In Tassie

hiya, have been in good ol' tassie for the last 3 days since christmas... what beautiful weather! 10-25degC! woohoo! and the sun's blazingly bright!

anyhows, thank God for providing us with all we need, especially accomodations- its been pretty awesome.

somehow, its beginning to look like we've terribly underestimated this little island- been all the way to the south in Esperance Bay, then all the way east to Swansea and the Freycinet Peninsular, and then up north from Bicheno to St Helens and the Bay of fires... Today we pushed westward and am in Launceston now... arrived at 11pm, and grateful for a place to stay. Been a few awesome sunsets!!

i'll try to get some pics up sometime.

cheers!

Prayer for the Year Ahead

O LORD and Heavenly Father,
I stand at the threshold of a new year.
Small and uncertain of things to come;
I stand in awe of all that you have in store for me,
of what you are preparing within.

Surely we are destined for greatness in You;
for your Glory demands it.
It is not with strength and power that I come to You,
But with weakness and tenderness, and with love.

I thank you for your faithful hand about me this past year-
Each step, firm and secure;
For faithful friends about me,
and Godly men that cross my path
to plant a seed in my life,
And to assure me of Your greatness, favor and faithfulness!

Your strength O Lord, I need;
Your wisdom at my right hand,
Your favor at my left;
Grace before me,
Christ about me,
Binding me to You and You to me.

Teach me Jesus, to take level paths
Where my feet may be on sure ground.
Direct my thoughts to You
and let my words have its fill of grace;
keep my eyes focused on You
and my hands free from idleness.
Keep faithlessness away from me
and have joy abounding in my heart.

Though the path may not be clear,
Nor the next step sure,
I ask for patience and faith to trust You dearly,
to have an awe and wonder
of You.
Keep my heart pure and tender;
To lay down my crowns before Your glory
to surrender my desires and burdens to You,
for it is too great to bear alone.

I need Your Holy Spirit to guide me, inspire me and to hold me
safe from myself and a broken world.
Direct me to your courts daily;
Here's my heart, take and keep it, keep it for Your courts above.

Jesus being my all in all,
In His Name, I say,
"Amen"

GSD

Pensive

On the eve of the eve of christmas
the eve of a family vacation
exhilaration and yet uncertain. no accomodations booked, itinerary not fixed

Cool!

time changes everything
time is defined by change
everything changes
defined
timed

years fly by
months pass
and the days fade from memory
moments vanish from vestiges of impression

Lord, won't you rekindle the sense of awe in my heart?
Keep if fresh and tender
amen
אמן

Oh I Want To Know You More

Steve Fry

Just the time I feel that I’ve been caught in the mire of self.
Just the time I feel my mind’s been bought by worldly wealth.
That’s when the breeze begins to blow I know the Spirit’s call.
And all the worldly wanderings just melt into His love.

Oh I want to know You more.
Deep within my soul I want to know You.
Oh I want to know You;
To feel Your heart and know Your mind,
Looking in Your eyes stirs up within me,
Cries that say I want to know You,
Oh I want to know You more,
Oh I want to know You more.

When my daily needs ordinarily loses life and song.
My heart begins to bleed: sensitivity to Him is gone.
I’ve run the race but set my pace and face a shattered soul.
But the gentle arms of Jesus warm my hunger to be whole.

Oh I want to know You more.
Deep within my soul I want to know You.
Oh I want to know You;
And I would give my final breath,
To know You in Your death and resurrection,
Cries that say I want to know You,
Oh I want to know You more,
Oh I want to know You more.

Christ-mas is With Us A-gain

What's christmas got to do with me? A time where I feel 'all christmassy' and warm and fuzzy? Food, candles and nice friends? Worse- christmas in the tropics; how terribly unexciting. No snow, no shepherds out in the freezing cold, no reason to sit around a fireplace, nor for hot chocolate, nor sugar-saturated christmas pudding. Tough. Christmas in a tropical city- all that marketing, sales, commercialism, NO STARS in the humid night sky, only the flashing blinking lights of freezing malls and stuff. Sweaty people trying to push things in your face.

Then there's the problem with the date. 25th December. Which roman emperor in his right mind would have called for a midwinter census? People would have revolted! It must have been suicidal shepherds out in the snow, not to mention explaining why grass would be growing under that blanket of frost. Poor sheep. Then again, it took the wisemen over two years to arrive, so I guess the 'nativity' of Christ- his 'babyhood' if we could call it- still stands. He would still have experienced two winters before they arrived with the gifts. The three gifts. Not Three wisemen. Oh well.

What was He thinking? Forsaking the perfection of heaven, for the squalor of earth. Better yet, die for us. And while in that manger he's that image of frailty, tenderness and innocence; a foreshadow of how he ends his life frail, tender and still innocent. Jesus you're so beautiful.

"The most Innocent [man that ever lived] had to suffer the Most Unjust suffering, so that the most wicked of us can live our lives as innocent" Loren Cunningham

"Magnificat anima mea Dominum;
Et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo."

Then there's Mary. The poor girl- the psychological trauma. My goodness! God's poster child for using the simple to confound the wise. Carrying a "holy embryo" as Michael Card calls it. Half the chromosomes? Oh dear. What a paradox- the Created carrying the Creator. Its repurcussions echo through all time.

"My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."

Then again, she was faithful- faithful with the task set before her. It would not be an easy journey. From cradle to the cross- talk about total quality management, or cradle-to-the-grave service. And yet, in this case it went more than the grave. There was the glory of the resurrected Jesus Christ!

Christmas seems to me, a simple reminder in the calendar that Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again. His work on earth was complete and perfect. The whole history and humanity of man converged on those 33 years of incarnation, culminating at the cross- where all the prior deeds of man, the present and all the future deeds of man were summed up with Jesus on the cross and crucified. Before we were, he bore our sins, our suffering and our pain. More than me remembering his birth, I will remember his death and his ressurection. And I MUST remember he is coming again. Coming very soon.

C. S. Lewis summed up Christmas in one sentence: 'The Son of God became a man to enable men to become the sons of God.'

Put Christ back in Christmas.

Equality the Highest Pursuit?

From C. S. Lewis, on Membership (Sobornost, No 31, June 1945)

"It is idle to say that men are of equal value. If value is taken in a worldly sense- if we mean that all men are equally useful or beautiful or good or entertaining- then it is nonsense. If it means that all are of equal value as immmortal souls then I think it conceals a dangerous error. The infinte value of each human soul is not a christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value he perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because he is Love. It may be that He loves all equally- he certainly loved all to the death- and I am not certain what the expression means. If there is equality it is his love, not in us.

"Equality is a quantitative term and therefore love often knows nothing of it. Authority exercised with humility and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live....

"I have wanted to try to expel that quite unchristian worship of the human individual simply as such which is so rampant in modern thought sided by side with our collectivism; for one error begets the opposite error and, far from neutralizing, they aggravate each other. I mean the pestilent notion (one sees it in literary criticism) that each of us starts with a treasure called 'personality' locked up inside him, and that to expand and express this, to guard it from interference, to be 'original', is the main end of life. This is Pelagian, or worse, and it defeats even itself. No man who values originality will ever be origianl. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake, and what men call originality will come unsought. Even on that level, the submission of the individual to the function is already beginning to bring true personality to birth. And secondly, I have wanted to show that Christianity is not, in the long run, concerned either with individuals or communities. Neither the individual nor the community as popular thought understands them can inherit eternal life: neither the natural self, nor the collective mass, but a new creature."