I'm making plans to waste my life on You.
"Breaking Down," John Mark McMillan
The above is currently one of my favorite lyrics. I like to listen to that song as soon as I get up to start my blood pumping and my heart beating toward eternity. There's not enough dignity to keep me away from You.
Recently, however, there has been a change in morning routine, one than I agonize over and lament and abhor. It brings me such grief because I know the cause: Christmas.
Christmas is an incredible season, as illustrated by the fact that my mother sent me candied almonds by post. I am munching the nuts happily (or merrily, as the case may be) as I type this entry. Even better, advent and the observation of the Incarnation bring the person of Jesus to the forefront of countless minds. There's a spring to the steps of the mobs of shoppers; exiting the grocery store, one is followed by cries of, "Merry Christmas!"
Living in this culture--the internship, accountability, discipleship culture--adds another dynamic to the season: Christmas break. Christmas break in theFurnace is different from Christmas break in school. In school, break is a welcome respite from intellectual overload and the bearing of burdensome packs, a time to reflect and celebrate, to see loved ones and rejoice in the great Lover. In theFurnace, break can easily become the altar on which we sacrifice momentum and discipline to engage in revelry.
After a whirlwind of prayer meetings, hours in the prayer room, and weekly accountability meetings, we find ourselves suddenly--if temporarily--stranded to navigate the spiritual waters on our own. The people we are paying to hold us to our daily commitments are out of town drinking eggnog, and we are left to ourselves. Too often, we disappoint.
I experienced roughly a month of sleeplessness and illness that only just ended before break began. In the week since sesmester's end, I have been dogged by an instinct I rarely face: to sleep and sleep and sleep. I crash for hours as my body attempts to recover from the strain it has been through of late, and when I awake, I power through the tasks I need to accomplish, only to crash once again.
God times have been sparse.
It dawned on me today, "I am setting myself up to go to my first accountability of the year and say, in typical fashion, 'I didn't do well on break.'"
That is unacceptable. Am I not on break to remember the massive King who chose inexpressable humility that I might know Him? He is worth more than this.
Though my holidays are sure to include cups of cocoa, snow angels (if this bipolar city sees any precipitation), and the consumption of many more candied almonds, I am still on mission. The call still stands. "Draw near to God."
How will you stay steady through the break?
Monday, December 21, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Psalm 143
A Psalm of David.
Hear my prayer, O LORD,
Give ear to my supplications!
Answer me in Your faithfulness, in Your righteousness!
And do not enter into judgment with Your servant,
For in Your sight no man living is righteous.
For the enemy has persecuted my soul;
He has crushed my life to the ground;
He has made me dwell in dark places, like those who have long been dead.
Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me;
My heart is appalled within me.
I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all Your doings;
I muse on the work of Your hands.
I stretch out my hands to You;
My soul longs for You, as a parched land. Selah.
Answer me quickly, O LORD, my spirit fails;
Do not hide Your face from me,
Or I will become like those who go down to the pit.
Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning;
For I trust in You;
Teach me the way in which I should walk;
For to You I lift up my soul.
Deliver me, O LORD, from my enemies;
I take refuge in You.
Teach me to do Your will,
For You are my God;
Let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.
For the sake of Your name, O LORD, revive me
In Your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble.
And in Your lovingkindness, cut off my enemies
And destroy all those who afflict my soul,
For I am Your servant.
Hear my prayer, O LORD,
Give ear to my supplications!
Answer me in Your faithfulness, in Your righteousness!
And do not enter into judgment with Your servant,
For in Your sight no man living is righteous.
For the enemy has persecuted my soul;
He has crushed my life to the ground;
He has made me dwell in dark places, like those who have long been dead.
Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me;
My heart is appalled within me.
I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all Your doings;
I muse on the work of Your hands.
I stretch out my hands to You;
My soul longs for You, as a parched land. Selah.
Answer me quickly, O LORD, my spirit fails;
Do not hide Your face from me,
Or I will become like those who go down to the pit.
Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning;
For I trust in You;
Teach me the way in which I should walk;
For to You I lift up my soul.
Deliver me, O LORD, from my enemies;
I take refuge in You.
Teach me to do Your will,
For You are my God;
Let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.
For the sake of Your name, O LORD, revive me
In Your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble.
And in Your lovingkindness, cut off my enemies
And destroy all those who afflict my soul,
For I am Your servant.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Deja Vu
Excerpt from a May 2008 journal entry:
"I went out from my native land with a searching heart, and I found God awaiting me there. He invited me to be released from gravity and dance among the stars, but I wanted to wrap Him up and take Him back home, where I was comfortable and the weights that held me down were all familiar."
Further up and further in!
"I went out from my native land with a searching heart, and I found God awaiting me there. He invited me to be released from gravity and dance among the stars, but I wanted to wrap Him up and take Him back home, where I was comfortable and the weights that held me down were all familiar."
Further up and further in!
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Simple
I really enjoy God.
Is that a rather elementary statement to make? Perhaps.
He is just so delightful. It makes me so happy to see the way He is constantly interweaving the motions and conversations of life to communicate a larger point. It's great.
Everything that has been occurring in my sphere of late, all my paradigms that have been challenged, and every conversation I have held--the sum of my life is pointed toward the anxious need for maturity.
This begins in my day-to-day existence. I am experiencing what I can only articulate as a fundamental longing to be good. This "good" of which I speak is not simply a lack of outrageously wrong behaviour or thought. I want contribute to the rushing flow of time into which I am so often swept unaware. I want to be good.
This, for a time, concerned me. Is this desire basic self-interest? But no, He says. Goodness is one of My fruits. Kindness. Gentleness. Those are Mine.
And so I am slowly beginning to engage the messy process of straining forward as a person. I am learning to let the dead things and the rotten things be expelled from my flesh. It is not a pleasant process: For the sourness to be pushed out of me, it will necessarily be exposed both to myself and to those around me. I am wearied by the depth of my seemingly endless depravity. However, I perceive the life that is being breathed into my soul, though all I may feel in my body is the weightiness of my filth.
As these transformations and challenges are occuring at my foundations, I find that this movement is happening all around me. Tonight, I listened to my dear friends' exasperation at their own toleration of carnal things. I heard an urgency for abandonment in their words. This thing is living and dynamic.
I watched a friend's eyes fill with tears as she lamented the inactivity of the Church on behalf of the orphans in the world. "Our churches are filled with people who are perfectly capable of providing for a child," she said. "Why don't they? They go buy a new TV or computer instead. Why?"
These heart cries are not isolated. Together, they form the picture of the very activity of God. Romans 8:22 tells us that creation literally groans in waiting for the revelation of the Son of God. Revelation 19:7-8 exposes what will be necessary for this longing to be fulfilled: the Bride of Christ, His Church, must prepare Herself for His return. How will She do this? She must clothe herself in acts of righteousness, being found in linens spotless and bright.
This is the drive of the Spirit for the Church today. She must cease to be a child, gratifying her addiction to entertainment and her ties to materialism, and she must mature into responsibility for the world for which Christ longs to return.
Why, do you think, is the Church heralding the need to care for widows, orphans, and the poor? It is not because She is joining some social motion. No, the secular world is following the activity God is desperate to accomplish through His people. We are being driven to responsibility on this planet that we might be made a Bride ready for His coming.
What I realize is this: He is asking us to be simple people. People unconcerned with appearances and possessions, status and power, fame and prowess. People who don't particularly care about how they look or how they compare to the socially established standard. People who, instead, care deeply about caring for the well-being of the exploited. Who go without so that others may be provided for in the flesh and, having been sustained in physical life, may be presented with hope for eternity. Who are on mission at every moment, desperate to see the kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven that the King might return. Basic, unpretentious, satisfied, simple people.
Is that a rather elementary statement to make? Perhaps.
He is just so delightful. It makes me so happy to see the way He is constantly interweaving the motions and conversations of life to communicate a larger point. It's great.
Everything that has been occurring in my sphere of late, all my paradigms that have been challenged, and every conversation I have held--the sum of my life is pointed toward the anxious need for maturity.
This begins in my day-to-day existence. I am experiencing what I can only articulate as a fundamental longing to be good. This "good" of which I speak is not simply a lack of outrageously wrong behaviour or thought. I want contribute to the rushing flow of time into which I am so often swept unaware. I want to be good.
This, for a time, concerned me. Is this desire basic self-interest? But no, He says. Goodness is one of My fruits. Kindness. Gentleness. Those are Mine.
And so I am slowly beginning to engage the messy process of straining forward as a person. I am learning to let the dead things and the rotten things be expelled from my flesh. It is not a pleasant process: For the sourness to be pushed out of me, it will necessarily be exposed both to myself and to those around me. I am wearied by the depth of my seemingly endless depravity. However, I perceive the life that is being breathed into my soul, though all I may feel in my body is the weightiness of my filth.
As these transformations and challenges are occuring at my foundations, I find that this movement is happening all around me. Tonight, I listened to my dear friends' exasperation at their own toleration of carnal things. I heard an urgency for abandonment in their words. This thing is living and dynamic.
I watched a friend's eyes fill with tears as she lamented the inactivity of the Church on behalf of the orphans in the world. "Our churches are filled with people who are perfectly capable of providing for a child," she said. "Why don't they? They go buy a new TV or computer instead. Why?"
These heart cries are not isolated. Together, they form the picture of the very activity of God. Romans 8:22 tells us that creation literally groans in waiting for the revelation of the Son of God. Revelation 19:7-8 exposes what will be necessary for this longing to be fulfilled: the Bride of Christ, His Church, must prepare Herself for His return. How will She do this? She must clothe herself in acts of righteousness, being found in linens spotless and bright.
This is the drive of the Spirit for the Church today. She must cease to be a child, gratifying her addiction to entertainment and her ties to materialism, and she must mature into responsibility for the world for which Christ longs to return.
Why, do you think, is the Church heralding the need to care for widows, orphans, and the poor? It is not because She is joining some social motion. No, the secular world is following the activity God is desperate to accomplish through His people. We are being driven to responsibility on this planet that we might be made a Bride ready for His coming.
What I realize is this: He is asking us to be simple people. People unconcerned with appearances and possessions, status and power, fame and prowess. People who don't particularly care about how they look or how they compare to the socially established standard. People who, instead, care deeply about caring for the well-being of the exploited. Who go without so that others may be provided for in the flesh and, having been sustained in physical life, may be presented with hope for eternity. Who are on mission at every moment, desperate to see the kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven that the King might return. Basic, unpretentious, satisfied, simple people.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
There that is.
This is the question I want to ask of every human being on the planet.
Well, one of them. Of course, I'd like to know their favourite thing about Jesus, and the story of what He has done in them, and lots of other glorious tales as well. But once all those things are settled, I am itching to ask one thing:
What are the five books you would recommend I read before I die? (And, why?)
So, do tell!
(An aside: As deeply as I appreciate your wittiness, let me clarify that I already have read and continue to read the Bible. It's as necessary as water. So, after the Bible, what are your top five literary pleasures?)
Well, one of them. Of course, I'd like to know their favourite thing about Jesus, and the story of what He has done in them, and lots of other glorious tales as well. But once all those things are settled, I am itching to ask one thing:
What are the five books you would recommend I read before I die? (And, why?)
So, do tell!
(An aside: As deeply as I appreciate your wittiness, let me clarify that I already have read and continue to read the Bible. It's as necessary as water. So, after the Bible, what are your top five literary pleasures?)
The Vagabond Song
Written early 2009. Chemineau thoughts.
I am a vagabond.
I belong to another place--a far country.
My soul is not tied to this rock.
My heart is free of cares in this world.
My life is bigger than the confines of the planet.
I am anti-gravity.
I go about in rags, wandering, destitue--looking for my home.
I am an alien. I am a stranger.
My eyes are constantly seeking, seeking the Great City.
I live in the Wait. I carry the Ache.
I am a whisper. I am a vapor. I am a phantom.
I am the breath of eternity. I ride upon the wind.
My heart is fixed on the journey.
I am pressing on toward Zion.
I am confident in the world unseen.
I rest assured in the reality of an invisible Kingdom.
My senses cannot confine me.
Write it across my brow: just passing through.
I freely admit, I do not belong here.
My longing is for another place.
My deepest affections are for another Master.
My aim is for another goal.
I am a traveler. Pilgrim. Vagabond.
----------------------------------------------
[Reprise]
I live in the Wait. I carry the Ache.
Looking...
Past the veil.
The beautiful unseen.
The glorious mystery.
Crying, "Come!"
Heart unfettered.
Anti-gravity.
Traveler.
Asking. Seeking. Knocking.
Desperate to behold.
Possessing no alternatives.
Willing one thing.
One great obsession:
Only Him.
I am a vagabond.
I belong to another place--a far country.
My soul is not tied to this rock.
My heart is free of cares in this world.
My life is bigger than the confines of the planet.
I am anti-gravity.
I go about in rags, wandering, destitue--looking for my home.
I am an alien. I am a stranger.
My eyes are constantly seeking, seeking the Great City.
I live in the Wait. I carry the Ache.
I am a whisper. I am a vapor. I am a phantom.
I am the breath of eternity. I ride upon the wind.
My heart is fixed on the journey.
I am pressing on toward Zion.
I am confident in the world unseen.
I rest assured in the reality of an invisible Kingdom.
My senses cannot confine me.
Write it across my brow: just passing through.
I freely admit, I do not belong here.
My longing is for another place.
My deepest affections are for another Master.
My aim is for another goal.
I am a traveler. Pilgrim. Vagabond.
----------------------------------------------
[Reprise]
I live in the Wait. I carry the Ache.
Looking...
Past the veil.
The beautiful unseen.
The glorious mystery.
Crying, "Come!"
Heart unfettered.
Anti-gravity.
Traveler.
Asking. Seeking. Knocking.
Desperate to behold.
Possessing no alternatives.
Willing one thing.
One great obsession:
Only Him.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tour ramblings
theFurnace just spent a week on the road doing nights of prayer and worship across the country. I went with a group of thirty college students to tour the west coast. We started in Roswell, NM, travelled through Arizona and California, and ended in my home church in Ogden, UT. It was an incredible experience, and we saw God move in magnificent ways. Once I write my ramble about our free day on the ocean, I may post it here. In the meantime, here are a few other rambles tapped out in a fifteen-passenger van on the freeway...
On the Desert
The road through New Mexico and Arizona is beautiful. It reminds me very much of the drive through certain parts of Utah. Especially as the sun drops in the sky and the shadows grow longer, the light casts a sparse, romantic beauty on the desert as it lies on either side of the highway.
This more than anything explains the unique charm of this country: the desert doesn't flow as the coast and its ocean; neither does it grow in the way of the plains. It simply lies with its dusty greens and dirty yellows, serene and a bit predictable surrounding four lanes of asphalt, without presumption or extraneous aspirations. Even the rocky growths that are repeated again and again in the view from the car windows seem to roll in and out of the ground in which they are planted, unlike the boldly stated mountains or the sheer and sudden precipices that can be seen elsewhere.
Our movements have fallen in with the rhythm of this land. They are paced and recurring. We listen to songs that flow in and out of each other. There seems to be something natural and familiar to this place.
Perhaps the desert is a faint echo of some plainer existence to which we feel an indefinite drawing. It evokes a memory of a life that is content with strength and tenacity, not caring for embellishments or handiwork to display. The desert is a life without trophies on its shelf, a life that is more interested in lying in quiet expanse than momentarily leaping from the earth: one that is deep and interior and silent, one whose power lies mostly in the unseen.
On Happy Jack
Making a drive across Wyoming is one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, and one that I have undertaken many times. The landscape from I-80 is barren and notably indecisive. Even in colour, the topography refuses to commit to any shade or hue and instead muddles about in a dreary grey. After several hours of such a view, my eyes grow weary of constantly gazing on dustiness and endless horizontal lines.
Then comes the glorious moment of the trek shortly outside of the city of Laramie. One rounds yet another grey corner and is suddenly greeted by bright reds and greens shouting cheery platitudes from either side of the winding road. Pines are stacked up above the grooved face of the rock like an evergreen ensemble marching through a wilderness. The sign for the nearest exit reads “Happy Jack Road.”
Cheers, friends.
On the Desert
The road through New Mexico and Arizona is beautiful. It reminds me very much of the drive through certain parts of Utah. Especially as the sun drops in the sky and the shadows grow longer, the light casts a sparse, romantic beauty on the desert as it lies on either side of the highway.
This more than anything explains the unique charm of this country: the desert doesn't flow as the coast and its ocean; neither does it grow in the way of the plains. It simply lies with its dusty greens and dirty yellows, serene and a bit predictable surrounding four lanes of asphalt, without presumption or extraneous aspirations. Even the rocky growths that are repeated again and again in the view from the car windows seem to roll in and out of the ground in which they are planted, unlike the boldly stated mountains or the sheer and sudden precipices that can be seen elsewhere.
Our movements have fallen in with the rhythm of this land. They are paced and recurring. We listen to songs that flow in and out of each other. There seems to be something natural and familiar to this place.
Perhaps the desert is a faint echo of some plainer existence to which we feel an indefinite drawing. It evokes a memory of a life that is content with strength and tenacity, not caring for embellishments or handiwork to display. The desert is a life without trophies on its shelf, a life that is more interested in lying in quiet expanse than momentarily leaping from the earth: one that is deep and interior and silent, one whose power lies mostly in the unseen.
On Happy Jack
Making a drive across Wyoming is one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, and one that I have undertaken many times. The landscape from I-80 is barren and notably indecisive. Even in colour, the topography refuses to commit to any shade or hue and instead muddles about in a dreary grey. After several hours of such a view, my eyes grow weary of constantly gazing on dustiness and endless horizontal lines.
Then comes the glorious moment of the trek shortly outside of the city of Laramie. One rounds yet another grey corner and is suddenly greeted by bright reds and greens shouting cheery platitudes from either side of the winding road. Pines are stacked up above the grooved face of the rock like an evergreen ensemble marching through a wilderness. The sign for the nearest exit reads “Happy Jack Road.”
Cheers, friends.