I don't really like pickleloaf.

I don't really like pickleloaf...I don't really like blogging. But here I am, blurting out whatever is on my mind.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

The Initiator

"The sooner we stop thinking that we are the energetic operators of religion and discover that God is at work, as the Aggressor, the Invader, the Initiator, so much the sooner do we discover that our task is to call people to be still and know, listen, hearken in quiet invitation to the promptings of the Divine. Our task is to encourage others first to let go, to cease striving, to give over this fevered effort of the self-sufficient religionist trying to please an external deity. Count on God knocking on the doors of time. God is the Seeker, and not we alone…I am persuaded that religious people do not with sufficient seriousness count on God as an active factor in the affairs of the world. “Behold I stand at the door and knock,” but too many well-intentioned people are so preoccupied with the clatter of effort to do something for God that they don’t hear Him asking that He might do something through them." - Thomas Kelly

(thanks to the MARK center for this great quote)

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Give us more time


We are staying with my parents for Christmas, and have been here for about a week and a half. They just moved here in the summer,and the basement is full of boxes from the move that haven't been opened. In my spare time between playing with Zoe, eating Christmas cookies and studying, I've been hunkering down and going through boxes that were from my room in the last house.

As a kid, I made many photo albums and time capsules. I've kept all my letters from grade eleven on- that is 8 years worth of mail!!I have artwork and other school projects from when I was younger.

I've been in a funk these last couple of days, and couldn't articulate exactly why, but I think I figured it out this morning. My daily Bible readings have all been in Revelation and I can't help but feel the urgency and seriousness of it. I have been focused on a miserable thought that there really isn't a point to saving my old journals and albums, because whose going to be around to read them? Will life just zoom by and before I know it, without having made an impact or done anything lasting,I'll be 75? It sounds very dramatic,which, it is, but I do feel this way, talking to people about how children grow up so fast,and wondering about my ancestors, and how most of everything they were and did has been forgotten.

Usually I like to imagine heaven, and don't look at earth-life with much hope. But now that I have a family, and many dreams and ideas for the future, it is depressing to think that our time is so limited!I realized I can do something about it. I can pray.

I really do love this world, with all of it's brokenness and potential. I really do want to live to see grandchildren, and pass down traditions and stories. I really do want Zoe to have a huge full long life. And so I pray: give us more time. Work through us to make your kingdom come. Hold back on your judgement. Flood us with compassion, still. Give us joy and peace and redemption and love and healing. Let us continue in this fight, here. Stay with us, Jesus, your presence invading dark places. Continue building us up in love and truth.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Praise

Italic Who compares with you among gods, O God? Who compares with you in power, in holy majesty, In awesome praises, wonder-working God?
Exodus 15:9-11

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Peace

Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.
Colossians 3:14-16