Weekly Thoughts

1) Gave a presentation last night. Prof told me it wasn't what she was looking for. Wish she woulda let me in on that secret a week ago when I should her my plan... Needless to say felt dumb.

2) Voldemort is back... O said the name. My bad.

3) Bought Man in the Iron Mask, gonna jump into that after Harry Potter. Alexandre Dumas is my favorite literature writer.

4) Listened to this fella all day yesterday.

5) Rich and Difficult

6) Come on Autumn - or Fall, whichever you prefer.

7) This post gets quite a few reads. I like it, especially this week.

8) Was asked to write for a website - Not sure if I'll do it just yet.

9) "Come with what you do no have and buy what's underserved."

10) "Shall we doat on the scattered pieces of a rude and imperfect picture, and never be affected with the original beauty? This [would be] an unaccountable stupidity and blindness. Whatever we find lovely in a friend, or in a saint, ought not to engross [us], but elevate our affections: we should conclude with ourselves, that if there be so much sweetness in a drop, there must be infinitely more in the fountain; if there be so much splendor in a ray, what must the sun be in its glory!" ~ Henry Scougal

The Dad

So my dad, right?

He and I were sitting in a conversation yesterday, a conversation I was honored to be a fly on the wall at.

Have you ever had a moment of decent clarity, when you’re there, but you feel so distant because the way you’re seeing something has changed perspective? Do you know what I mean?

The gospel. Straight forward the gospel, unmingled with cultural wish-wash or downplaying on the blood, sweat and tears of the difficulty and beauty of a life lived in faith.

“This is what makes us men, what completes us,” he said while point at a line on a page, which read, “You must love Jesus.” “He is the truth of the universe, which holds all things together that are, and if we don’t love him we are lost men.”

That’s my dad, preaching the gospel with passion, fervency. Casting all his hope onto the 2000-year-old reality, Jesus saves sinners. “I was saved 2000 years ago when Jesus died on the cross for my sins and all of my life I’ve been coming to understand that more.”

Yet, this post shouldn’t be a praising of my dad, he’s cool alright (and he has Harry Potter classes), but he’s just a sinner. No, this should be a post which is interpreted as this:

 “[They] find so much perfection and goodness [that] not only answer and satisfy [their] affections, but master and  overpower [them] too: [they] find all [their] love to be too faint and languid for such a noble object, and [are] only sorry [they] can command no more. [They] wish for the flames of a seraph, and long for the time when [they] shall be wholly melted and dissolved into love: and because [they] can do so little [themselves], [they] desire the assistance of the whole creation, that angels and men would concur with [them] in the admirations and love of those infinite perfections.” ~ Scougal

May dad and I get to worship the same God together. Be infatuated by him, be set aflame by him, preach and teach to others about him, live and die in him. And that is well worth writing about.

Black & White Clouds

Down the street from my house is a church. The church has a beautiful garden in the front; it’s dedicated to someone who died.

Often when I need to think I’ll sit on one of the three benches around the outskirts of the shrubs, on the one hidden from the streetlight by the waterfall. It was particularly pungent this time.

The person who died was one of my closest friends growing up.

The garden is in their honor.

There are three kids in my memories. One was just married this weekend, and it was my pleasure to be in the wedding. The other is beholding the glory of God with an unveiled face. The last is myself.

I didn’t know it was this garden that bore their name when I moved in it wasn’t a planned thing. But now I’m glad I’m near their last physical memorial.

Death, the final pang of the fall, the last twinge of the fight of faith, the bittersweet road that must be traveled by all, it is the end.

Spiritually, death is beautiful.

Physically, death is tragedy.

Memorial-ly, death is falling snow.

Never again will the memories of those gone be as pure as it was when the person was there to shake away the constantly falling snow. But the snow never stops, and as soon as they’re gone the snow begins to distort the real them, soon they’re what we want them to be, all the good and none of the bad (C.S. Lewis).

Yet, this applies to more than the dead. It applies to every relationship we’ve ever been a part of. Either we remember only the bad, or only the good. We’ll never get the whole picture right. The situations are too complex for our minds to remember ever little piece, too many subtleties, too many.

But we can still learn from the memory. We can still look to the breaker of the curse. We can still be fond of those gone.

And we can celebrate the friends we still have, those ones which marry and laugh, the ones who’ll be there tomorrow, the ones who text in the night. Because all of life isn’t death, and all of eternity isn’t sorrow, because there is Jesus.