Casting Crowns - East to West

Chris Tomlin Indescribable

God of Wonders by Third Day

Mark Harris "One True God"

So Long Self - MercyMe

Healing Rain -Michael W. Smith

Winter - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Dr. Michael Harbour

Via Positiva

Chapter Three: Winter

This chapter is a bit of a travel log. She speaks of Starlings and spiders and coots and the weather. Everywhere she is respecting both life and death. She is in awe of the work that life does. Have you ever hesitated to disturb a spider web, knowing that the spider has worked so diligently? Have you ever looked at your old insect collection and thought that maybe is was a cruel exercise in presumed sovereignty?

Desiderata:

• Starlings: “According to Edwin Way Teale, ‘Their coming was the result of one man’s fancy. That man was Eugene Shieffelin, a wealthy New York drug manufacturer. His curious hobby was the introduction to America of all the birds mentioned in William Shakespeare.’” (37) (He released 100 in Central Park in NYC. Now Starlings are ubiquitous and stubbornly entrenched.)
• “Winter clear-cuts and reseeds the easy way. Everywhere paths unclog.” (40)
• “All that summer conceals, winter reveals” (40) (In winter, when the leaves are dropped, there is something different to see.)
• “I’m getting used to this planet and to this curious human culture which is cheerfully enthusiastic as it is cheerfully cruel.” (43)
• “When his father was young, he used to walk out on Great South Bay, which has frozen over, and frozen the gulls to it. Some of the gulls were already dead. He would take a hunk of driftwood and brain the living gulls; then with a steel knife he hacked them free below the body and rammed them into a burlap sack. The family ate herring gull all winter, close around a lighted table in a steamy room. And out on the Bay, the ice was studded with paired, red stumps” (43) (Something in this made me laugh, is that the cheerfully cruel in me?)
• “Things out of place are ill.” (53) (She says this when she has a cocoon of spiders in her pocket! Out of place and ill.)

Hillsong-Mighty to Save

Regensburg Cathedral in Bavaria, Germany

I Will Sing

Seeing - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Dr. Michael Harbour

Seeing

· “I have been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises.” (17)

· “What you see is what you get.” (17)

Her point is that it may seem mundane, the things you can see. It is like finding pennies. Are you delighted to find a penny, or is that beneath you? So much of our world passes us by without our thinking that it is remarkable. It is like reading Scripture. We think we know, so we are kept from hearing. How often to you gaze at the stars and think about what you see? How often do you look at an ant bed and think about what you see?

When it comes to nature, the sights are fleeting. Nature is pervasive, but it also is fleeting. Life is on the move. One has to pay attention in order to take it in. If you will take it in, there is wonder.

· “If I can’t see the minutia, I still try to keep my eyes open.” (19)

· “After thousands of years we’re still strangers to darkness, fearful aliens in an enemy camp with our arms crossed over our chests. … An uneasy pink here, an unfathomable blue there, gave great suggestion to lurking beings. Things were going on.” (22)

· “At this latitude I’m spinning 836 miles an hour round the earth’s axis; I often fancy I feel my sweeping fall as a breakneck arc like the dive of dolphins, and the hollow rushing of wind raises hair on my neck and the side of my face. I orbit around the sun I’m moving 64,800 miles an hour.” (23)

· “If we are blinded by darkness, we are also blinded by light.” (24) One example is a meteor shower in the middle of the day.

· “We have really only that one light, one source for all power, and yet we must turn away from it by universal decree. Nobody here on the planet seems aware of this strange, powerful, taboo, that we all walk about carefully averting our faces, this way and that, lest our eyes be blasted forever.” (25)

· “This looking business is risky.” (25)

When your eyes are open, you can look millions of light years into space. When your eyes are open you can see the abundance of life in a glass or bowl of pond water. It is extravagant!

Dillard tells of people who are newly sighted. They have been blind from birth. They have learned to navigate the world in a particular way. When they receive sight, they may refuse to use it. It is disorienting. It is overwhelming. One girl, aged 21, would close her eyes whenever she went out of the house.

• “She is never happier than when, by closing her eyelids, she relapses into her former state of total blindness.” (30)
  
• “Some delight in their sight and give themselves over to the visual world.” (31)
• “Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it.” (33)
• “When I see this way I analyze and pry, I hurl over logs and roll away stones; I study the bank a square foot at a time, probing and tilting my head.” (33)
• “But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera, I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut.” (33)

How can you do it? How can you see? She says that the challenge of her life is to quiet the interior conversation in her head. The secret, she says, is the pearl of great price. It can be found, but probably not by pursuit. The discipline is to practice openness, to be ready to see. I think this is true all over God’s world. I need to practice being non-self-absorbed. Then I can see in the dark and in the light. I can see, so to say, with a camera, or even in the ecstasy of being the camera, taking it all in with wonder and awe.

• “I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until that moment I was lifted and struck.”

I cannot tell you how that resonates with me. Oh, for the openness to position ourselves to see, to perceive, to be in the place where the moment of realization of who you are and where you are is understood.

In The Arms of The Angel

Dr. Harbour: Heaven And Earth In Jest

It is the known, or perhaps that is an overstatement. There are some things that we can see. We try to make sense of what we see. Annie Dillard has written a book about seeing. She is walking near Tinker Creek, Virginia and she sees some things in nature. Nature has a voice. It is difficult to see clearly. It is also presumptuous to say that we understand what we see. However, we ought to look and we ought to think. What kind of world is this?

As I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I am another step removed from seeing. I am listening as Annie Dillard sees. She thinks and I think along with her. Then I begin to pay attention to the world, to see for myself, and to live in wonder at the sight, the sound, the voice.

Chapter One

Heaven and Earth In Jest

• “I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing.” (4)


• “And just as I looked at him (a frog), he slowly crumpled and began to sag. The spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed. ... An oval shadow hung in the water behind the drained frog; then the shadow glided away. ... ‘Giant water bug’ is really the name of the creature, which is an enormous, heavy-bodied brown bug. Through the puncture shoot the poisons that dissolve the victim’s muscles and bones and organs – all but the skin – and through it the giant water bug sucks out the victim’s body, reduced to a juice.” (8)


• “That it’s rough out there and chancy is no surprise.” (9)


• “What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? ... If the giant water bug was not made in jest, was it then be made in earnest?” (9)


• Einstein: ‘God is subtle, but not malicious.” (9)


• Her question is: What does nature say? Is it violent and cruel? Yes. Is it powerful and beautiful and somehow awe inspiring to us? Undoubtedly.

“We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what is going on here.” (11)

Tim Hughes- Here I Am To Worship

How Far Is Heaven

'Bout Midnight - Jim

‘Bout Midnight

Acts 16:25
25About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.

As we give thought to this scripture, can we place ourselves with Paul and Silas? Maybe we could imagine back to the last time we were in prison, shackled, just after a good flogging to cleanse the mind, keeping an eye on the rats, and wondering just what that aroma was, but not really wanting to know. It’s ‘bout midnight, but unlike Paul and Silas, in my weakness I don’t feel like it’s a good time for worship. In my weakness, it does not feel like it would be a good time to minister to the other prisoners.

Oh, merciful Father that I could be strong enough to worship and minister like Paul and Silas.

I wonder how long it took Paul and Silas to turn to God in this situation. Hmm, being Paul, it was probably pretty quick. I confess: I am not that good. To me, it seems I spend entirely too much time on doing everything in my considerably limited power before turning to God in my trials and tribulations. I’m afraid I would have been consumed with fear, I would have been dominated by the pain, I would have been complaining, I would have been feeling very sorry for myself, I would have been conspiring to escape, I would not have given a second thought of those around me.

Then sometime after I had gone through my complete repertoire of selfishness. After I had worn myself out, sometime after I fell quite, after I became still, and after I finally turned to look for Him, He would be there. I can sense Him shaking His head, wondering why it always takes me so long to let The One who can calm any storm, calm my storm. He is there, waiting for me yet again. Waiting for me to open my heart, and mind so he can take over. Then He lifts me, gives me strength, and reminds me to help others.

Too often distractions, interruptions, inconsequential problems, and the like derail us from our focus on Christ, and in doing so they can disrupt our time of prayer, disrupt our time of worship or ministry. Delay us in getting our mind where it should be. Delay us in getting to the choice of Christ.

Father, You chose me, You made me, and You love me. Dear God help me focus on You no matter the situation I’m in, help me choose You first, and look to You first. Lord, please give me strength that I may seek You in all things as my first action, then to serve You in helping others.

May His Grace & Peace be on you and yours

EDGE OF THE NIGHT

How Great Is Our God

The Lost Hour - Tom Norvell

The Lost Hour
We lost an hour. Before going to bed, as instructed, we pushed a few buttons or turned a knob and an hour was gone. Some forgot to make the change and arrived at church an hour late not even realizing they were an hour late. That hour is gone. Supposedly we will get the hour back
in the fall when we change the clocks back to real time. But, is that really possible?
When I woke up my body told me, "You lost an hour of sleep." When I looked outside and it was still dark I felt like I lost an hour. When we met for the Sunday night gathering it felt like we were meeting in the middle of the afternoon. It seems strange to just skip an hour. It seems like a waste.
After pondering the hour I lost (due in part to my preference for the real time which I inherited from my Granddaddy in the 60s when it started), I acknowledge that there are many other hours that I have wasted that just as frivolous. In fact, if you count the hour we lost with the time change and the time I spent thinking about not being a fan of the change, I probably lost two hours. We find many ways to waste time, don't we?
There's the hour spent daydreaming about what we would do if we had...
There's the time spent through the years sitting in useless meetings, discussing solutions to problems that most likely will never occur.
There's the time spent in conversation about the weather - how cold it is, how hot it is, how we need rain, and how we can't wait until it quits raining.
There's the time spent worrying about what we did wrong yesterday, and worrying about what we may do wrong tomorrow.
There's the time spent wondering about where we would be today if we had made a different decision ten years ago.
There's the time spent trying to change other people and being frustrated because we could not change them.
There's the time pretending to be working at the computer when actually all you're doing is browsing the Internet.
There's the time spent reading emails, getting upset, and forwarding emails about things that never really happened but sounded really true when you first read them.
Some (very uninformed people) would say I've wasted time watching golf on television, and wasted of time (and money) playing golf.
The fact is we are very creative in finding ways to waste time, aren't we? Chances are we'll never recover the hour we lost this weekend, but we can commit to use the hours we do have more wisely.
Paul gives good advice, "Be very careful, then, how you live-not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is." (Ephesians 5:15-17, NIV)
The lost hour is lost. The next hour is not.

Live it wisely.

Live it with joy.

Live it with hope.

Share it with someone you love.

Live it for God.
Tom
A Norvell Note

Newsboys - He Reigns

Audio Adrenaline - Big House

Barlow GIrl-Never Alone

Switchfoot - This Is Your Life

The Heart of the True Christian (Mark Kielar)

What is the Unpardonable Sin? (Dr. Alan Cairns)

Come To Jesus By Chris Rice

Audience of One - Big Daddy Weave

You're Worthy of My Praise - Jeremy Camp

BETTER LIFE NOW - JOEL OSTEEN