Chosen Hunger [Glorious Fast - Part I]

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen?"

I know what it is to be hungry.

A little bit.

You know, where every sensation is heightened, (stub your toe and see.) and you carry with you an ache that won't. go. away...

Hunger is both a gift, and a tragedy.

And normally, we go to great lengths to avoid it...

But to choose to be hungry... 

We call that fasting. 

To choose to carry the ache everywhere--

To embrace the heightened sensitivity to seemingly unrelated woe,

Could this be what it means to have fellowship with Christ in His sufferings?

And could it be that personal vulnerability, and brokenness, and weakness born of raw hunger are prerequisite to being a channel for life and liberty?

Could it be?

Is This Not the Life I Have Chosen?

I watch the scurry from my seat behind the wheel, past noses of three cars poised to launch. 

We've gotten pretty good at our "preflight."

These engines idle; these craft of steel and fiberglass wait in precise formation, just barely holding short of the drive. We'll leave almost simultaneously. Five of us. Still pre-dawn. To three destinations 100, 200 miles apart. But we'll be back in a few hours.

I sigh, close my eyes. Rest head to head rest.

Then I look again.

Looks like a carrier deck.

How fitting...

-  -  -  -  -  -  -

This is war. 

I'm most cognizant of it when the sun sets and the moon rises. But sleep won't come. 

By day, we work. 

-changing carpets in our rental, working the relentless wedding list, building, cleaning, weeding, planting, designing, then dropping everything to operate an ambulance... (and did I mention my laundry?)

By night, we watch, we war...

-pacing, pleading, juggling strategies. praying. reading. writing. leading... hand holding.

And then we repeat the oft-quoted words of a valiant friend: "I can rest in Heaven"

 

Is this not the life I have chosen?

I'm going back to Isaiah 58. 

verse 6, verse 7, verses 8 and 9...

Because this is the life I've chosen.

And I'm going to pull it apart piece by piece... Every agonizing, thrilling little detail. 

Because I can't be satisfied until I watch "light break forth as morning"

in the darkest soul I know.

You can come with, if you'd like...

starting tomorrow.

Almost Obedience [of lights, lanes, and a lecture]

It's pouring rain. 
I'm half in your lane because the only way I can keep out of the standing water is by straddling the yellow line. 
I'm all lit up, and have been watching your headlights oncoming for the last three miles-- 

and you're going to play chicken. with. an. Ambulance.


?!!


--As my dad would say:

"Work with me."

I have to laugh.
We rumble along. I just raise my eyebrows as they go by, me fully in my lane, driving in deep water.
(because we prefer smart driving to brave.)

The rain slows and we pick up pace again. And three drivers in a row have their cars in park a half mile before I get there, and the next driver just crosses the white line enough to spit gravel everywhere and endanger my windscreen.

I can't resist a little lecture in the moments before we meet and part.

Eh hem..., driving with one wheel barely over the white line still verily qualifies as being on the road. Especially at that speed, bro. And driving with all but one wheel on the other side would too. Know what I'm saying?


[car streaks by]


This 'almost off the road' thing is really a misnomer. 
You're either on the road,

or you're... off. the...

Hey...

And suddenly, it is as if He is sitting in the passenger seat, pointing towards the next car-- the one that is almost stopped, and almost all the way off...

It is as if He turns a kind face from it to me, locks with my eyes and just raises His eyebrows a bit and smiles a little, that smile that betrays a bit of something like sadness and a whole lot of Love-- That smile I've seen too many times to count...

right. 

So... whose idea was the lecture. mine, or Yours?

-  -  -  -  -

His, I think.
I suddenly see how they are one and the same. The guy who blazes past, and the guy who almost stops. Both still on the road.

And I think of the times I mostly obey...

God's Fortress

"...It's not even American young people and European young people working together--"

"We're Adventist young people."

I sit and listen, fidget while tingles play tag up and down my spine. I brush tears away; squeeze fists together tight till my forearms bulge. 

I'm watching stone walls generations old crack before my eyes.

I'm watching the sun dip low on the heyday of materialism, secularism, postmodernism. 

Yes, even on the continent.

I'm watching a generation wake up and decide all those things are empty and they've had enough.

I am one of them.

Oh, and I don't mean to say we'll win without paying the ultimate price.

But I am saying, it's as good as over. 

We can't lose.

. . . .

I recline early, book in hand under soft glow of christmas lights that grace my office year-round. (Jet lag in my favor, I'm bright and eager at 0200)

My eyes hesitate at the end of this phrase, retrace and return. Revel:

"The church is God's fortress"

 Acts of the Apostles p.11 | photo: JN

GYC Europe (From the i of my Phone)

Can't be weary in this place. Nope.
Even when I am tired. :)

I pinch myself over and over. Is this Europe? Is that our logo?
And am I really here?

I am. And it is.

I tingle. We all do. I have seen --I am seeing something great.
Something history will remember always.

It's a blur. But I'm doing my best to remember every waking detail.

coming home from outreach

friends from home :)

Sign Here Please

"By signing, I would have been giving away comprehensive and exclusive rights to all of my music, everywhere in the universe, for perpetuity! No!"

We still laugh every time we remember it.
Our incredulous friend-since-childhood, turned celebrity and world traveler. And us.

We'd just finished sharing a stage. And now under discussion was the paperwork so often required for such appearances...

- - -

Comprehensive, exclusive, universal... For perpetuity.
My rights.
Sign here please.

I bristle. Don't you?
The last thing I want to do is give up my rights.

But do I really have any?
Oh yes, "We hold these truths to be self evident..."

But on the cosmic stage...

On the cosmic stage, I'm a criminal. And I already gave my rights away.
But I still claim them. My right to myself. My right to my powers. My right to pleasures...
It's all death. And they're not even really mine...
I don't even have the right to life.

Unless Jesus Himself gives me His.
The right to His power, His pleasures, His life... Himself.

It's crazy. But He offers it anyway.
And so we trade.

That's when I sign away my claims to myself.

Sign here please.



You bet.
My rights, comprehensive, exclusive, universal, for perpetuity.
I release my claims to myself.

Christ claims my powers, my gifts, my breath,

I claim Christ.

Until Next Time...

Mics and pop filters, and preamps slide back into their boxes,
until next time.

They've been out, waiting for the "All Clear" from Mastering... just in case.

And now with the Master and the artwork set to meet at the replicators early next week, their job is finished for a time.

Once again our hearts overflow with gratitude...
Once again this project has taken on the pathos of the season slipping away, and the joyful anticipation of another on the horizon.
Once again God has proven Himself faithful through the hands and feet and prayers of people like you.

But this one's a little bit different.
It's a plea.

A dollar from every disc goes to a cause we love.
Just which, you'll have to wait a wee tad longer to find out. :)

Pre-orders opening soon...

Neighbors

There are the schedules, the checklists, the trips, the itineraries, the suitcases, the sermons, the songs, and the symphonies of Heaven heard by exhausted servants...

And then there are the rest of the moments that make up life. 

Moments that are often skipped when cataloging mileposts...

The colloquial, the common. The spontaneous... 

The blink-twice-and-they'll-be-gone opportunities. 

...to love people.

Here's to those. 

Sabbath night with the neighbors. 

Only One

I've learned something about love.

It feels the pain of strangers.

Somewhat overwhelmingly so, at times.
Or maybe it is that it knows no strangers.

Under a tiny sliver of moon in the sultry south I sit on a red-brick retaining wall, and ponder:
This joy that's mine, this peace, this hope--

These become torture, when I recognize in the eyes of a stranger the fingerprints of pain, and I can't do anything about it. Because as quickly as they come, they go...
And there are hundreds of them, and there's one of me.

Only one.

And I can only be in one place at one time.
(ruthless limitation.)

But then I remember:
There's just one of me, but then, there are the footprints.


They can't go where I've not gone,
but they can stay after I leave.

Jesus, let me leave only prints You could claim as Your own...

- - -

I have only one life to live.

And that one, I intend to give away.

There is a Sanctuary

These days begin early, pass quickly, end when the sun is gone.
We move from strategy session to our intersecting orbits around home base, and mulch gets spread, and ditches get dug, and flowers get planted, and tasks disappear from our corporate checklist in the cloud.

Sunrise (literally) finds me on my knees in the cactus garden burying drip irritation for the moss roses.
By 10:00 I've moved on to a sunny spot in the lawn, me surrounded by bags of irrigation parts for the Anniversary Garden
At noon, it's in the office with me. Answering the emails from early risers in Europe. By 2:00 I'm in full swing with the laundry room all torn apart, sanding and finishing cabinets. By 5:00 I'm back in the office, for more emails, more ProTools, more design concepts for the next album cover...

By 9:00 I'm exhausted.

But I'm learning something...
I've been learning slowly over days blurring together. Over knees in gravel, knees in mulch, knees in grass wet from the morning's artificial dew...

Days ago, I grunted out animated passion with every striking of the pick to gravel.
"I. Don't. Just. Fight. For. Myself..."

Moments later, huge raindrops from a benign looking cloud drove me temporarily into the shed doorway, and I stood, arms folded, watching rain stream down.

And I realized:
Full days notwithstanding;
Long lists notwithstanding... Speaking engagements coming up, Europe travel coming up, design and replication deadlines coming up, the wedding coming up--

Whenever I pause, wherever I pause...
Wherever my knees touch the ground,
there is a sanctuary.