I love this song – we sang it last night at YAF and it reminded me how much I like it – the melody is pretty, but the words are also really powerful for me – beautiful and poignant and hopeful…
O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
that in thine ocean depths its flow
may richer, fuller be.
O Light that followest all my way,
I yield my flick’ring torch to thee,
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
that in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
may brighter, fairer be.
Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee,
I trace the rainbow through the rain
and feel the promise is not vain
that morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
and from the ground thereblossoms red
life that shall endless be.
So I’m in the middle of Blue like Jazz by Donald Miller, and unlike the first time I tried to read it 6 months ago, I am absolutely loving it! I bought it after hearing all the rave reviews from people and tried it, only to give up after 15-20 pages because I got so frustrated by his somewhat rambling style of writing. Well I was looking for a good book at Borders the other day and ran across another of his books called Searching for God Knows What and after reading the title and summary, I decided to give it a try – and it was awesome! He’s still a bit ramble-y (I know that’s not really a word), but it’s so great and he expresses so many fears and questions and random things that I can relate to – quite brilliant really… Anyway, so I got my copy of Blue like Jazz back after having loaned it out to several people (who all enjoyed it immensely) and I’m now probably close to halfway through it – and I’m really enjoying it now – I’ve laughed several times, and not just the little silent chuckle, but the ‘I’m out in public and laughing out loud and people are looking’ kind of laugh – embarassing but still funny! So, I highly recommend both those books, plus he’s written other books, but I haven’t read them yet – Matthew’s reading Through Painted Deserts now, so I’ll find out how good that one is soon.
I still have a rather large stack of books that I’m working on, including one written by a scientist who’s a Christian about his struggles with connecting his faith with his work – really good so far, but pretty dense for bedtime reading, so it’s slow going… I can always use suggestions for books to read, light or heavy reading!
From Blue like Jazz:
“In exchange for our humility and willingness to accept the charity of God, we are given a kingdom. And a beggar’s kingdom is better than a proud man’s delusion.”
“The ability to accept God’s unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God’s kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convice the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love.”
He’s so good at making connections between big faith ideas and normal everyday things, or at least things that we can try to grasp more easily than ‘God stuff’ – like he talks about how penguins have an internal knowledge of when their eggs are about to hatch and that that’s how he feels about God, that he’s drawn to Him by some inexplicable force – and he says that people like to think about the love story of people and God being something like Romeo and Juliet when really it’s more like The taming of the shrew with the persistent lover chasing the reluctant bride – good stuff, eh?!?!
Congratulations are in order for my mom, who accepted a job with MetLife (hehe – makes me think of Snoopy!) and will begin working there shortly!!!!!! Yeah Mom! There’s some kind of training period, during which she’s supposed to take this very tough insurance-y test, and then she’ll be more official – but it’s a first step! Whoohoo! And the office is over in Ballentyne, so it’s not too far from their house, which is great – some of the other jobs were farther away, even one downtown, so this is a major plus – esp given gas prices…
In other news, my laptop’s hard drive crashed yesterday, but the fabulous people in academic computing managed to save pretty much everything before it fritzed out – but it’s going to take a while to get a new hard drive in and even to get a loaner – hopefully sometime today… But good news, I’m going to visit my brother this weekend – probably Sunday til Monday – so we should get some good brother-sister time – maybe putt-putt or go-carts – that sounds bro-sis-ish, right?!?!
I’m bringing back a quote from a while ago cause I read it again and loved it again – from Robert Burns – abridged from one of his poems (actually called something like In the Prospect of Death or something morbid, but still quite good!):
Thou know’st that
Thou hast formed me
With passions wild and strong;
And list’ning to their witching voice
Has often led me wrong.
Where with intention I have err’d,
No other plea I have,
But, Thou art good;
and Goodness still
Delighteth to forgive.
