Thankful for the Hope of Heaven

It’s been a really tough year, as you can guess from many of the posts here. But this Thanksgiving I am reminded that I have so many things for which to be thankful. God has blessed me with a wonderful family, and some good friends. But mostly I am thankful that this world is not all we have to look forward to. I am thankful that Jesus has taken my sin and given me his righteousness. I am thankful that God has given us a love that knows no bounds!

I was just listening to this song by Rich Mullins today, and it made me feel very thankful for God’s unfailing love.

[Youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=tBITqv69_Bc]

A Love that Knows No Bounds
by Rich Mullins

Deep calls to deep
And all that we need
Has been lost in what we’ve found
And all we shall be
Is growing by leaps
In a love that knows no bounds

And we will rise on spirit wings
When we wake from earthen dreams

Time ticks away
Night after day
‘Til the clock comes unwound
With all we shall be
Still growing by leaps
In a love that knows no bounds

And we will wake from earthen dreams
To rise on spirit wings

Make this soul sing

Thanks to my friend, Casey at “Faraway, So Close” for posting this video. The song seems particularly meaningful to me at this moment in my life. I feel the weight of my inability to be all that I need to be. I need to “fit”, I need to be made “clean”, and I need to feel my “soul sing”

“Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing”

I hopy you will enjoy the video as I did. It’s U2 performing the song Yahweh in Chicago.

Yahweh lyrics

Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn

Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don’t make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn

Still waiting for the dawn, the sun is coming up
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?

Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break

Shadow proves the Sunshine

I love this song. It describes so much of where I am and the feeling that things just aren’t the way they are supposed to be. I could wonder, “where is God in all this” when the trouble seems so big, but then if the trouble is the shadow of something out of place, something that is blocking the sun, well, that tells me where God is. He’s where He is supposed to be.

Isn’t the fact that I can judge that there is something wrong the same as seeing the shadow and the light that reveals it?

O, Shine on me!

The Shadow Proves The Sunshine
by Switchfoot

Sunshine, won’t you be my mother
Sunshine, come and help me sing
My heart is darker than these oceans
My heart is frozen underneath

We are crooked souls trying to stay up straight,
Dry eyes in the pouring rain
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine

Two scared little runaways
Hold fast to the break of day light where
The shadow proves the sunshine

Oh Lord, why did you forsake me?
Oh Lord, don’t be far away away
Storm clouds gathering beside me
Please Lord, don’t look the other way

Crooked souls trying to stay up straight
Dry eyes in the pouring rain
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine

Two scared little runaways
Hold fast to the break of day light were
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine

Yeah Yeah, shine on me

Crooked souls trying to stay up straight
Dry eyes in the pouring rain
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine

Two scared little runaways
Hold fast to the break of day light were
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine

Yeah Yeah, shine on me

Shine on me,
Let my shadows prove the sunshine

Stand on . . .

When we stand before God do we stand on our own faith? I hope not, because, if you’re like me there are days when you just don’t have the answers and there is doubt. And I just can’t make my belief cover my short comings. So when I stand before God if I stand at all it will be on His grace . . .

Shifting Sand by Caedmon’s Call

Sometimes I believe all the lies
So I can do the things I should despise
And every day I am swayed
By whatever is on my mind

I hear it all depends on my faith
So I’m feeling precarious
The only problem I have with these mysteries
Is they’re so mysterious

And like a consumer I’ve been thinking
If I could just get a bit more
More than my 15 minutes of faith,
Then I’d be secure

My faith is like shifting sand
Changed by every wave
My faith is like shifting sand
So I stand on grace

I’ve begged you for some proof
For my Thomas eyes to see
A slithering staff, a leperous hand
And lions resting lazily

A glimpse of your back-side glory
And this soaked altar going ablaze
But you know I’ve seen so much
I explained it away

Waters rose as my doubts reigned
My sand-castle faith, it slipped away
Found myself standing on your grace
It’d been there all the time

Stand on grace

we were meant for more!

“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, “Hope”

Bertrand Russell wrote,

“The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain – a curious wild pain – a searching for something beyond what the world contains.”

St Augustine wrote,

“You made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you.”

Blaise Pascal wrote in Pensees #425

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”

What do you think, do you ever feel that there is more to this life?

Scream for Second Life!

I love this song! Have you ever felt that there just had to be more to life than what we see?

“Meant To Live” by Switchfoot

Fumbling his confidence
And wondering why the world has passed him by
Hoping that he’s meant for more than arguments
And failed attempts to fly, fly

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside

Dreaming about Providence
And whether mice or men have second tries
Maybe we’ve been living with our eyes half open
Maybe we’re bent and broken, broken

We want more than this world’s got to offer
We want more than this world’s got to offer
We want more than the wars of our fathers
And everything inside screams for second life, yeah

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live
We were meant to live