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Brilliance drives by.
Filter horizontal stripes
Onto headlights
Cornering shadows,
And together they dance the
Brief waltz that
They die to live for.

Horizon leaning,
Diagonal spinning,
The fade then flashes.
Cars distancing
The dim nighttime hues
That fall between
My fingers like time’s sand.

Pillow cools my mind.
Breath shortens
While form escapes me.
Stanzas are failing.
The night’s music that
Chimed so lovely then
Now forebodes that sanity’s a temporary vapor.

Thoughts evaporate as
The sound of raindrops mists them.
I still feel but
No worries are left in the game.
I feel peace and
Wonderful love and
Even see the potential future today.

(Submitted from my phone.)

During Sunday Night’s Community Group, a vision overwhelmed me. Here, I’ll try to capture that experience.

Prayers
Answered.
Hearts spoken to.
Holy Spirit moved,
But by selfishness removed.

And this is what it looks like when
God whispers in the hearts of men.
And this is what it feels like when
Our own ambitions turn us away.

I cried,
For Heaven was crying,
And the sorrow we dealt
Was drowned out by the sorrow I felt.

Nation
Dying.
Saints proclaiming.
Leaders denying
And Heaven is crying.

And this is what it looks like when
God hears our intercessions.
And this is what it feels like when
Those we care about do not listen.

And I cried,
For Heaven was crying,
And the sorrow they dealt
Was drowned out by the sorrow I felt.

Oh, I cried
When I saw how Heaven cries.
And the sorrow–oh, the sorrow–
Was a sorrow I never before felt.

The sorrow–
My sorrow–
Shared in Heaven’s sorrow,
Heaven’s sorrow.

And then I could see,
See what we are meant to be–
See what we could be–
And I cried at the beauty.

Some of Heaven’s Headlines concerning  the North Country…
New Life Presbyterian and New Hope Co-Sponsor Refugee Family
Brasher UMC sends New Hope Kids to Camp
CFC Shares 57 Market St. With NH for ESL Classes
Many Unite for Prayer for the Persecuted
Trinity Hosts Great Commission Meeting
Faith Fellowship Gives Away BRIDGES to IVCF and NH

I love this! Christopher Hitchens, the author of God is Not Great, says to a liberal theologian “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

I heard Dawkins once claim to be a christian (small c). Actually, I think he coined the phrase ‘cultural christian.’ Now, it seems to me we may be heading towards the first big Atheist denominational split. Those that define Christian as Hitchens does (AMEN) and those that define christian as Dawkins does. Even the Atheists can’t agree on what they DON’T believe in!

Read or listen to the interview here.

http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/arts-and-entertainment/category/books-and-talks/articles/christopher-hitchens/

In the software world the word free is confusing. Free software doesn’t mean the same thing to everybody. Let me give you an example to help you understand what I mean. There are lots of programs that are freely downloadable from the Internet with no strings attached. Now many of you may read that and consider those programs to be free software. And in one sense (in terms of cost) you would be correct. However, there is another definition of free software that doesn’t count all of these programs, but only counts software that is not only free to download, but also free to modify. The Free Software Foundation uses the word free to refer to freedom and not to cost. They believe that software should be distributable in such a way that the source code that makes the program work is also available for those that are able to make changes to it and then redistribute those changes. Making the source code available has others benefits. For example, if more people are able to see how something works, they might be able to find ways for it to work better or find flaws or security vulnerabilities etc. Some of the best examples of free (as in freedom) software are Mozilla’s Firefox web browser and the Linux operating system, which was created by Linus Tovalds. There are countless other fee software projects that have had very good success as well.

Quite some time ago I came up with another interesting personal analogy. Free software has some interesting analogies to Christianity. I wondered if other people had had the same thought, so I searched on Google and one of the things I found was a site called Linux for Christians with a motto “Free as in salvation” referencing the Bible verse Ephesians 2:8-9, which says “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast.” I thought it was really neat that someone had seen the same the analogy that I had. Just recently I had a conversation with Pat about technology and Christianity and I promised to write up a blog post on this topic in hopes of being included on [NorthernChristian.org]. We both agree that there are a lot of possibilities when combining technology and Christianity. For instance, we have been discussing the concept of cloud Christianity, which could be understood simply as using the cloud to spread Christianity.

In conclusion, it is fun to apply different parts of your life together in order to find interesting analogies and you never know what you will come up with. You may also be surprised that others have had the same thought. In Ecclesiastes 1:9, it says “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” I think it is important not to take such statements out of context however. The author of Ecclesiastes is king Solomon (I wrote about this king before), who was given much wisdom from God and in this book he is trying to share some of those ideas. I don’t think it should be read that you can’t think of new ideas, but more in the sense that God already knows everything and we can’t think up something new that he doesn’t already know about. New to us, sure. That is my understanding anyway. Feel free to give your thoughts on it.

Paul tells the church at Ephesus that those in Heaven were fascinated by certain events on earth Read the rest of this entry →

What really changes? What stays the same?
Read the rest of this entry →

There were tears to be had this morning. Suffering is close and our hearts wrap around it, welcome it, the answer is to comfort; the answer is to condition; the answer is to confront. We all answer accordingly.

I feel the judgment yesterday, I hear it in his words, coarse, sarcastic. I hear it in her comment, it sears across my mind and I don’t know what to do with it. Forgiveness is easy, it’s figuring how that looks that’s hard. There are totem poles of history, priorities of piety and preciousness: these are the things we hold dear and the gospel does not top the carved teller when we want our story to be heard so badly.

My heart is grieved–the gospel does not top my list. I concern myself with things of this world, pleasure and recourse, provision and appearances. I am obsessed with the front that’s shown. I cry this morning, across from her (with her there is no front, there is only a face and a bared heart). I weep because we, ourselves, I, me, we meet felt needs thinking that the gospel will eventually come through, crossing our fingers for salvation, a wing and a prayer. But shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t the gospel be first as we give cups of cold water, rides to and from, and our testimony?

Shouldn’t the gospel be first?

We are listening to this song twice, “Your fingers reach around the bone, you set the break and set the tone.” Isn’t to set the tone to show how it’s done, gospel first, all else second? Coming so small, so holy, so discarded, and waiting 30 years and His lifetime to do the first of so few miracles. Meeting needs is only a comfort, a condition and a confrontation of all that’s wrong in the world. But He didn’t set the break and set the tone to show us how to right what’s wrong with the world, He reached around and did it a different way–He righted it for us.

We talked long last night and I drove home with one constant thought: Thank you God. For doing it for us. For me. I have climbed to the top of the totem pole, set myself atop ideals, easy fixes, and misplaced priorities, and still been further from Heaven than before.

The answer is the gospel.

Please take a look at the following inspirational video regarding global outreach
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I am.
Neither my father nor my mother, but of both.
I am small
But like my brothers, I am my own.

I grow.
It’s a race against the clock, and I was made eager to grow.
I am alive
And like others in my race, taste human rights.

I dream.
Not in thought, but my heart beats the rhythm of the human spirit,
Freedom’s song.
The passion of humanity and individuality flows through my veins, it’s how I was made.

Ask why.
My mother could be unwilling to care for me, or might have been raped,
I do not know.
But I do know I’m not to blame.

Ask why.
My only protection from the world has turned on me.
Turn away
You won’t protect me from my kin, though I have no fighting chance.

Ask why!
I wish I could understand how the world could be so cruel as to blame me.
In this world
That promotes this and only this way out, I wish I wasn’t made guilty.

I cry.
I might be incapable physically, but I’d try.
The heart that
Is still in formation, oh how it can feel heartache.

I cry.
This is how it feels to be forsaken, and now I’ll never meet my first love, laugh with friends, or chance the American Dream.
I think little
But if only I’d been given the chance for after-thought, these are what I’d say.
Yes, if I had a voice before my death sentence, these are what I’d plea.

I die.
If only I was given the chance to forgive you and this world, then I could have tried.
But I die,
I die.