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Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.
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Thursday, October 19, 2006
If you are what you eat, I am golden raisins
The ears are feeding on Psalters - All Who Are Weary
I'll start with trivialities. The old tagboard thing is gone... Gone are declarations of Mike and Skye's undying love, gone are narcissistic quips, gone are random hellos. I'm being sentimental... over a tagboard. Anyway, I found a new one to put up.
My Dad has a gazillion books, and it has been silly of me to spend so much money buying my own when I can raid his bookshelf. I've been reading Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places (I know, forgoing CS Lewis for Eugene Peterson... what's a girl to do?) in the bus on the way to work and like every other book that I carry with me onto 196, every other sentence makes me think more than I read. And so I end up spending 20 minutes pondering over 20 things, and I spend the other 10 trying to understand the depth of the passage with my eyes.
I'm incredibly different from how I was earlier this year, which is a weird thing for myself to realise. I'm not sure it's a good different. I know God is always shaping us to be more and more like Him, but things happened along the way to make me question myself, and question Him, and question everything I know. Which annoys me to no end right now; why on earth did I question the only Constant that will ever be present in this life? I ought to know better. There are many things I ought to know better. But I've realised that intellect and rationality get people nowhere at the end of the day, at the end of this life. Credibility is lost on me when I know my spirit needs something more than what the world and philosophies can offer. I let myself get robbed of the beauty of Christ's humanity and Divinity, and immersed myself in careless wanderings of the mind and of every other ideology not relevant to mine.
I mean, I'm not saying I was secretly a pagan or anything. But when the spirit of doubt weighs heavily on the inside, it translates into awkward repose on the outside.
So I'm not going to continue chasing fleeting fancies that will not satisfy me. It's good to have knowledge, but everything is absolutely meaningless - excessive knowledge begets pride, if you aren't careful - if not for God and His supreme sovereignty.
Who am I living for? What am I living for? I'm blessed to know the answers to those questions, and the burden I've been carrying has been one of feigned ignorance of what is set ahead for me. Ignorance isn't always bliss, because there are so many things I'd love to undo. I am of the firm belief that everything happens for a reason. Each and every circumstance is timed such that God can swiftly put us in our place, right where He needs us to be.
I'm not going to try to prove anything to anyone. I don't ever want to start on that again. God sees me as I am, blemished and utterly imperfect, but He has loved me with an everlasting love on my most undeserving days, and that is currently what is putting me in my place.
Rach and I figured out last night, that everything, no matter what, is deeper than it seems. That isn't a phrase of mockery, it's just a simple truth about everything we see on the surface.
There's still so much to understand, but I'm also understanding how this life is something to delight in. The plague of mediocrity seeps easily into wounds and careless cuts, but God gently cleans it out with His love and assurance. How discomfiting and euphoria-inducing it is to realise that everything I've said and done has been washed away by the cleansing blood of Christ.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good.
...His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
...His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords:
...His love endures forever.
to him who alone does great wonders,
...His love endures forever.
who by his understanding made the heavens,
...His love endures forever.
who spread out the earth upon the waters,
...His love endures forever.
who made the great lights -
...His love endures forever.
the sun to govern the day,
...His love endures forever.
the moon and stars to govern the night;
...His love endures forever.
to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt
...His love endures forever.
and brought Israel out from among them
...His love endures forever.
with a mighty hand and outstretched arm
...His love endures forever.
to him who divided the Red Sea asunder
...His love endures forever.
and brought Israel through the midst of it,
...His love endures forever.
but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea;
...His love endures forever.
to him who led his people through the desert,
...His love endures forever.
who struck down great kings,
...His love endures forever.
and killed mighty kings -
...His love endures forever.
Sihon king of the Amorites
...His love endures forever.
and Og king of Bashan -
...His love endures forever.
and gave their land as an inheritance,
...His love endures forever.
an inheritance to his servant Israel;
...His love endures forever.
to the One who remembered us in our low estate
...His love endures forever.
and freed us from our enemies,
...His love endures forever.
and who gives food to every creature.
...His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of heaven.
...His love endures forever.
13:17
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