Wilco Wow

The Leavers

Mankind

Our ground of hope is that God does not weary of mankind.

-- Ralph W. Sockman

Mercy for Japan, Mercy for Us

Father in heaven, you are the absolute Sovereign over the shaking of the earth, the rising of the sea, and the raging of the waves. We tremble at your power and bow before your unsearchable judgments and inscrutable ways. We cover our faces and kiss your omnipotent hand. We fall helpless to the floor in prayer and feel how fragile the very ground is beneath our knees.

O God, we humble ourselves under your holy majesty and repent. In a moment-in the twinkling of an eye-we too could be swept away. We are not more deserving of firm ground than our fellowmen in Japan. We too are flesh. We have bodies and homes and cars and family and precious places. We know that if we were treated according to our sins, who could stand? All of it would be gone in a moment. So in this dark hour we turn against our sins, not against you.

And we cry for mercy for Japan. Mercy, Father. Not for what they or we deserve. But mercy.

Have you not encouraged us in this? Have we not heard a hundred times in your Word the riches of your kindness, forbearance, and patience? Do you not a thousand times withhold your judgments, leading your rebellious world toward repentance? Yes, Lord. For your ways are not our ways, and your thoughts are not our thoughts.

Grant, O God, that the wicked will forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Grant us, your sinful creatures, to return to you, that you may have compassion. For surely you will abundantly pardon. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus, your beloved Son, will be saved.

May every heart-breaking loss-millions upon millions of losses-be healed by the wounded hands of the risen Christ. You are not unacquainted with your creatures' pain. You did not spare your own Son, but gave him up for us all.

In Jesus you tasted loss. In Jesus you shared the overwhelming flood of our sorrows and suffering. In Jesus you are a sympathetic Priest in the midst of our pain.

Deal tenderly now, Father, with this fragile people. Woo them. Win them. Save them.

And may the floods they so much dread make blessings break upon their head.

O let them not judge you with feeble sense, but trust you for your grace. And so behind this providence, soon find a smiling face.

In Jesus' merciful name, Amen.

-- John Piper

GO BLUE!

Human Beings / Spiritual Beings

Just an observation within myself; such distinctions have been quite helpful to me in many ways over the years. But, of late, I have noticed that recognizing wholeness of our being is also important. There has been a tendency (at least within myself) to peer at one through the lens of the other...depending on which 'being' is dominating my sense of things at the time. I suspect the reality is that we are fully both and there seems to be a number of implications to that. For one, we can't take ourselves apart and look at things in separate containers. We are inextricably interconnected. My view of God (and then of myself) is highly influenced by my human experience. And vice-versa. All that to say, I'm (at the moment) more in favor of both than one over the other.

Forgiveness

What a marvel it is to ask for and grant forgiveness.  Did you notice how difficult it is to NOT grant forgiveness when it is sought?  It is like offering a response as light as air, really easy to do...almost natural.  Too bad we are often convinced that asking for forgiveness is something hard and heavy.  Makes me wonder who is telling us that lie.  God certainly doesn't seem to be saying that, nearly always offering us forgiveness if we will just ask for it.

Freedom

...the truth will set you free.

-- John 8:32

Go Out Into Darkness

And I said to the man
who stood at the gate of the year:
"Give me a light,
that I may tread safely into the unknown!"
And he replied, "Go out into the darkness
and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light
and safer than a known way."

So I went forth,
And finding the hand of God,
Trod gladly into the night.
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.
So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife of things,
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention.
God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature. In Him
All time hath full provision.
Then rest; until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of life's stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise,
God's thought around His creatures
Our minds shall fill.

-- Marie Louise Haskins 1876 - 1957

Do you?

Do you ever wonder, at times, if something and what is happening to you...as you tumble on, sometimes lazily and sometimes in nearly catapulting form, into simply the next series of things that overtake your time and energy?  While busy with next obvious steps that are always in front of you, do you ever wonder where things are actually going, where they are taking you?  What it all is about?  Does it ever feel like just a dream of all things normal, yet strangely something else?

Yes, I do wonder such things.  And, today is one of those days...where it seems more like just the next thing happening for some inexplicable reason.  ...where all things big, and planned, and deeper, and purposeful about life are slightly and unattainably out-of-view and out-of-reach.

Perhaps, I noticed this sense of things today, because of this morning's slow, methodical late-winter dripping going on outside.

Aging & People

Somehow, you have to admire an aging man who moves towards people rather than away from them.

See Andy's story here.