cool poem

Written by Nate Millheim from ReIMAGINE:

"This bit of spoken word poetry was written as I walked through the diverse and beautiful Mission District of San Francisco, asking God to help me simply love …

My Thoughts

Sometimes they get all messed up,
they get all jacked up, all tripped up.

I see the tough guy with the tank-top under the double-x T-shirt,
gold chains hanging down
and a scowl on the brow,
and I feel threatened,
I feel offended, I feel defensive.

I see the hipster with the precocious smirk,
listening to some band he’s proud to know because other people don’t.
The T-shirt with the cute little graphic
New Balance shoes, Cool tattoos, the funky hat,
the ritual coffee cup and the road bike that makes him peg his right pant leg on his oh so tight jeans.

My thoughts get all messed up in my head,
I’d like to love but I’d rather not.
My own insecurities and my own peculiarities are calling.

The little boys hop the fence into the half finished Garfield Square.
Pipes and rocks are used instead of the baseball bats and balls that never came on Christmas morning.
Rocks are whizzing past my baby girl’s head.
Anger rises in my veins like a wave at Mavericks.

What feelings am I feeling now? What thoughts race through my tired brain?

When the man at the park scolds me, shaking his head, for not bringing him a bicycle .
While my family sits the drunken man knocks on the window of my car and complains that we will not give him food. He shakes his head in anger and disgust, scaring my two lovely ladies.

What now? Thoughts, feelings, thoughts, feelings, thoughts, feelings ...

I need to breathe.
I need to stop.
I need to rest.

My God says He loves, He cares, He sympathizes, He wishes well
He created ... In HIS IMAGE

He grieves when He sees the heroine needles.
He cries when He sees the lonely child.

Jesus spoke of a life abundant,
A life He came for us to have.

Echoes from my Sunday school childhood ring in my ear ...

Change my heart oh God, Make it ever true
Change my heart oh God, May I be like you

Let me be so in tune, like a head bopping to a Jay Z tune
My thoughts full of your thoughts

May my brain be full of good thoughts, full of generosity
May my heart be filled with a compassion it has never known
May my feelings find direction and inspiration from my Creator

Let me think YOUR thoughts and feel YOUR feelings for the people I see."

when its been a rough week....or weeks

Psalm 40

I waited patiently for the LORD;
he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear
and put their trust in the LORD.

Blessed is the man
who makes the LORD his trust,
who does not look to the proud,
to those who turn aside to false gods*. (the ESV calls them "lies")

Many, O LORD my God,
are the wonders you have done.
The things you planned for us
no one can recount to you;
were I to speak and tell of them,
they would be too many to declare.

Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but my ears you have opened;
burnt offerings and sin offerings
you did not require.
Then I said, "Here I am, I have come—
it is written about me in the scroll.
I desire to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart."

I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly;
I do not seal my lips,
as you know, O LORD.
I do not hide your righteousness in my heart;
I speak of your faithfulness and salvation.
I do not conceal your love and your truth
from the great assembly.

Do not withhold your mercy from me, O LORD;
may your love and your truth always protect me.
For troubles without number surround me;
my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see.
They are more than the hairs of my head,
and my heart fails within me.

Be pleased, O LORD, to save me;
O LORD, come quickly to help me.
May all who seek to take my life
be put to shame and confusion;
may all who desire my ruin
be turned back in disgrace.
May those who say to me, "Aha! Aha!"
be appalled at their own shame.
But may all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who love your salvation always say,
"The LORD be exalted!"

Yet I am poor and needy;
may the Lord think of me.
You are my help and my deliverer;
O my God, do not delay.

When my mouth fails to produce the words needed to cry out to the Lord, his Spirit is so faithful to intercede and lead me right to what I desperately need.
May the Lord give you strength to make it through your days with joy.

beautiful day

so to preface this, i need to say things have been a little crazy lately and i realized i have been struggling a bit with contentment in my present circumstances for various reasons. (thank you ryan for convicting all of us at exchange this week...ouch) how often we doubt that the Lord has good intent for us, even when he has shown us (me) extreme faithfulness. i am so much like Israel sometimes it makes me cringe.
but i have been feeling restless lately...like i want to pick up and go somewhere different. and the Lord has shown me that partly this is due to a little discontentment. so we are working on that. :)

anyways...in light of all this i went running today with paige. i thoroughly enjoy our runs. sometimes when we are running we dance (yes, even on market street)...b/c really we just don't care and it makes it less boring...and its even funnier if there are actually large groups people around watching us wave our hands in the air while sucking wind down the battery.

so today we were having one of the above mentioned runs...and i was listening to some U2. and i looked up and just all of a sudden was overwhelmed with how beautiful everything is...how blue the sky was ...and what a gorgeous city i live in... and how thankful i am to have friends like paige who have such a similar spirit as i do...and that i am ...alive...to enjoy all of these beautiful things.

and I said a little prayer of thanks to the God who has blessed me so much.

i'm telling you, this girl is a genius.

I am afraid of beginning
‘cause I don’t know how to end

But you told me:
that the mountain before us
would become a plain in our eyes

So I won’t despise,
I won’t despise the day
I won’t despise the day of small things.

Even when you tell me…
oh, even then I’m shaking
‘Cause I am afraid of believing

The plans that we make seem so big
But you’ve shown me
that we’re never alone
and your spirit will stay by our side

So I won’t despise
I won’t despise the day
I won’t despise the day of small things.
-alli rogers

when we are afraid of doing what the Lord tells us to do because we don't know how it will turn out, we need to (i need to) have faith that He can do much more than we imagine, and take comfort in knowing he will never leave us.
Sometimes I think I am afraid to believe the Lord...even when he gives me the blessing of clear instruction...because usually His plans are so much bigger than what I would choose. Yes, his plans are bigger...but so is His power.

Lord, I believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.
Mark 9:14-27

i have good genes

"Be patient, be wise, be still, be consistent."

-my dad


good advice considering none of the above come naturally to me. :)

i knew physics would come in handy one day....

first:
just need to say thank you to all the awesome people who have prayed for me during these past 1 1/2 years. ya'll are amazingly encouraging and throw incredible post cancer parties. ;)

somehow thank you doesn't quite seem enough.
the words are inadequate to really express my gratitude.
when i find a better way to say it, i will.


second: (for all of you scientists)
i read this a while ago and this is the first chance i have gotten to write it all down. Next time somebody uses the metaphor of light and darkness (with light = good and darkness = bad), think about this:

"In the Hebrew tradition...light is a metaphor. God makes a cosmos out of the nothingness, a molecular composition, of which He is not and never has been, as any thing is limiting, and God has no limits...And into this being, into this existence, God first creates light. This light is not to be confused with the sun and moon and stars, as they are not created until later. He simply creates light, a nonsubstance that is like a particle and like a wave, but perhaps neither, just some kind of travelling energy...Light, then, becomes a fitting metaphor for a nonbeing who is. God, if like light, travels at the speed of light, and because space and time are mingled with speed, the speed of light is the magic, exact number that allows a kind of escape from time....The faster you move, physicists have found, the less you experience time. And if you move at the speed of light, you will never age; you are outside of time; you are an eternal creature. But...you and I, made from molecules, cannot travel at the speed of light and cannot escape time, at least not with a body. Consider the complexity of light in light of the Hebrew metaphor: we don't see light; we see what it touches. It is more or less invisible, made from nothing, just purposed and focused energy, infinite in its power (it will never tire if fitted into a vacuum, going on forever). How fitting then, for God to create an existence, then a metaphor, as if to say, here is something entirely unlike you, outside of time, infinite in its power and thrust: here is something you can experience but cannot understand. Throughout the remainder of the Bible, then, God calls himself light. "

Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

the Lord knew that perhaps the true, deeper meaning of calling himself light (and how the scientific properties of light reflect his glory) would not be discovered until thousands of years after he originally spoke it to the Hebrew people.

thank you physicists for figuring stuff like this out. and thank you donald miller for writing about it in such a way that us non-scientific people could begin to understand it.

how sweet the sound

if william wilberforce were not already married....

and dead.....

i might would marry him myself.

good movie. go see it if you haven't already:

http://www.amazinggracemovie.com/