It is Spring!
The daffodils are pushing up. And the grass is green, GREEN, GREEN! After all, this is Oregon.
There is something vibrant about a sunny spring day in the Willamette Valley.
My middle schoolers are off for Spring Break. They will return with the changes this season brings to the hearts, minds, and bodies of adolescents. The sixth graders will return as full-fledged middle schoolers. The 7th and 8th graders will return with even greater spunk and vinegar.
Watching them is like watching a nature film on public broadcasting. We call them kids because they act like mountain goats, springing about, shouting, alive.
Perhaps that is why it is called Spring. It puts a spring in our step. It makes kids spring from place to place, game to game. It feels like we have tapped into a spring of refreshing cool water.
Though my mind keeps turning to my upcoming 50th birthday I am feeling very young, in a lot of ways. Today something occurred to me.
I am in the Spring of my life.
There is a joy in my heart that makes it race, a clarity to my thoughts that makes reading and writing and listening to music feel pregnant with a coming spiritual epiphany.
I am immortal. I will never truly die. I will dance throughout time, I will sing throughout eternity. I will praise and shout and weep with joy beneath my benefactor’s smiling gaze.
I am brand new. I will live forever, and the whole of this life, this mortal life, is just the birthing of who I really am.
I’ve been on a U2 binge of late... today I want to share a song with you.
"Yahweh"
It starts out with a simple prayer, a plea for the Lord of all things to take us, just as we are, with our dead end lives headed nowhere, our ordinary clothes, our ordinary bodies, and wash us.
Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing
I have known sorrow. I have held my dead child... three times. I have felt the ache of unreturned love. I have felt the fear of bankruptcy. And I have had a doctor tell me I have only months to live. I’ve felt shame and guilt and horror. These are the awful realities of living in a fallen world. These aren't emotions of God's but of the pain we have brought with us into this world... pain we need to feel before we can drop our own self-centeredness and embrace Him.
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn
I have felt the joy of relinquishing who I am, what I want, what my desires are, and sought to make myself obedient.
Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticize
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticize
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss
(Please Lord, make me better able to serve You. Less of me. More of You.)
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn
Oh what a fearful thing! My heart quickens... someday... I will breathe my last breath, and the true dawn will come. I will see the Sonrise.
Still waiting for the dawn, the sun is coming up
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
All that I am... the best of who I am... my greatest passions, my deepest love, is the faintest hint of the vastness of love I know is real... I feel that ocean lapping on the edge of who I am, on the shores of my soul, and I know that as strong as my love feels, though it makes me tremble, I am only sensing the true love that brings all things together... the subatomic strings dancing in patterns of three, making up quarks, making up atoms, making up molecules, making up cells, making up this body, are dancing a song of love, binding it all together. Science is stretching, trying to pull the laws of physics into a single whole... the strong atomic, the weak atomic, the electromagnetic, the force of gravity, attempting to describe You (my master).
-Yahweh-
There is an eternal spring bringing the freshest water to my greatest thirst.
And make Your city, the city, shine again. Rebuild it. Both the city of Your kingdom, and the city where I live.
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?
Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
-------------------------------------
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?
Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
-------------------------------------
Oh heavenly Father! Oh my master! I am so weak. I know I do not deserve to even utter this magnificent word, this holy name. Forgive me Lord for my pride.
Please accept my trembling offering. Lord, I lay it all before You. I give you my money. Take my checkbook, take my wallet. It is Yours.
Take my love... my love for my wife, my love for my children, my love for my church. It is Yours. Heavenly Lord.
Take my sadness. Take my grief. Take my anxieties and cares and happiness and amusement and bewilderment and make it Yours.
Take my education, take my skills. Take my talents, and my knowledge, my curiosity and thoughts, my strengths and my frailties, use them in any way You please. They are Yours.
Today I am young. A man. A mere moth. I am in the Spring of my existence. I know I will dance beyond the life of the universe and You will sustain me. Let me be Your servant Lord. Bid me and I will obey.
Amen.
11 comments:
hey man
remember in the old movie 'airplane' when lloyd bridges (playing an air traffic controller, i believe) keeps popping up with "boy, i picked the wrong day to give up (smoking) (booze) (amphetamines)" ...?
well i picked the wrong lent to give up blogging.
i'm sure that over the last couple of weeks everyone in hell has dropped what they were doing and jumped on my friends and me. weird stuff- i'll tell you about it sometime after easter.
satan has mounted quite an offensive, even going to the extent of blindsiding two of our major intercessors with surprise health conditions at the time when we so desperately need them to be in top form... it appears that the attacks are becoming increasingly violent. "count it all blessing..."
i know that your blog is not about satan and his tactics- your blog is about he who is greater than he who is in the world. therefore, i am just begging you and your readership to pray for me.
you know me as jollybeggar- my name is darryl.
'regardless of the tools used, hell will not override my divine compulsion to celebrate truth and light with the gifts entrusted to my care for the active and intentional glorification of Christ my saviour...'
ps-as long as we're canonizing u2:
all this, all of this can be yours
just give me what I want
and no one gets hurt'
Folks... if you do not know Jolly B... permit me to introduce you (his link is over there on thhe right).
He is on a blogfast right now (for Lent) so there aren't any recent posts.
I would like to ask you to lift him and his church up in prayer.
Despite my love for science I know that "our" reality is a veneer of a spiritual reality and that there is a battle sweeping to and fro beneath that skin of four dimensions.
Prayers make a difference.
A week ago (on the post: "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For")there was a string of comments to and fro surrounding a comment left by an anon. blogger who later identified herself as Christine.
She is feeling a little shell shocked and I think perhaps the whole thing may have been over poor word choice.
At any rate, I just want to let folks know how she may be feeling and that she is welcome here to speak her mind, even if it from a unique perspective.
Thanks to those who came riding to my defense. It is wonderful to have such people as all of you as readers of this little blog.
Pechur asked me to post on the U2 song "Vertigo". I don't feel like writing a post on it, but I thought I could stick a few words about it in a comment.
So here you go, Pechur:
I know that Bono said it was about an imaginary club.
The music ties in very well to the whole out-of-control, overloaded senses thing that is true of clubs and our post-modern culture in general.
Everything is relative, nothing is absolute... so we are going through life, spinning around, getting a case of "Vertigo".
In the midst of the mad scene is a crucifix hanging around a young woman's neck. A spark of sanity, a glimmer of light... Jesus.
That is what our Lord is for us, something we can fix our eyes on, a steadiness amidst chaos.
At least... that is how I interpret the song.
Again, I say, "Amen!"
And JollyB, I am adding my voice to prayers for you and yours.
"There is an eternal spring bringing the freshest water to my greatest thirst."
Absolutely beautiful to hang onto this. God bless you CS.
This is interesting. I've been reading Job for the past month with a group of women. I wrote this the other day and I just found what you wrote on U2's song Yahweh. I'll share it with you.
Yahweh
You say in Joshua as well as in Hebrews, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Forgive me Lord Jesus and have mercy on me but this question bores into my brain. I've pushed it down long enough. But Father, to be honest, I was forsaken and abandoned by you. My God, where were you when my mother died and left with me panic, anxiety, fear and dread? Where were you when she left me rejected, lost and on my own? Where were you when the boys attacked me in the yard and in the safety of my home? God... where were you people teased me unmercifully and no one would step in. Father, where were you when the boy abused me in the pool of my neighborhood friends? My God, where were you when my boyfriend raped me or when the love of my life left? Where were you for 14 years while I sat in the pit of despair, nights of restlessness and days filled with hopelessness and broken spirit? Father God, where were you when my children were taken never to be acknowledged as one? Father where were you when my grandparents all died within twenty-two months? My Father where were you when my closest friends betrayed me and turned my husband in to the elders to reprimand? O God where were you when loved ones ridiculed and criticized my heart because I don't fit their hollow form. Have mercy on me, Yahweh....but where were you?
My spirit is broken, my days are cut short, the grave awaits me. Surely mockers surround me; my eyes must dwell on their hostility. Job 17:1-2
From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Matthew 27:45-46
Then I said, "For how long O Lord?" And he answered: "Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged and the land is utterly forsaken. Isaiah 6: 11-12
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. Psalm 22 of David.
Your ways are not my ways. Your thoughts are not my thoughts. To you O Lord, I place my trust. To you O Lord I place my hope. I do not understand, but you O Lord have my heart.
Halle Halle Halle Hallelujah
becky
That is a powerful comment you have left for us, Becky.
There aren't any words that I knw that wouldn't sound trite.
I cannot say I understand, because each of us has our own burdens, our own pains, and each pain is unique.
I can say I will go to a quiet place in my home and pray for you.
I can also tell you that I am willing to help you in whatever way I can be of service to you.
--Will
Thanks. I'll be back too.
Becky
umph. wow, at becky's comment and your post here cs. i'e been in the conversations with bono book and how to dismantle an atomic bomb music this past week and have been moved as well.
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