i dare not ask to fly from thee

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

[George Matheson]

the dark chaos of our inner being

"In the morning I will stand and see my God, who sheds the light of salvation on my face, who will breathe life even into our mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in us and has been mercifully hovering over the dark chaos of our inner being."  

[Augustine, Confessions, Book XIII]

I the LORD have created it.

"Shower, O heavens, from above,
and let the clouds rain down righteousness;
let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit;
let the earth cause them both to sprout;
I the LORD have created it."

Isaiah 45:8

value grief, sacrifice, weakness, and exclusion

10 Resolutions for Mental Health

Andy Goldsworthy

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me. 

2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: "There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing." 

3. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood. 

4. I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do. 

5. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work. 

6. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence. 

7. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder." 

8. I shall follow Darwin's advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music. 

9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, "fulfill the moment as the moment." I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now. 

10. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.

 [Ten Resolutions from a lecture by Dr. Clyde Kirby, Source: Desiring God]

what I am seeking is a life of happiness

Bookmark by my amazingly talented friend Amanda Tanner.

Check out her Etsy shop at Let's All Make Believe.

your maker is your husband

"As we have been saying all month the natural tendency of the human heart is to take good things into ultimate things, and in ancient cultures and nonwestern traditional cultures of today the family thing is the ultimate thing. it is what we have been calling, essentially, an idol. and therefore, women who don't have children because they aren't married or can't have children because of some physical impediment felt worthless and were regarded as worthless. so if you want to further the example of that you can go into the book of Genesis where Rachel the wife of Jacob is seeking to have children and can't have children and she says, 'Give me children, or I will die!' And that about sums it up in those cultures. Now some of you saying,  I know about this: those ancient cultures really oppressed women. And you're right, but I'm glad you brought that up actually... Why do you think that in those cultures women were not troubled with eating disorders at all? The point is that all cultures are fallen. And that all cultures oppress because here is what they do: every single culture put in front of men and women certain objects and says, 'You don't have them you don't have worth! You don't have them, you don't have significance! If you don't have them, your existence isn't justified! You must have them!' Ancient and traditional cultures have collective idols: you have to have a family.  

Modern western culture has individualistic idols. Modern cultures say that your worth is completely dependent upon your individual assets: looks, career, money. If you don't have that, you're nothing. When Rachel says, 'Give me children, or I die!' she is saying childlessness means psychological and social death. It's very telling. If you build your identity on anything more than God, and you fail to get it, it's psychological and social death. And every culture that ever existed and and exists today is telling you to build your identity on something. Therefore, every culture is going to oppress you and crush you into the ground because every culture is cooperating with a part of our heart that wants to be its on Savior and Lord and to justify itself. And it's almost impossible when everybody else is going after these objects to not go along with them and to not be just as enslaved and crushed as everyone else in the culture. I say almost impossible because God says there's a way out. There's a way to emotional and inner freedom and cultural freedom.... He says, Your maker is your husband. Your maker is your husband. Your maker is your husband." 

- Tim Keller

other ways to proclaim the good news

"The Bible does clearly teach the right of property, but both the Old Testament and the New Testament put a tremendous stress on the compassionate use of that property. If at each place where the employer was a Bible-believing Christian the world could see that less profit was being taken so that the workers would have appreciably more than the 'going rate' of pay, the gospel would have been better proclaimed throughout the whole world than if the profits were the same as the world took and then large endowments were given to Christian schools, missions, and other projects. This is not to minimize the centrality of preaching the gospel to the whole world, nor to minimize missions; it is to say that the other is also a way to proclaim the good news." 

[Francis Schaeffer]

My sin has been erased. I'll never be the same.

[Citizens, "Made Alive"]

in the morning it's always Leah

"Most people if they really learn to look into their own heart would know that they do want and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love or first think of some foreign country or first take up some subject that excites us are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning can ever really satisfy. I am not speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages or failures of holidays and so on. I’m speaking of the very best possible ones. There is always something we have grasped at. There’s always something in that first moment of longing but fades away in the reality. The spouse may be a good spouse. The scenery has been excellent. It turned out to be a good job. But it’s evaded us. In the morning it’s always Leah."  

[C.S. Lewis]

bow to the Christ in you

"To really get the best of frustration, you must turn it into celebration. If you stop being frustrated and start celebrating, you enter a whole different space, and so will your circumstances. You can make your circumstances bow to the Christ in you." 

- Graham Cooke

my heart only has entrances

"My heart only has entrances. It doesn’t have exits. Whoever enters remains there. Whatever he may do, I love him the same as I loved him when he first entered into my heart. I pray for him and seek his salvation."

[Elder Epiphanios]

love quell my doubt and dread

Father whate’er of earthly bliss
Thy sovereign hand denies
Accepted at Thy throne of grace
Let this petition rise 

Let the sweet hope that thou art mine
My life and death attend
Thy presence through my journey shine
And crown my journey’s end 

Give me a calm, a thankful heart
From every murmur free
The blessings of Thy grace impart
And make me live to Thee 

You raise your hand to still the storms
That rage inside my head
Revive my heart with gratitude
Love quell my doubt and dread 

Give me a sure and rested soul
From every fear relieve
The spirit’s power and presence mine
To ever comfort me 

Give me a sure, a restful heart
From every fear relieve
Thy spirit’s power and presence mine
To ever comfort me. 

Give me a calm, a thankful heart
From every murmur free
The blessings of thy grace impart
And make me live to thee. 

[Anne Steele & Sandra McCracken, "Petition"]

those whose soul is intelligent

St. Anthony by Piero di Cosimo, c. 1480 

People are generally called intelligent through a wrong use of this word. The intelligent are not those who have studied the sayings and writings of the wise men of old, but those whose soul is intelligent, who can judge what is good and what is evil; they avoid what is evil and harms the soul and intelligently care for and practice what is good and profits the world, greatly thanking God. 

[Anthony of Egypt]

not by efficiency and economy

‎"Order and organization are an essential part of our life cycle with God and one another, but they must be compelled by love and relationship, not by efficiency and economy."'

[Graham Cooke] 

i am mediocrity with the name of disaster

I am mediocrity with the name disaster
Called into the chosen ones with a hope in the here and hereafter

[Tim Coons, "The Back Window"] 

everything good comes from You, Father of Lights

Love has a voice.
Love has a name.
Jesus.

["Father of Lights," Jesus Culture]

a domesticated, harmless Christ

Sayaka Ganz, Emergence 

"One of these days lightning is going to fill the sky from the rising of the sun to its setting, and there is going to appear in the clouds one like a son of man with his mighty angels in flaming fire. And we will see him clearly. And whether from terror or sheer excitement, we will tremble and we will wonder how, how we ever lived so long with such a domesticated, harmless Christ." 

{John Piper, Good News of Great Joy]

in love with the events that are dragging them downward

Without Your eye I wander hopelessly

through my soul like a wayfarer in the night,

in the night’s indistinguishable gloom. 

And the wayfarer in the night falls and picks himself up, 

and what he encounters along the way he calls “events.”

You are the only event of my life, O lamp of my soul.
When a child scurries to the arms of his mother, 

events do not exist for him.
When a bride races to meet her bridegroom,

she does not see the flowers in the meadow, 

nor does she hear the rumbling of the storm, 

nor does she smell the fragrance of the cypresses

or sense the mood of the wild animals–

she sees only the face of her bridegroom; 

she hears only the music from his lips; 

she smells only his soul. 

When love goes to meet love, no events befall it.

Time and space make way for love.

Aimless wanderers and loveless people have events and have history. 

Love has no history, and history has no love.

When someone makes their way down a mountain

or climbs up a mountain without knowing where he is going, 

events are imposed upon him as though they were the aim of his journey. 

Truly, events are the aim of the aimless and the history of the pathless.

Therefore the aimless and the pathless are blocked 

by events and squabble with events. 

But I tranquilly hasten to You, 

both up the mountain and down the mountain, 

and despicable events angrily move out of the way of my footsteps.

If I were a stone and were rolling down a mountain, 

I would not think about the stones against which I was banging, 

but about the abyss at the bottom of the steep slope.

If I were a mountain stream, 

I would not be thinking about my uneven course, 

but about the lake that awaited me.

Truly terrifying is the abyss of those who are in love

with the events that are dragging them downward..."

[from Nikolaj Velimirović's Prayers by the Lake]

completely honest before God

"Take heed how you hear the Gospel. It seems that the Lord wants to say that we hear with our hearts rather than our ears, and that the inner life affects the word of God, either killing it, or making it live and thrive. So whoever wants to hear the word well, understand it, and hold it fast in an honest and good heart should prepare his heart inwardly so that the word may safely take root there, finding in his heart faithfulness to God and truthfulness in word and promise. It is absolutely impossible that anyone should understand what he hears of the word of God, if he is not completely honest before God and has not determined to surrender his life, his responsibilities, his interests, his money, his future, and his own honor and lay them at God’s feet." 

[Fr. Matta El Meskeen, Coptic Orthodox monk]