“I have been snoozing this reminder to grab my tomatoes out of the fridge for the last half hour.” My coworkers respond with genuine concern and a touch of mockery. “Oh my goodness, go! They’re crying out for you.”
Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body. Proverbs 16:24
How I long to be someone whose lips drip soothing and sweet words to all I encounter. But oh how my tongue can be a dagger more often! I have left a trail of wounds in the side of the one I love.
I always knock twice and wait with an expectant smile to hear a muffled, “come in”.
He was absorbed, contorted over his guitar, cords snaking and coiling into various devices. I knelt in front of him and lay my head on his knees, just listening.
I don’t quite know how to describe this. For some time my mind has felt “closed”. Constantly preoccupied. I have been conscious of it when it’s happening which makes it all the more frustrating.
But today, I feel free. Free and present and open. Like the walls of a cage have come down; like the constant weighty fog of distant mind has withdrawn for a moment.
Perhaps it is inspiration, perhaps I am remembering what I miss, perhaps it is the absence of social media and the chosen silence of my phone. Maybe it is all of the above. And maybe it is the Holy Spirit reawakening inside of me because a fissure in my stubbornness has emerged. Oh God, I hope that is true.
I so appreciated that she had asked me. And I didn’t know what my answer was. She’d been talking of her struggle with using profane language within the context of a band that had once led congregations in worship of God. A rift was growing and that fact presented to her an issue that was difficult to ignore in good conscience.
“We’re supposed to be united and this is causing division. That doesn’t seem right.”
“You guys are mad at each other all the time because you love each other. It’s weird,” he said. I’m not sure how to respond so I just laugh. But some part of me enjoys glimpsing our relationship through anyone else’s eyes but my own.
I am not a welcoming presence—I am reluctant. I do not love the homeless. I argue against everything he says. I am forgetful, unthinking, a poor listener. I do not pursue his family. I do not respect him. I demand instead of discuss.
These things were said in anger but they are not entirely wrong.
If the current artistic trend and belief is nihilism and meaninglessness, we need to push back with truth in our art.
All kinds of evil can come out of a corrupt imagination but out of the imagination comes good as well. Our hearts cannot be reached without the imagination.
“The only way to create freely is through a sanctified imagination.” —C.S. Lewis (?)
The church needs more imaginative activity to usher hearts back to aliveness.
You don’t need to prove your worth. Your dignity has been given to you by God. Making demands, exerting force, and being ugly doesn’t win you the respect you’re looking for.
There is nothing better than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil—this is God’s gift to man. Ecclesiastes 3:12–13
This is God’s world. All is because of Him. Genesis 1
Focus less on your desire to be properly loved and respected by people on this earth and more on Me and My love.
It is my deepest, most honest, yet most unreachable desire to be fully yielded to You. It gives me the greatest hope and sorrow to think about because I carry with me the weight of so much failure.
My daddy just called to encourage me. He said he felt he should tell me not to be afraid to dream with the Lord. This is something he regrets not doing as a young man.