinions. Ha ha. I have no idea how the actors of the tributes are going to do because I’ve never seen most of them before. Jennifer Lawrence is cast as Katniss, and after seeing her in X-Men: First Class as Mystique I think she’s...
May 2011
3 posts
The Inner Experience Part II
Here are some really good things to chew on that I’m finding in Thomas Merton’s The Inner Experience. These might take a little bit to sit in.
“The great practitioners of contemplation who were the Desert Fathers of Egypt and the Near East did their best to dispel the illusion. [Of contemplation being merely based in aesthetics and intellect and social trendiness] They went into...
The Inner Experience
So I’m reading The Inner Experience by Thomas Merton, and my brain is exploding. It’s the kind of book where I could spend a month digesting a single chapter. I thought I’d share some thought provoking quotations from the first couple of chapters. Feel free to post comments, thoughts, agreements, disagreements, and let’s have a healthy discussion about this stuff....
April 2011
3 posts
Let's Get Intentional
I’m in a theology class in seminary right now, and it’s an overview of all basic Christian doctrine. The textbook(s) for the class are Thomas Oden’s three volume set of systematic theology. I have a love/hate relationship with it. The books are amazing, and probably the one purchase in seminary so far that I will without a doubt use later in life, but I get virtually no time to...
Mission(s)
Gosh. Couldn’t fit this in my status update.
“If ‘mission’ is understood as the sum total of all actual missionary activities in the modern period or as everything undertaken under the banner of ‘missions,’ then an honest biblical scholar can only conclude that such a concept of mission does not occur in the Bible…It is therefore anachronistic and hence...
A Valuable Lesson in Worship
I learned a seriously valuable lesson this past week. I got the chance to be a part of a huge gathering of house churches in Atlanta, GA last Thursday night. The worship was off the chain, the teaching was super simple, but super important, and really the only thing preached was the Gospel and how much people need it.
After everything was over people were milling around and groups were praying...
March 2011
4 posts
Beautifully Frustrated
I feel extremely expectant today. It’s almost like a flood of a million different emotions. I’m excited, I’m anxious, I’m curious, I’m overwhelmed, and it’s almost like all of these emotions have converged on a center point and is causing a standstill in my head. But man…it’s exhilarating.
The things is….I have no idea what to do with it.
Do...
Scratch Off Prize
Hello friends,
God is working like crazy in my life right now, and I figure it’s a good time to share some of it. My heartstrings have been pulled for a long time to help plant a church somewhere. I haven’t had the slightest clue as to what that would look like until the past few months or so. Moving to Orlando has been like one of those scratch off games where you take a quarter and...
February 2011
10 posts
“They have invented a phrase… free-love, as if a lover ever had been or ever...”
– G.K. Chesterton (via pennypensees)
There's Always Tomorrow...Except Not Really
It’s amazing to me how much pressure we put on the idea of tomorrow. Things get pushed into the realm of tomorrow, we wait for tomorrow, we hope in tomorrow, and we ultimately live most of our lives in the expectation that tomorrow is right around the corner. Most of the time when we think about tomorrow, we hope that it is better than the horrible day we just finished drudging through.
...
Valentines Day...
Here’s the deal. I’ll be completely honest with everyone and say that I have let bitterness take root in my heart for this very day. Because I have never been able to spend a Valentines Day with a significant other, it’s become way too much of a focus for me when this day rolls around every year. I’ve always disguised my insecurity behind a thinly structured explanation...
LOVE this song.
gazzelle:
Flume - Bon Iver
Patiently waiting.
WatchMy friends and I are on Jimmy Fallon Part 2
WatchMy friends and I are on Jimmy Fallon Part 1
Washing the Feet of the Imago Dei
Sometimes I am amazed at how God pieces together multiple autonomous situations in life for one single purpose, or to get across one unified fact. Over the past few weeks I feel like God has been orchestrating ideas and promptings through the multiple different venues and people I interact with on a daily/weekly basis. In a nutshell, I am being prompted by God to love people more efficiently and...
January 2011
42 posts
Had to post this. HA!
Watch
WatchThis is quite possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“Music is the pleasure that the human soul encounters from counting without knowing that it is counting.”
-Leibniz
Change of Pace
I posted a few really big things today on Facebook. It’s been a whirlwind of a couple days trying to get this all sorted out, but I can finally rest a little bit, and my mind got put a little more at ease this afternoon.
This week has been rather eye opening for me, and it started Sunday at Summit. It was a normal Sunday, yada yada yada, there’s another blog for you to read that goes...
Musings on God, Shakespeare, and the Love of My...
Can I just say that I really really love my church? I’m not even sure how to follow up that sentence to express to the fullest extent of how grateful and blessed I am to be a part of such an incredible body of believers. Do we have everything ironed out? Of course not. Are we perfect? I’m pretty sure that deserves a hell no, however, we know what it means to live life in...
We all need a Jesus who looks like us to stand with us in our humanity, but perhaps even more we all need a Jesus who looks different from us to stand against us in our sin. Or to put it another way, it is not ultimately for my own sake that I need a Jesus different from myself, but for the sake of my neighbor, so that I may learn to see in my neighbor the humanity that Jesus died to save. -Sarah...
“For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, died, was laid beside his ancestors, and experienced corruption; but he whom God raised up experienced no corruption. Let it be known to you therefore, my brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could...
