this weekend i'm teaching on the importance of words and connecting with people-- out of Job, Proverbs and Psalms.  

I relinquish my pushbutton, results based view of life.

So often the man relies on meters and graphs

to sculpt the frame of an immeasurable God.

The measure of pain extends us

driving us into the wellspring faith.

my pain screams loudly in the far country.

the Almighty of God uses pictures and pain to speak truth

Chesterton

He lights the sun through the portals of the starry host

He speaks order in planets spinning as celestial tops in the playrooms of seraphim

He caps the mountains and gives muse to dancing geese and flying salmon

Giving grand buffets to whales in their salty home of the deep

He renders the deluge of clouds pregnant with rain

He conducts the grand orchestra of birds and teaches the gazelle to run

He fashions tiny cells to move as cities through the tiny oceans of my eyes

he is everywhere, in every move, causing order in the most chaotic orb

Each chapter of days is marked by the never-ending discovery of new life

Strange creeping, flying, flourishing creatures unknown before now

Alive since the dawn of Eden

And still they reckon Him lost in the flurry of his own creation

calling everything a calamity of circumstance 

He casts his messages in every breath of every organism, every galloping foal

And they search harder for the accidental clues,

for a random explanation in a system they will never fully know.

... it is then that the angels laugh.

On the road to recovery from the cold and taking a day off.  Something is stirring within me and I want to reevaluate a few directions in my personal world.  Sickness has a way of doing that. It is like a little slice of death that allows you a taste of the inevitable entree.

Oh death, where is thy anti-biotic!!

Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness,"made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

it falls forward into the depths of sea

contented with the salt

acquainted with darkness

Akin to night

dodging the arrows of heaven

food tasteless

Mysteriously grief is worship because the absence of God

it gives birth to the lust of His presence.

How long, O Lord.

When will you speak?

When will all this make sense?

Could this advent of pain and perplexity

be born from the womb of God's glory?

They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden; the Romans setting a military guard lest there should be some riot and attempt to recover the body. There was once more a natural symbolism in these natural proceedings; it was well that the tomb should be sealed with all the secrecy of ancient eastern sepluchre and guarded by the authority of the Caesars. For in that second cavern the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history; the history that was merely human. The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages. In the great Roman phrase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

FBC Oddessa came in last week to do Adventure week.  We had a great week. Wonderful experiences for both churches I believe. We  didn't have the numbers I was hoping for but overall, an excellent time to vision-cast what Children's ministry, arts ministry and community could be at at our Church.  I spent the past week coughing and sneezing through a cold--- unlike any I have had in a long time.  I feel like I'm coming out of it now. 

Thursday I resigned to the fact that I wouldn't be well enough to preach. Josh filled in for me and did a great job. I'm looking forward to some time off. at the end of this week.