It's always there.
We all have it.
In our lives.
In our minds.
At work.
At school.
At home.
All around us.
No matter what we do.
No matter where we go.
It goes with us.
A constant soundtrack to our existence.
Background noise.
It comes in many different forms.
It may even be uniquely different for every person.
It certainly affects us all differently.
But if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that it affects us.
In fact, some of us would hardly know what to do without it.
And not even just sound, but any type of visual noise as well.
Whether it be music, television, radio, phones, computers, or even just an endless stream of thoughts in the back of the mind.
Or something we really can't even seem to explain.
Even when there isn't anything really going on, there's always something.
Somewhere, some sort of background noise.
Do we even know what it would be like without it?
With real, true, utter silence...
Silence.
Just imagine that for a moment.
Stopping absolutely everything.
Everything that goes on in the world around us.
Nothing but nothing.
Silence.
Could we do it?
Could we stop it?
Could we handle it?
Can we really even imagine it?
And if we could imagine it, even experience it, can we imagine what might happen in that silence...
What might we hear, even in the silence...
If you don't know anything about the Bible, let me just say one thing about it. It's absolutely stuffed with crazy ridiculous absolutely awesomely amazing stories. Stories about an incredible awesome loving God. And one of those stories involves a guy named Elijah, a prophet of the Most High God.
Now Elijah was at the time the last of the prophets of God, as the rest had been slaughtered, and had just finished up the showdown of the century with the prophets of this hunk of wood called Baal. Basically how it went down was the prophets of Baal begged and pleaded and cried and danced and even bled themselves, trying to get some lousy inanimate object to send fire from heaven and burn up a sacrificial bull on their altar. Elijah tried to help them out a bit, suggesting that they should try to be a little louder, since maybe Baal just couldn't hear them, that he was sleeping or preoccupied or on vacation or something like that. And so they danced and screamed and shouted and bled some more. As you might expect, they all just ended up wearing themselves out. Not the best of days for those guys.
Eventually, Elijah got tired of goading them on and (talk about cocky) had his sacrifice and the wood it was on doused in water, so much so that the trench he had dug around the altar ended up filling up as well. In case you don't follow the irony of the whole situation, wet things don't exactly burn too well.
And then he prayed.
And then this massive fireball flew down from the sky, totally incinerating every last molecule of bull, wood, stone, soil, and water.
Yeah, even the rocks of the altar and the dirt around it got fried. And not just fried, absolutely obliterated. By fire.
Talk about crazy.
And then what happens next? Oh yeah, some crazy queen tries to get him killed, and Elijah is off like a rocket to hide in the desert. I mean, wouldn't you too?
Here's the really interesting part that I'm trying to get at though. Now Elijah had been though a lot. So much in fact,that he actually even asked for God to let him die out there. This was a guy who was worn out, beaten down.
Tired. So tired.
So Elijah is out in the desert, had been wandering around for weeks, and God tells him to go up on this mountain. Because guess what? The Lord Himself is about to pass by here.
Whoa.
So Elijah climbs on up, preparing himself...
And then out of nowhere this massive wind tears through, ripping apart mountains and shattering rocks, sending them flying everywhere.
But God isn't there. He's not in the wind.
And then there's this ridiculous earthquake, and more of the same chaos ensues.
But still, no God.
And as if that wasn't enough, this crazy fire starts raging around, totally engulfing everything. You've got to wonder what Elijah was thinking was up by this point.
Because still, God wasn't in the fire either.
Then he heard it.
A gentle whisper.
And that's when Elijah went out and spoke to God Himself.
Now, there's actually a bit of discussion about what that " gentle whisper" really means in the original Hebrew it was first written in. In fact, there's the idea that the word for it really means complete, total, utter...
Silence.
So this is where I raise the question...
What kind of affect would it have on our lives if we were to let the winds calm, the earthquakes subside, the fires fizzle out, the noise to just stop?
What if we were able to just sit there in the silence...and listen...
I mean honestly, think about what it would be like to not have or make any noise at all. Can we do that...and if we can are we able to do so without any feelings of discomfort or just plain weirdness? What is it that makes silence so...awkward? We have to tap our foot or drum our fingers, clear our throats, hum some sort of sound. Think of something, anything to say.
Something, anything to break the silence.
But what if we got rid of all the distraction, all of the insanity that is life as we know it, if were somehow able to just stop ourselves, our minds, for even a moment? What if we could turn down the volume, tune out the static, and really,truly, listen to the silence? And what if it actually became a regular part of our routine?
To just stop.
To just sit.
To just listen.
What might we hear in the silence?
Is there a connection between the amount of noise in our lives and our inability to hear God?
~Rob Bell
Who might show up in that silence...
Dive Deep
Monday, May 3, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Same Old Same Old
I tried Lord...
I tried Lord...
I tried hard to be Your good little boy
Chin up, head high
All zeal but no joy
Thinking all my good deeds could please Jesus
Boy, was I wrong
Though I knew the right songs, all my cymbals and gongs played the melodies wrong
And it wasn’t long ‘til I saw my disease
A life spent wanting to please
On hands and knees
To make right, to appease
God help me please
This can’t be Christianity,
It can’t be
The whole thing’s like insanity
Where’s the rest of eternal security?
Where’s the hope of a God big enough to cope with all my hang-ups and insecurities?
Certainly this isn’t breathing
My chest burning and heaving
It’s like my, my pulse is ceasing
Like my heart quits beating...
Yet this I recall to mind and therefore I have hope:
You died, Lord...
You died, Lord.
Assuredly, like the coming of the dawn, the Father’s love song goes on
Drowning out my bitter songs
And breaking through walls and barriers
Christ swoops in,
Removes sin,
Picks up His bride and carries her
So I can sing in agreement with the King this thing:
There’s only one thing that pleases the Father
The God-man on the tree
In the midst of the scoffers
Now I finally see
That Christ is
What Christ offers
And I’m finally free
In the love of the Father
Not Without Love (The Benediction)- Jimmy Needham
...
It's been over a year since I first posted that here. Half as long since I last wrote.
I know it's been a while.
Trust me I know, exactly how long.
So much is different.
Me.
Even you, I have no doubt.
Life in general and all the junk and joys that it has thrown our ways, constantly keeping us in a state of raging fluidity. Mentally, emotionally, even down to our very identity.
And yet this thing is the same.
Love.
Ever read the Old Testament? Yeah it's kind of long, to a lot of people even boring, but try just flipping through it some time (Psalm 78 is pretty good refresher of the basic gist of things). You know, whenever I used to hear or read about way back when, I always wondered how in the world they always forgot. When the people so blatantly had these ridiculously incredible acts of God happening right before their eyes, when He seemed to be constantly warning them of one calamity or another coming because of their sin, their forgetfulness, even going to the extent of causing such calamities just to get their attention. And then one way or another He would swoop down to save them! Yet it seems like every time a new paragraph came around they were forgetting completely! And off they'd be, getting into trouble again, sinning and worshiping idols and the like, and God would send them a judge or a prophet and save their backsides again. And then, infallibly, they forgot. Even in just a generation's time.
"You of this generation, consider the word of the LORD:
'Have I been a desert to Israel
or a land of great darkness?
Why do my people say, "We are free to roam;
we will come to you no more"?
"Does a maiden forget her jewelry,
a bride her wedding ornaments?
Yet my people have forgotten me,
days without number."
~Jeremiah 2:31-32
And yet how blind I was not to see that the story is still the same, from Genesis and beyond.
I mean honestly, can you not say that more often than not it takes little more than a month, a week, a day for us to forget oh so quickly what awesome things our awesome God has done for us? To lose hold of that passion and focus and drive to be all out crazy for Him and what He's done and what He's doing. I'll be the first to admit this. I'm nothing if not a prime example. And what's even more fascinating is that, more often than not, it isn't even on purpose.
I mean life is busy, crazy even. We don't mean to forget.
But it happens. Life happens. Is to be human, no?
I found this saved in some deep dark corner of cyberspace, something I wrote just for me in a time that apparently just the sort of thing I'm trying to describe. Now, not all of us have this kind of reaction, and certainly not all the time, but in this moment I have a shred of insight into my mind for us. So try if nothing else to get the background feel for what's going on in these words I wrote really not all that long ago.
...
Is this me?
The man, the child, the hopeless wreak who wants nothing more but to see and show the reckless abandon of the love of his God, to be the man he feels inside wishing to burst forth and show the world what has happened to him, what he has truly become, not what circumstances or people or anything else have him currently portrayed to be, trying to be, acting, it all feels so temporal, fake even, not the man my awesome God has transformed me into and is continuing to shape and form with His miraculous love, I just want to be that man, to be real, for everyone to see the passion that has enraptured my every everything, every fiber of my being, all I am, my heart and soul, just wishing to burst forth,
My God please let it burst forth! Like the rushing of the floods of heaven being poured out on Your earth, on your people, God please shatter this wretched cursed mask
Show me, show them, what is behind that shattered mask.
You.
Your love.
Shatter me my God. Please.
Let me see Your love again, let me feel it. Please.
You've taught me so much. Now please don't let me go, don't let me let it go, to forget even for a second the incredible things You've shown me, taught me. Please.
Passion, love, everything You are and are making me.
Please show me, show them, what is behind the shattered mask.
...
Now here also is a bit of the background behind why the address of my blog is as it is. Behind the Shattered Mask. But back to my point.
Hopefully in reading this you were able to catch a sort of tone set. Especially in this age of instantaneity, with basically everything we could desire of this world at our fingertips, and yet where the object of our desires and satisfaction is constantly shifting, how easily do our minds shift, do we just kind of lose focus, do we forget?
And yet their God was the same.
And yet our God is the same.
And yet this One is the same.
Love.
He never forgets. Never loses focus. He can never be distracted.
He just loves us that much.
How great is that?
That the God, Creator, of the universe would wish to focus all of his attention on us. Us.
Even if, and when, we forget.
He never changes, and neither do His desires for us, the plans He wishes to bring to such beautiful fruition in our lives. And oh what brilliant plans they are.
"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." ~James 1:17
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that even in our forgetfulness, always remember.
Even in our forgetfulness, He is faithful. Love is faithful.
And how much more so when we are down on our knees begging for His Love to save us, to rescue us, when we abandon all else and surrender to His Love. When we do remember. For we are His people. And He never forgets.
Whoa.
Dive Deep.
I tried Lord...
I tried hard to be Your good little boy
Chin up, head high
All zeal but no joy
Thinking all my good deeds could please Jesus
Boy, was I wrong
Though I knew the right songs, all my cymbals and gongs played the melodies wrong
And it wasn’t long ‘til I saw my disease
A life spent wanting to please
On hands and knees
To make right, to appease
God help me please
This can’t be Christianity,
It can’t be
The whole thing’s like insanity
Where’s the rest of eternal security?
Where’s the hope of a God big enough to cope with all my hang-ups and insecurities?
Certainly this isn’t breathing
My chest burning and heaving
It’s like my, my pulse is ceasing
Like my heart quits beating...
Yet this I recall to mind and therefore I have hope:
You died, Lord...
You died, Lord.
Assuredly, like the coming of the dawn, the Father’s love song goes on
Drowning out my bitter songs
And breaking through walls and barriers
Christ swoops in,
Removes sin,
Picks up His bride and carries her
So I can sing in agreement with the King this thing:
There’s only one thing that pleases the Father
The God-man on the tree
In the midst of the scoffers
Now I finally see
That Christ is
What Christ offers
And I’m finally free
In the love of the Father
Not Without Love (The Benediction)- Jimmy Needham
...
It's been over a year since I first posted that here. Half as long since I last wrote.
I know it's been a while.
Trust me I know, exactly how long.
So much is different.
Me.
Even you, I have no doubt.
Life in general and all the junk and joys that it has thrown our ways, constantly keeping us in a state of raging fluidity. Mentally, emotionally, even down to our very identity.
And yet this thing is the same.
Love.
Ever read the Old Testament? Yeah it's kind of long, to a lot of people even boring, but try just flipping through it some time (Psalm 78 is pretty good refresher of the basic gist of things). You know, whenever I used to hear or read about way back when, I always wondered how in the world they always forgot. When the people so blatantly had these ridiculously incredible acts of God happening right before their eyes, when He seemed to be constantly warning them of one calamity or another coming because of their sin, their forgetfulness, even going to the extent of causing such calamities just to get their attention. And then one way or another He would swoop down to save them! Yet it seems like every time a new paragraph came around they were forgetting completely! And off they'd be, getting into trouble again, sinning and worshiping idols and the like, and God would send them a judge or a prophet and save their backsides again. And then, infallibly, they forgot. Even in just a generation's time.
"You of this generation, consider the word of the LORD:
'Have I been a desert to Israel
or a land of great darkness?
Why do my people say, "We are free to roam;
we will come to you no more"?
"Does a maiden forget her jewelry,
a bride her wedding ornaments?
Yet my people have forgotten me,
days without number."
~Jeremiah 2:31-32
And yet how blind I was not to see that the story is still the same, from Genesis and beyond.
I mean honestly, can you not say that more often than not it takes little more than a month, a week, a day for us to forget oh so quickly what awesome things our awesome God has done for us? To lose hold of that passion and focus and drive to be all out crazy for Him and what He's done and what He's doing. I'll be the first to admit this. I'm nothing if not a prime example. And what's even more fascinating is that, more often than not, it isn't even on purpose.
I mean life is busy, crazy even. We don't mean to forget.
But it happens. Life happens. Is to be human, no?
I found this saved in some deep dark corner of cyberspace, something I wrote just for me in a time that apparently just the sort of thing I'm trying to describe. Now, not all of us have this kind of reaction, and certainly not all the time, but in this moment I have a shred of insight into my mind for us. So try if nothing else to get the background feel for what's going on in these words I wrote really not all that long ago.
...
Is this me?
The man, the child, the hopeless wreak who wants nothing more but to see and show the reckless abandon of the love of his God, to be the man he feels inside wishing to burst forth and show the world what has happened to him, what he has truly become, not what circumstances or people or anything else have him currently portrayed to be, trying to be, acting, it all feels so temporal, fake even, not the man my awesome God has transformed me into and is continuing to shape and form with His miraculous love, I just want to be that man, to be real, for everyone to see the passion that has enraptured my every everything, every fiber of my being, all I am, my heart and soul, just wishing to burst forth,
My God please let it burst forth! Like the rushing of the floods of heaven being poured out on Your earth, on your people, God please shatter this wretched cursed mask
Show me, show them, what is behind that shattered mask.
You.
Your love.
Shatter me my God. Please.
Let me see Your love again, let me feel it. Please.
You've taught me so much. Now please don't let me go, don't let me let it go, to forget even for a second the incredible things You've shown me, taught me. Please.
Passion, love, everything You are and are making me.
Please show me, show them, what is behind the shattered mask.
...
Now here also is a bit of the background behind why the address of my blog is as it is. Behind the Shattered Mask. But back to my point.
Hopefully in reading this you were able to catch a sort of tone set. Especially in this age of instantaneity, with basically everything we could desire of this world at our fingertips, and yet where the object of our desires and satisfaction is constantly shifting, how easily do our minds shift, do we just kind of lose focus, do we forget?
And yet their God was the same.
And yet our God is the same.
And yet this One is the same.
Love.
He never forgets. Never loses focus. He can never be distracted.
He just loves us that much.
How great is that?
That the God, Creator, of the universe would wish to focus all of his attention on us. Us.
Even if, and when, we forget.
He never changes, and neither do His desires for us, the plans He wishes to bring to such beautiful fruition in our lives. And oh what brilliant plans they are.
"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." ~James 1:17
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that even in our forgetfulness, always remember.
Even in our forgetfulness, He is faithful. Love is faithful.
And how much more so when we are down on our knees begging for His Love to save us, to rescue us, when we abandon all else and surrender to His Love. When we do remember. For we are His people. And He never forgets.
"I love you, O LORD, my strength.
The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.
He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise,
and I am saved from my enemies.
The cords of death entangled me;
the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
The cords of the grave coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me.
In my distress I called to the LORD;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came before him, into his ears.
The earth trembled and quaked,
and the foundations of the mountains shook;
they trembled because he was angry.
Smoke rose from his nostrils;
consuming fire came from his mouth,
burning coals blazed out of it.
He parted the heavens and came down;
dark clouds were under his feet.
He mounted the cherubim and flew;
he soared on the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him—
the dark rain clouds of the sky.
Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced,
with hailstones and bolts of lightning.
The LORD thundered from heaven;
the voice of the Most High resounded.
He shot his arrows and scattered the enemies ,
great bolts of lightning and routed them.
The valleys of the sea were exposed
and the foundations of the earth laid bare
at your rebuke, O LORD,
at the blast of breath from your nostrils.
He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the LORD was my support.
He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me."
~Psalm 18:1-19
The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.
He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise,
and I am saved from my enemies.
The cords of death entangled me;
the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
The cords of the grave coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me.
In my distress I called to the LORD;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came before him, into his ears.
The earth trembled and quaked,
and the foundations of the mountains shook;
they trembled because he was angry.
Smoke rose from his nostrils;
consuming fire came from his mouth,
burning coals blazed out of it.
He parted the heavens and came down;
dark clouds were under his feet.
He mounted the cherubim and flew;
he soared on the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him—
the dark rain clouds of the sky.
Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced,
with hailstones and bolts of lightning.
The LORD thundered from heaven;
the voice of the Most High resounded.
He shot his arrows and scattered the enemies ,
great bolts of lightning and routed them.
The valleys of the sea were exposed
and the foundations of the earth laid bare
at your rebuke, O LORD,
at the blast of breath from your nostrils.
He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the LORD was my support.
He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me."
~Psalm 18:1-19
Whoa.
Dive Deep.
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