Dear Christian

Dear Christian, take heart.
No matter how tired you are, no matter how broken, no matter how drained
Hold on.
There is healing. There is comfort. There is rest.
There are safe places in the world.
Not a stronghold, but a place to be vulnerable.
A place to cry.
A place to be healed.
When the church comes together as a family, crazy things happen.
Those magical moments when you are exactly where you are supposed to be, and God is present.
A group of friends hanging out in an attic
A family sitting around a kitchen table, talking and drinking tea.
A group of musicians meeting at a farm to sing and play music for each other.
Like the safe places of a secret society
Strangers become allies
News is shared
Souls are encouraged
Hearts are broken, so that they can be remade.
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast.
It starts small. Seemingly insignificant.
But it grows.
It grows and grows, becoming ever more annoying and intrusive, until it takes over everything.
Transforming.
God does crazy things!
Look for Him.
Wait for Him.
Wait.
And do not give up hope.

"His rule gives room for good things to run wild, 
Yes, His rule gives room for good things to run wild!"

Good God

I used to have a lot of worlds.

But, one by one,

They all started dying.

I guess I'm not a very good god

After all.


This poem came together in about ten seconds sometime during my Junior year of highschool, my thoughts being something like this:
There are lots of things that we, as humans, try to create. Sometimes they're good, and sometimes we're proud of them. But they don't always last. Situations and relationships fall apart and there's nothing we can do to fix them. We are terrible, selfish gods.
Thank God that we aren't the real God.

Always Winter, Never Christmas

Always winter, never Christmas.

This was part of the curse that was upon the land of Narnia in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

As a kid, reading this book, the only thing that crossed my mind was, “Oh, how sad, there's no presents,” and that was the end of my thinking.

The symbolism of it never really struck me until recently when I was thinking about the winter solstice.

Because what is Christmas, really?

December 25 is the day that has been celebrated for centuries as the return of the sun. It's when people first started noticing the days getting longer again. It marks the end of the darkness and all the fearful wondering, “Will we have enough to eat? Will my family be safe? Will we survive this? Will the light ever come back? Is everything going to be okay?"

Christmas means that all your waiting has paid off and the seasons are finally changing. Christmas means hope.

The Christians adopted this winter holiday, the celebration of the sun's birthday, to celebrate something even greater – the birthday of the son of God.

The Christ, the promised savior, who people had been waiting for for thousands of years. When he arrived, the whole world changed.

In The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the arrival of Father Christmas meant that the White Witch's power was weakening and that Great Lion Aslan had returned to Narnia.

The waiting is over.

The King has come to set things right.

All Glory to God

From a collection of poems and prayers titled Interobang, by Norman Habel.

If I can't be honest with you, Lord

I can't be honest with anyone.

You are the only person I know

Who can take it

no matter what I say

People are offended if I'm honest.

They want to hear nice things

Sweet words of happiness

Gentle hymns to a gentle God

Smiling somewhere

on a red velvet throne

Well I'm sick of being phony

and I don't like to act

as if there's nothing wrong

with me

or my friends

or the world

or you

Sometimes I want to scream at you

and let it out

I have a million

Unanswered prayers

stuck in my craw

I want you to listen

when I yell at the sky

Pound my pillow

kick the ground

throw stones at the stars

slam doors

or swear at the world

Perhaps that's not giving

all glory to God

as others do

with folded hands and frozen face

but for me it means

I'm paying you

the highest respect there is.

It means I trust you with the truth-

all the truth.

Alive, Almost

A poem I wrote this summer. Yay, depression!

I'm alive

In some strange sense of the word

Meaning that my self-destructive tendencies haven't quite overpowered

The grace of my God

I'm sick

And have been for a while now

Choking and unable to breathe. Adding to the misery

While a small voice in my head whispers that this is just what I deserve

After all,

I'm broken

Beyond repair

A mess of plans gone wrong and a disaster waiting to happen

I'm trapped

As the things I loved and the things I wished for and dreamed of came within my grasp

And then quietly slipped away.

All the while,

I'm struggling

To put aside these thoughts

Of glittering knives and speeding cars and venomous snakes

Whispering to me of easy ends

I'm helpless

Watching the people I love cry from things I have said

and being completely unable to fix it.

Unable to make them understand

I'm trying

My hardest to remember that even in this nightmare, even when it seems that all is lost and the daylight will never come

My God is in control.

I'm repeating

To myself what I'm trying to see as true:

This will not destroy me, He has not forgotten me, and

In spite of me,

All will be well again.

A Happy Thought

Fireflies are beautiful.

I usually don't think about them much, but I have a friend from the West cost who says that they don't have fireflies out there. They're one of his favorite things about the Midwest.

Think about it.

They fly slow and close to the ground so little kids can catch them.

They're pretty, and virtually useless.

God made them just for us to enjoy.

Really says something about God, dosen't it?

He makes pretty, useless things for us everyday.

Fireflies, music, sunsets, mountains, stars.

He loves us with an immense, never tiring love, and he wants us to enjoy the life he's given us.

I have this image in my head of a little kid running up to its parent holding a drawing or something and saying, "Look what I made for you! Isn't it pretty?"

But instead it's the Father running to us, a smile on his face, saying, "Look what I made. It's just for you. Isn't it pretty?"

It is.