a Sunday morning

1. A reminder: God can salvage our mistakes: even the big mistakes. Didn't he raise the dead?, heal the paralytic?

2. A challenge: God is powerful - do we only ask God for things that we can already take care of, or do we dare ask for the things that can only come about if He steps in - do we believe that He'll step in?

3. A blessing at the altar: "thank you for the calling You have put in her heart, help her to carry it through, and give her the strength and courage to do so."

4. a song:

Everyone needs compassion
Love that’s never failing
Let mercy fall on me
Everyone needs forgiveness
The kindness of a Saviour
The hope of nations

CHORUS
Saviour He can move the mountains
My God is mighty to save
He is mighty to save
Forever
Author of salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave

So take me as You find me
All my fears and failures
Fill my life again
I give my life to follow
Everything I believe in
Now I surrender

graceful posture

I know I write the same things over and over, but I keep forgetting what I write, then the truth hits me again - hits me as if for the first time, and I can't help writing about it again. So here goes another song lyric and running narrative...

_____

In this posture let me live
and "hosannas" daily give
in this temper let me die
and "hosannas" ever cry

this is a favorite - it's the last verse from the Indelible Grace worship song "Jesus Cast A Look on Me". For some reason I really like the Christian life described here as a "posture" in which we daily live. I can't help but picture a confident, skinny, tall woman with fair skin, red lipstick and excellent posture. She's not a snob, but she's quiet, confident, disciplined... she's beautiful.

I've always been a bit of a sloucher. Sometimes I'll become cognizant of my hunched over state, and sit up straight for a moment, but gradually my shoulders fall forward again and my back begins to curve. I've heard that slouching is as much a cause as it is an effect - it is the result of having low self-confidence, and it also causes you to feel less confident - I think I read that in one of those teen magazines many years ago - so "shoulders back and chin up" Seventeen told its readers.

I started thinking of all this on my run last night. I started out very conscious of my running posture - trying to piece together all the tidbits of advice I've heard over the years - shoulders back, slight lean forward, lift your feet straight up to your knee, arms relaxed and parallel to your body, chin up - look ahead, not at your feet....then I started thinking about this whole posture thing - the Indelible Grace song above, Seventeen magazine... my mind started to wander and I realized that I was no longer thinking about my running posture. So I straightened up again, arms relaxed shoulders back... but shortly thereafter my mind began to wander, and again I forgot about my posture. In the course of that 30 minute run, my mind probably wandered off about 5 times - that's a pretty short attention span:)

Posture - good posture. I'm not just speaking of a straight spine. It is how one carries herself, her own weight and the weights placed on her, how one walks through life. Good posture is a mark of refinement and discipline - acquired with practice. I will occasionally forget, and my mind will frequently wander, in which case I will just sit up straight and straighten up again 'til it's all my body knows to do. Good posture is a mark of confidence. It says: "I am Beautiful" - not Seventeen beautiful... indelible grace beautiful. Good posture is the result of a life well lived and also the very thing that helps you to live well.

________________

Grace, she carries a world on her hips.

Grace makes beauty...

...out of ugly things.

U2

Ridiculous

"The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear"
U2
_____

Everyone wants to be cool. I try to be cool, but its just so hard:) Its neither hot nor cold, just somewhere in the middle - apathetic. Its "cool" to be cool, "cool" to be apathetic, to not care, to be unaffected and without emotion - don't let any body or any situation rattle you. But its so hard because our little human heart is always wanting to go crazy - to believe in something, to be on fire about something. We care.

A dear friend and her husband stopped through Gainesville last week to visit - they are super cool people - what I mean is that they are really "wonderful" people, but "apathetic" by no means. They've packed up their house and are off to Ethiopia in a few months to minister to young women brutalized by sex trafficking and looking to start life afresh. They left me a cd they'd recently picked up called "Can you hear us?" (not by the David Crowder Band). Its not an uplifting-easy-listening sort of cd - all the songs are about social injustice. As I listen on my way to work this morning, I find myself wanting to cry - I feel a little ridiculous at the stop light, and hope no one will look over and see me. I especially like the first song on the album - the chorus is catchy, and I find myself still singing it long after the car engine is turned off and the cd stops.

"Wouldn't this be ridiculous!"

The verses are a series of hypotheticals: "What if we...(did something for the oppressed), Instead of...(doing something for ourselves)". In our cool culture that really is ridiculous and extreme...and a little edgy. What if we cared, and lived as if we cared about something bigger than ourselves? I feel suffocated and get claustrophobic just chillin' in the middle of cool - let me outside, let me be a little crazy. I want to be ridiculous.

just keep going

Today I got to read the first lesson and psalm in church. I love to read aloud - so this task fits me well:) Today's reading was quite long though, and contained a list of OT names that weren't so easy to pronounce, so I wasn't totally feeling it and hurried my way through. Feelings are so unreliable I've discovered (again and again and again...). They were unreliable again today. This "long and boring passage" contained more than I initially thought - the message I needed to hear. It was the story of Hannah, who was barren, but prayed to God fervently for a son. I'm sure she must have felt weary of saying that same prayer over and over. But in time, God blessed her with a child, and she bore a son whom she named Samuel. Today's gospel lesson from Luke 18 made the same case for persisting in prayer - "And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart..." The sermon naturally followed: don't give up! keep praying!

I feel like giving up far too often. I went for a run before church this morning. I'd been feeling tired and heavy all week. I attempted to do a longer run yesterday and didn't make it as far as I would have liked, so I tried again today - hoping that today would break the cycle. I started strong and felt good for most of the way, but then I started feeling tired again, and felt like giving up. My mantra for the remainder of the run: "It's ok to feel tired, JUST KEEP GOING!"

travelling in Gainesville

I've got this energy beneath my feet
like something underground's gonna come up and carry me.

I love to travel. For the past two weeks I've been house and dog sitting for a family on the other side of town. They will return this afternoon, so this morning I packed up my stuff and drove back to my house in NW Gainesville. As soon as my body is put in motion, my mind takes off as well. I don't have to move far, just be in motion - I think it keeps me fresh, alive, new - it does something. I am in between here and there, and there's a freedom of thought and independence in that place. Reminds me I'm not stuck in a moment and not stuck in a place. I'm living, moving, breathing - I'm free and I like it.

another day

Through another day, another trial,
another chance to reconcile to one who sees past all I can see

Again my perspective unravels, again my mind needs renewed. Always coming back, cause I'm always wandering off. Prone to wander...

Lord, my will has deceived me
please come and free me
come rescue this child
for I long to be reconciled to you
refine me

all I can do is give my heart and soul to you
and pray...
and pray...
oh, I will pray

Walk with me empty, walk with me strong
The hush of our voices, when the day seems so long
It is like a balm, it is like a jewel
It unravels all I thought I knew

swing low!

I'm waiting on the light to change...
Oh, love won't let you go
it bends and reaches low

and love alone is not enough to hold us up
we've got to touch your robe
so swing your robe down low

Swing Low!
Sweet Chariot!