Michael Bublé really knows how to write and sing songs to make girls absolutely swoon…
Safe Keeping
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness…
We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break,
so be it.
-C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
Don’t you love when music lyrics are so close to what you’re feeling it’s strange?
All at Once
All at once,
The world can overwhelm me
There’s almost nothin’ that you could tell me
That could ease my mind
Which way will you run
When it’s always all around you
And the feelin’ lost and found you again
A feelin’ that we have no control
Around the sun
Some say
There’s gonna be the new hell
Some say
It’s still too early to tell
Some say
It really ain’t no myth at all
Keep askin’ ourselves are we really
Strong enough
There’s so many things that we got
Too proud of
We’re too proud of
We’re too proud of
- J. Johnson
Peaceful Thought Amungst a Chaotic Mind
“There is another way to be set free from “praise too dearly loved” and from the power of “shifting fashion.” Our unblessed soul was made for God. Our head was made to rest on his breast. And when it does, we are set free from fashion and the fear of man.” – John Piper
A Little Reflection
While reading through my journal full of all my travel & Capernwray thoughts, I came across a prayer I had written down that I like because it’s exactly what I was thankful for from beginning to end & even now:
April 22, 2009
O, Lord, in the quiet of this morning, this beautiful sunny morning, I ask that You would fill my heart, soul, mind, body, and spirit with satisfaction in Jesus.
I am thankful for coming to this place. I am thankful that You brought me here. I’m thankful for the rolling green hills when I look out my window to the left, I am thankful for the sweet English garden I see when I look out my window to the right, I am thankful for the warm sun shining down on a cool and crisp morning, I am thankful for the birds I hear chirping and the sheep I hear baa-ing. I am thankful for roommates who are kind, helpful, and fun. I am thankful for speakers who give insightful teachings on Your Word, but are humble and know what they say can be flawed. I am thankful You brought me here with a good friend and I am thankful that even after spending the last month seeing each other non-stop we can still giggle and have fun together. I am thankful You have kept me healthy and even the few times I have felt unhealthy You have had Your hand of healing and comfort upon me. I am thankful You have calmed my nerves. I am thankful for a family at home who cares for me so much and for the prayers they give to You on my behalf. I am thankful for good friends at home who love me and pray for me and even write me while I am away. I am thankful for my relatives who also love and pray for me, and who encouraged me when I was feeling uncomfortable or scared with the idea of being here.
I am thankful for Your Son who died for me so that I may be free from the chains which held me in a place far worse than homesickness; thankful that the only reason I ever feel homesick is because I miss my Heavenly one. Thankful because I am never far from my real Home – thankful that one day I will spend with You in all eternity. Thankful that I am free.
Amen.
What Have I Done?!
I asked myself this question every second of the day the week before I left.
“What am I doing?”
“Why do I want to leave the comfort of home?”
“Why can’t a comfortable life be enough?!”
And then for the two weeks of traveling I just finished yesterday, these questions went through my mind constantly:
“Why do I have to go home?”
“Why was I so worried about this?”
And now I am back, having to spend a whole week with out a guide, without a plan, and with way too much luggage. I am back to being terrified for what the next couple of months with hold. Back to wondering, “Why am I DOING this?!” Yet I know I would be even more unsettled if I had stayed home. I look forward to going to a place where people share my faith & my main goal in life.
I do not look forward to dragging my bags around town again for every person to laugh at.
And I am thankful to God for giving me this opportunity.
Silly Willy
This post is dedicated to the little boy who knows how to make every person he meets smile.
Goodbye, for now.
Commitment?
By: Major W. Ian Thomas
“The Lord Jesus Christ is the Truth, and as in all other things that pertain, unto life and godliness” (11 Peter 1:3), He is the Truth about true commitment. He was committed to the Father for all that to which the Father was committed in the Son, and He was supremely confident that the Father who dwelt in Him, was gloriously adequate for all that to which He was committed. We know also that the Saviour’s commitment to His Father was such that the Father was completely committed to His Son! The Lord Jesus Christ refused to be committed to the parochial needs of His own day and generation; He was not committed to the political situation in Palestine, or to the emancipation of the Jewish nation from the Roman yoke! He was not committed to the pressing social problems of His time, nor to one faction as opposed to another, any more than today He is committed to the West against the East, or to the Republicans against the Democrats (as though either were less wicked than the other!). Christ was not even committed to the needs of a perishing world; He was neither unmindful nor unmoved by all these other issues, but as Perfect Man He was committed to His Father, and for that only to which His Father was committed in Him exclusively! The basis of His commitment to the Father is the basis upon which the Lord Jesus Christ claims your commitment to Him; you are committed to Him for all that to which He is committed in you exclusively! You are not committed to a church, or to a denomination, or to an organization; as a missionary you are not committed to a Mission Board nor even to a “field,” and least of all are you committed to a “need”! You are committed to Christ, and for all that to which Christ is committed in You, and again I say exclusively!
From: The Mystery of Godliness
