Your love broke through...

this morning I spotted a book on the shelves of the wee church library in which I was sitting for a 'newcomers' class at the church I'm going to. I'm not totally sure what I'm doing in the class. But I think God sat me right beneath this book.
I had to check it out. I think I've seen it other places before. Isn't it funny how a book's time in your life sometimes is a long time in coming?

It's the book 'No Compromise. The Life Story of Keith Green.'

It's not the best writing in the world, and maybe it's not even the full-color picture of his life. But it's a person's story, told from the heart. So I'm almost done with it, have hardly been able to put it down today. Testimony books and I are like that.
Melanie, dear one, if you find this, know that your reconnecting me with Keith's music has been a blessing to me. How I miss you.

He's been gone since before I was born. Yet in his philosophy, his passion, Keith feels like the friend I wish were here; we cry out about so many of the same things. So this book was a challenge today, a challenge, a comfort, a friend. Maybe I'm not so crazy after all. Maybe I could even be even 'crazier' and it would be okay...

So many of us find grace, really find and hold onto and treasure GRACE--Abba-love--as a next-phase in our walk with and toward Jesus. Isn't that interesting? It's like a next-stage after striving so hard, wanting so much to be better for Jesus, and then realizing how broken you are and how impossible that is.

I like what Keith wrote in 1980 in his journal: "I used to think discipline and self-control was a natural by-product of a supernatural holiness and revival. but now I see that lack of self-discipline is keeping my holiness (which I already have in Jesus) from controlling my life an coming to the surface. This is a brand-new view, and I believe I've isolated the enemy's greatest stronghold in my life at this time... Discipline is not holiness--nor the way to holiness--it just helps you maintain it."

And feelings are not God, are not always right. But what a gift from Him they are. I wonder if we are so eager to keep ourselves from drowning that we disregard them as a precious tool that He uses if we place them in His hands. It's a tricky tightrope. But God sings. God weeps. God inspires. Let's let ourselves FEEL, as well as know about, His holiness and His glory.

pieces d'aujourdhui

I am about to eat a Limited Edition coffee flavored KitKat. Food with "limited edition" on it always intrigues me and then always ends up at BigLots. Go to Big Lots. You'll see.

It feels as though half of my heart is far far away in the Ukraine.
it is.

Walking to work today I found the word for how I have been feeling. Expectant. It's not a bad feeling. Just restless, uneasy, unsettled. When I realize what the feeling is, I actually realize it's a good feeling. But it's easy to mistake it for unhappiness. I feel like something's going to happen, like things are going to change, like the world is strange and God is stirring up my insides and the way I see. I like being able to hold onto an awareness that the world is strange. That's a blessing. But i also feel like I'm living some strange life that was assigned to me. Who's skin am I in?

Music today... Hem's CD "Rabbit Songs", which is so nice to study by and have as background to live against. Delirious's "Find me in the river".

Today's reading... Genesis, from Jacob and Esau to the end of the book. What a crazy, crazy bunch of people. What a crazy, crazy story. It's not the story we've been told, told in bits in Sunday School. It's so much stranger and bigger and more cohesive. Things aren't packageable in little wee lessons with corresponding flannel figures and easy morals for the day. This stuff is pre-Mosaic law, pre-temple, pre-a lot of revelation of God. Whom were these men, these 'patriarchs,' worshipping? Whom were they hearing, wrestling, questioning?
El. YHWH. God Almighty.
How little they knew OF Him compared to all the revelation we are privileged to have today, through the Word, through Christ Jesus. Yet how much they KNEW Him, the real Him.

How far we have to go. How much more of Him is there yet to be revealed?

Work thoughts: Do you think kids are really supposed to be put in large groups as they are in daycares, etc.? maybe it's just that I'm not made to be a leader of large groups of kids, but I'm not so sure that it's even right or natural for things to be this way. If I ever started any kind of childcare it would be a new breed where every kid or every two kids had just one adult assigned to them, and group-coming-together activities were planned creatively, cooperatively and joyfully.

Melanie, I miss you.

that's really all that's on my mind and heart right now
except for my prayers for you and my thoughts of where you must be and my wonderishness at how you are feeling and what you are experiencing.

be well, dearest friend. it is well with our souls.