Planes, Trains and Automobiles

If our personality was embodied in a mode of transportation; what would you be?

Would you be a bicycle? Laid back, relaxed. Old school. More concerned with enjoying the journey rather than arriving at any certain point.

Would you be a racecar? Competitive, driven. Always on the fast track. Wants to be the best and to be recognized.

A bus? (Double-decker if you're English) Supportive, carrying. Main purpose is to serve others and help them get to where they need to be. A Behind the scenes type.

A sedan? A truck? An airplane? A train? Rollerskates?

The point I wish to raise is this; if you can assess what/who you are, are you in the right place?

If you are a bicycle and have found yourself on a fast track surrounded by people zooming past you; are you in the right place? Even if it's a fast track you seek, there's still something better suited to who you are than the Indy 500. And if you are a bus, but you're forcing yourself to serve as a watermelon truck (you've seen them, you know what I'm talking about); are you serving as you were made to serve?

Just a thought for the day. You decide.

Our Own Story by Frederick Buechner

"THE WORDS INSCRIBED on the Statue of Liberty where it stands on Bedloe's Island in New York harbor are familiar to all of us:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to be free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me;

I lift my torch beside the golden door.

It is not great poetry, perhaps, and many a cynical word could be spoken about how the golden door that the goddess of liberty lights with her torch turned out for many to be the door to a wretchedness greater than any they had left behind on the teeming shores of their homelands. But nevertheless I think the old words have power in them still, if we let them, to move us, to touch us close to where we live. And the reason they have such power, I believe, is that one way or another they are words about us. Whether we're rich or poor, whether our forebears came to this country on the Mayflower or a New England slave ship or a nineteenth-century clipper or in a twentieth-century jet, those huddled masses are part of who all of us are, both as individuals and as a people. They are our fathers and mothers. They are our common past. Yet it goes farther and deeper than that. They are our past, and yet they are also ourselves. In countless ways, both hidden and not so hidden, it is you and I who are the homeless and tempest-tossed, waiting on our own Ellis Islands for the great promise to be kept of a new world, a new life, which we haven't yet found. We are the ones who yearn to breathe free. We stand not merely like them but in a sense with them beside the golden door. To read the story of our immigrant forebears as it is summarized on the base of the old statue is to read our own story, and maybe it is only when we see that it is our own story that we can really understand either it or ourselves."

-Originally published in A Room Called Remember

Click Here to read more by Frederick Buechner

 

Song 4 Thought: "All I Want" by Kodaline

I love it when song's lyrics are left open to interpretation, leaving room for the listener's creativity and soul to make their own story. One such song is "All I Want" by Kodaline. When I heard this song for the first time...well I'll let you listen to it first and then I'll share with you what I heard.

All I want is nothing more, to hear you knocking at my door. Cause if I could see your face once more, I could die a happy man I'm sure. When you said your last goodbye I died a little bit inside. I lay in tears in bed all night. Alone without you by my side.

But if you loved me, why'd you leave me? Take my body. Take my body. All I want is. And all I need is. To find somebody. I'll find somebody.

Like you oh...you...Like you. See you brought out the best of me. A part of me I've never seen. You took my soul and wiped it clean. Our love was made for movie screens.

...Like you are all

From the first verse, for whatever reason, all I could hear was the cry of a disciple that walked with Jesus (be it Peter, John, Thomas, etc) during those days before Jesus rose from the grave. For all they knew, He had left them and this song, for me, spoke of their pain, dissappointment and longing. Tear soaked bellows begging for answers, "Why'd you leave me?" and the heavy reminiscent reply of their Last Supper with Him, "Take my body..." In Him laid all their hopes and for 3 days they grieved over a tomb that held both the Trusted and all entrusted. For 3 days they endured the most painful dissappointment none of us now need never fear, a dead Messiah...

Such treasures of insight- priceless.

What did you first hear? What do you hear now? What else do you hear? Because I'd love to hear it.

A Song for Eastertide

For many Christians Easter is the celebrated Resurrection Sunday, the day Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Most churches honor significant days leading up to His resurrection, namely Palm Sunday and Good Friday, but for the most part Easter ends on Resurrection Sunday.
Easter, I have learned, is a season of fifty days from Easter Sunday to the day of Pentecost in the liturgical calendar/Advent year. This time is known as Eastertide. Lent was a season preparing hearts to receive, recognizing our need for Him, as we led up to Easter; but now that Eastertide is upon us, it is time to receive.

There is a song out right now called Stay by Rihanna featuring Mikky Ekko. It's a conversation between a man and a woman, but in its lyrics and steady hammering drone I hear another conversation -a confession meeting an invitation; the sweet raw conflict that exists before the final bolt cut letting Him in. In this song I hear the crossing over from Lent into Eastertide; from recognizing our need to receiving.

Stay by Rihanna ft. Mikky Ekko

All along it was a fever
A cold sweat hot-headed believer
I threw my hands in the air, "Said show me something."
He said, "If you dare come a little closer."

Round and around and around and around we go
Oh now tell me now, tell me now, tell me now you know

Not really sure how to feel about it
Something in the way you move
Makes me feel like I can't live without you
Oh it takes me all the way
I want you to stay

It's not much of a life you're living
It's not just something you take, it's given

Round and around and around and around we go
Oh now tell me now, tell me now, tell me now you know

Not really sure how to feel about it
Something in the way you move
Makes me feel like I can't live without you
Oh it takes me all the way
I want you to stay

Ooh the reason I hold on
Ooh cause I need this hole gone
Funny you're the broken one but I'm the only one who needed saving
Cause when you've never seen the light it's hard to know which one of us is caving

Not really sure how to feel about it
Something in the way you move
Makes me feel like I can't live without you
Oh it takes me all the way
I want you to stay


May we let Him stay. May we stay. It reminds me of the last line in "Come Thou Fount" saying, "Prone to wander Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart Lord take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above."

Lord's Prayer by Frederick Buechner

Excerpt from Listening To Your Life by Frederick Buechner:

In the Episcopal order of worship, the priest sometimes introduces the Lord's Prayer with the words, "Now as our Savior Christ hath taught us, we are bold to say..." The word bold is worth thinking about. We do well not to pray the prayer lightly. It takes guts to pray it at all. We can pray it in the unthinking and perfunctory way we usually do only by disregarding what we are saying.

"Thy will be done" is what we are saying. That is the climax of the first half of the prayer. We are asking God to be God. We are asking God to do not what we want but what God wants. We are asking God to make manifest the holiness that is now mostly hidden, to set free in all its terrible splendor the devastating power that is now mostly under restraint. "Thy kingdom come..on earth" is what we are saying. And if that were suddenly to happen, what then? What would stand and what would fall? Who would be welcomed in and who would be thrown the Hell out? Which if any of our most precious visions of what God is and of what human beings are would prove to be more or less on the mark and which would turn out to be phony as three-dollar bills? Boldness indeed. To speak those words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze.

You need to be bold in another way to speak the second half. Give us. Forgive us. Don't test us. Deliver us. If it takes guts to face the omnipotence that is God's, it takes perhaps no less to face the impotence that is ours. We can do nothing without God. We can have nothing without God. Without God we are nothing.

It is only the words "Our Father" that make the prayer bearable. If God is indeed something like a father, then as something like children maybe we can risk approaching him anyway.

Justice is a Garment

Our generation has more global exposure than any other generation before it. Daily we have images of sufferring worldwide flashed before our eyes. As a result of having so much exposure, it takes a lot to grab our attention; everything, from movies to news and groups, have had to up the ante if they're to get people to take notice. And when it comes to social causes you find people so desperate for action that they too have upped the rating on their material in hopes that it'll serve as a bucket of cold water over a sleepy ADD generation.

There is so much gore, so much darkness, so much devastation in how people talk about issues facing our world. And I do believe that the people sharing their horror stories are genuinely hoping that it will get people to act and that they are of the best intentions, however, intentions will never serve as proper justification for anything. And nor will good intentions justify the further exploitation of the exploited.

Picture this: A man is trying to get a group to act against human trafficking, particularly as it pertains to the sex industry. In an effort to get at your heart he shares his chilling experience of seeing sex-trafficking first hand. He shares the disgust he felt at the scene and goes into somewhat graphic detail describing what he saw. He then shares how it changed his life and how he hopes hearing about it will change yours. The End.

I ask you; who is honored in this story? Certainly not the soul that they are trying to solicit action on behalf of.

Exposure is a delicate thing. Any exposure you gain is really an entrusting. You have been entrusted with someone's story and being entrusted with that story does not necessarily make it yours to share; and should you ever share it it should be shared in such a way that would honor them should they ever hear you tell it.

Try to think of it like this: In Genesis 9 we read of a certain time where Noah became drunk and was naked in his tent. One son came into the tent, saw his father's nakedness and ran and told his other two brothers. The other two brothers then wrapped a garment over their shoulders and walked backwards into the tent to cover their father in such a way that they would not see their father's nakedness and expose him. Which of the three brothers do you think were honored for their approach?

Is it our responsibility to expose or is it our responsibility to honorably cover?

At the heart of every issue and every story lies a person; a person with feelings and rights, a person worthy of protection- protection even from good intentions. And at the end of every day people are motivated by hope more than they could ever be motivated by despair. So why don't we concern ourselves with how we facilitate hope rather than how we facilitate conviction? Let us truly honor the souls that have captured our hearts and our attention rather than honoring the darkness that victimizes them. Let them be honored in how we speak of them and think of them rather than being embarrased by our words exposing their nakedness. Instead, let us be like the two brothers who backed in and covered their father. Let us be like our Father Who saw our ancestor's, Adam and Eve, embarassment at their own nakedness and made them clothes.

 

Defiant

Defiant- boldly resistant or challenging

Have you ever thought of God's love as defiant?

Do you picture a Man so bent on holding you that He boldly opposes all obstructions in His path? A Man so fixed on loving you that He challenges every rivalry that stands between you and He?

Obsessed? Perhaps, but He is the only one in this relationship that still remembers what it was like before sin came to be. He is the only one who still remembers what it looked and felt like to have pure untainted desire. He is jealous for it. He is jealous for us to return to it, to Him. And because we cannot get there ourselves He defiantly stands at our aid waging the war for us.

The Love of God by Frederick Martin Lehman

The love of God is greater far

Than tongue or pen can ever tell.

It goes beyond the highest star

And reaches to the lowest hell.

The guilty pair, bowed down with care,

God gave His Son to win;

His erring child He reconciled

And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure

The saints’ and angels’ song.

When hoary time shall pass away,

And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall;

When men who here refuse to pray,

On rocks and hills and mountains call;

God’s love, so sure, shall still endure,

All measureless and strong;

Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—

The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made;

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade;

To write the love of God above

Would drain the ocean dry;

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky.