until the day dawns

please turn my scope
to that rich and vast expanse of sky
that spells out your word.
and with each of my words
and in all of my deeds
for every day that you gift me breath
may i show the world your hands and your feet and your side.

i often feel like everything good seems to get lost in brokenness. my perception is often that there is more grief in the world than joy, and looking around on any given day it wouldn't seem as though i was wrong. but on any given day there seems also to be as much possibility for happiness as there is for suffering. the unmet potential of the former just grates our hearts more acutely than the balm that is the absence of the latter soothes. the former is the desire of our hearts, and so its evasion of our grasp sits as a heavier weight on our chests. sometimes i catch myself reprimanding myself and humanity for ever feeling like happiness and joy are our prerogative. what gives us the right to think we deserve even an iota of goodness?

and quickly and kindly i am always reminded that the question is not what, but who.
and that His name is Yahweh and that He whispers grace and peace in my ear.

soon, and very soon we are going to see the King

i want to come Home
and i want to come soon.
i want to come now
and i want it to be with You.

my friend, sara, is halfway across the world, in sweden for now.
she told me she was a bit homesick the other day and that made me sad.

i miss her. a lot.

and there are some nights where the one thing i would really like to do would be to sit on her bedroom floor and drink tea with her, living in constant trepidation that i will stain her carpet by spilling my cup, again.


it's hard to know what to say to someone who misses their home. sara and i are knit together because of who jesus is though. and there's something about yearning for a place that is comfortable to you that points us to the dawn that is coming after the darkest part of this night. so i hopefully, helpfully, made her sick for our home of righteousness.

oh, what a wonderful son He is! 

(it is fitting that i am giddy for anything by benjamin francis leftwich this week.
i have taken the liberty above to load some words from 'hole in my hand' with sentiment that was probably not intended originally.)

a new endeavour

http://grownupswerechildrenfirst.tumblr.com/

i am a mist

we just have the kindest God.
when i am up early in the morning of a late night worrying about my plans for tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next, He helps me remember words like that passage in james four.

i know that he has plans to prosper me.
and to think that He loves me will put me to sleep.

thanks big guy

sometimes i wonder if i could go back to being seventeen, whether i would and whether i would make decisions differently. i am pretty jaded for a twenty-one year old. it's hard to look at happy-go-luckies and not think them a little naive. the bible doesn't talk about perseverance and steadfastness for nothing. sometimes i like to think of myself as being realistic. other times i know i am just a little bit bitter. but whether i'm jaded, realistic or embittered i know i'm not joyless.

because joy and happiness are different things. and i have been given everything i need for life and godliness and many great and precious promises. i know that the gospel is true and i rejoice in that.

i don't really think i would make decisions differently if i could go back.
i've learnt a lot about wearing an honest heart on my sleeve more and giving my ache to jesus.
i kind of hope that God is kind enough to give me sixty or seventy more years to be even better at that and love him more and more.

and, really, i don't feel much more than a day older than seventeen.
probably because in the scheme of a lifetime i'm not really.
and even though it's august and it's a month of birthdays and everyone is turning twenty-two and that seems quite old and scary because people are getting married and having children and moving countries and working real jobs, there are so many years to go.

and the future can only be (glory, glory!) exciting.

on a side note, today i wore suede shoes to uni and it rained. and that sucked. and then i tried to dry them on my heater at work and they shrunk. and that made me laugh.

i'm so glad i am learning to trust you, precious jesus, saviour, friend.

because it was he, because it was i

sometimes you take my breath away, in an unexpected second, with small simplicities; a patchwork of cloud, a heavy heart and a full moon.

the smudgeness

it's funny the things that we train ourselves to do.
the little ins and outs of interaction that we cause to exist so we can cope.
words we would say to one person that we'd never utter in front of another because of a temporal status quo.

you learn a lot about yourself not living in the home you've spent the past twenty one years in.
you learn a lot about people by living with new ones.

i think i understand better now how you can love someone dearly and still not look after them well.
and i'm starting to understand that every good intention can still fall short.
and that sucks.

but i am second.