Teaspoon Slide Guitar

Here's your glimpse of Jesus for the day:
Teaspoon Slide Guitar Man. You're gonna love this.

Unfortunately, wherever Master leaves His mark, there are imposters: Neil and Barrah.

It helps to see the original first, doesn't it?

The Icons of My Faith (or, The Gospel in Pictures)

Each one of these pictures tells a story--testifies--about the creator of the world. They do it so much better than I can.

Life is a worship experience.

Row, Row, Row Our Boat

To say my fate is not tied to your fate is like saying "Your end of the boat is sinking."

--Hugh Downs

The Here and Now

There's a hymn called "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus" that we used to sing when I was younger. I haven't sung it for years--this morning it was used in our worship service. The refrain goes like this:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.

There's another much more upbeat hymn that goes like this:

This world's not my home
I'm just passing through
My treasures and my hopes
Somewhere beyond the blue
Many friends and kindred
Have gone on before
And I can't feel at home
In this world anymore

Oh Lord you know
I have no friend like you
If heaven's not my home
Then Lord what will I do
The angels beckon me
To heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home
In this world anymore

Both of these songs convey the same message.

That this world isn't for us, that we don't belong here, that we should look beyond the present for what God is really preparing for us later. That life after death will be something else entirely.

Everything I write is somehow informed by my own background, and this sentiment was central to understanding this life for so long. I am just now working this out of my system, so what I'm saying may be very foreign to your own experience.

We were taught in so many ways that everything about this life was temporary and somehow bad--its pleasures, experiences, everything. That enjoyment itself and all the other positive feelings we are capable of were bad. That pleasure itself wasn't to be trusted.

I don't see a lot of justification for this. When I look around with the eyes of my heart, I don't see the things of earth becoming "strangely dim." I see the things of earth becoming strangely lovely.

Strangely intriguing. Striking. Inviting even.

Interestingly, in my faith tradition we rarely talked about the Kingdom. Unfortunately for us, because Jesus spent a lot of time talking about it.

For now, let me observe that we were made for this kind of life. As creatures of this universe, we're designed for a world of gravity, rain, moderate temperatures, alternating days and nights, and four seasons (unless you're from Texas, then you only get one).

This dirt, this grass, these trees, this oxygen. Don't you love it all? Don't you feel like getting out in it? Basking, soaking, absorbing? God made this whole thing, pretty much in the way we find it.

Most of the damage we see on the planet has come at the hands of man. The calamities being suffered in Sudan are nearly completely man-made. (What would physically happen on the earth if all peoples lived in peace for just twenty years? Just one generation.)

I'm not suggesting that this is utopia, or that it will be any time soon--I completely understand that we're dealing with this fallen-ness. There is sickness, and sorrow, and death, and separation, and heaviness of heart.

But there is also this residual longing for things to be the way they were, before the colossal fall. Before we chose to write our own rules, to try to control our own destiny, to strive to be something other than what we were created to be.

The heavens declare the glory of God,
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

(Psalm 19)

May we embrace the longings and the pleasures and the foretastes that God gives us in this life. May we learn from them, and may we follow them.

Here's a Psalm that sees God all through a thunderstorm:

Psalm 29

Ascribe to the LORD, O mighty ones, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness.

The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful.
The voice of the LORD is majestic.
The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the LORD strikes with flashes of lightning.
The voice of the LORD shakes the desert; the LORD shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
The voice of the LORD twists the oaks and strips the forests bare. And in his temple all cry, "Glory!"

The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as King forever.
The LORD gives strength to his people;
the LORD blesses his people with peace.

May we see what this world teaches us about the very pleasures and glories of God. Let's look for the face of Jesus in all things.

On the Mind

A sonnet, by Charity Stratford

When confusion prevails upon the mind
In silent unspoken torture
It is in those times that I find
The meaning of life and the cloudy future.
Don't ask me what my mind will tell me
For the words it speaks have no language.
It is in these moments of revelation that I am free.
There is no other way to feel so languid.
If life could be written down
We would have nowhere to go from here.
We always need the explanation in a sound.
What's left to be found? Does our need to know stem from fear?
Perhaps we should blow our questions to the air
And let Why dwindle and let no answer be declared.

99 Pictures of Sudan

Sudan Album, January 2007

Here's a good sampling of what we experienced in Southern Sudan a couple weeks ago.

--Jon

The Restoration of All Things

I get a short reading in my email every day from Ransomed Heart Ministries. Today's was worth quoting here:

Look at the life of Jesus. Notice what he did. When Jesus touched the blind, they could see; all the beauty of the world opened before them. When he touched the deaf, they were able to hear; for the first time in their lives they heard laughter and music and their children’s voices. He touched the lame, and they jumped to their feet and began to dance. And he called the dead back to life and gave them to their families.

Do you see? Wherever humanity was broken, Jesus restored it. He is giving us an illustration here, and there, and there again. The coming of the kingdom of God restores the world he made.

God has been whispering this secret to us through creation itself, every year, at springtime, ever since we left the Garden. Sure, winter has its certain set of joys. The wonder of snowfall at midnight, the rush of a sled down a hill, the magic of the holidays. But if winter ever came for good and never left, we would be desolate. Every tree leafless, every flower gone, the grasses on the hillsides dry and brittle. The world forever cold, silent, bleak.

After months and months of winter, I long for the return of summer. Sunshine, warmth, color, and the long days of adventure together. The garden blossoms in all its beauty. The meadows soft and green. Vacation. Holiday. Isn’t this what we most deeply long for? To leave the winter of the world behind, what Shakespeare called “the winter of our discontent,” and find ourselves suddenly in the open meadows of summer?

If we listen, we will discover something of tremendous joy and wonder. The restoration of the world played out before us each spring and summer is precisely what God is promising us about our lives. Every miracle Jesus ever did was pointing to this Restoration, the day he makes all things new.

--John Eldredge, Epic

To lose the hope of restoration is to lose everything.