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Wounded heart
I accept loneliness
An easy habit
My own burden

We had something once
I breathed Your beauty
It wrapped me up
And made my joy free

Precious things
So very fragile
I let it slip away
The fault is mine

You are faithfulness
From my own death
You have saved me
No death too deep

Here I stand alive
But scars cut still
I walk the peripheral
Locked in mourning

A girl in love
Once the mention
Of Your holy name
Brought me a smile

Now I wait
Outside and cold
Uncomplaining
Unworthy

But in my heart
The deep ache
Of love I lost
Memory of what was

And I hunger
Keeping my silence
I've lost faith in love
The child is gone

The emptiness wins
Taunting my iron will
I will be faithful
And hope for nothing more

Could I hope?
I know Your heart
It aches more than mine
Can I love You again?

Will You awake
The dead love in me?
Bring me back into
The joy of my youth?

I remember dully
The joy that we had
The reality of You
A love beyond beauty

The broken cynic
That haunts my mind
Cries impossible
And hope is strangled

But You made the stars
Turned water to wine
And have raised the dead
Nothing is impossible

Oh God keep saving me!
Breathe life into my heart
Melt the hopeless dull
Build the fire again

Awake in me the love
That sleeps within
Capture my heart
Teach me to dream

singing in the rain

Immanuel Fellowship does not own a building. I've always appreciated this. It makes it easier to grasp the fact that church is not a building or a meeting on Sunday morning, it is people following Jesus together.

This is sometimes inconvenient, like when we have to set up for Sunday's meeting on Saturday night. Mostly though I like it. I like the feeling that people in the church are the church 24/7. I think this buildinglessness (I always feel childishly proud of myself when I invent a new word) also helps create the sense of community we have. I feel like I don't have to wait till Sunday to see someone.

We rent our Sunday space from the Senior Center and meet in homes during the week. This Sunday was their annual rummage sale and consequentially it's our annual Sunday in the park. This is one of the Sundays I really look forward to. I always like it when we meet outside, weather it's during the rummage sale or one of our camping trips. I guess it somehow makes me feel more connected to the early church fathers and the persecuted church. I know they didn't/don't always their gatherings outside. I suppose for me these outside Sundays remind me of the church's placelessness on earth. How the church cannot be confined and limited to a building or a time or a country. It's a clearer glimpse of what we really are.

Usually we are blessed with a perfect sunny day during the rummage sale. This year we got a different blessing. We got cold mountain rain. Fortunately we are all hearty mountain people so we were prepared with the appropriate clothing. I was especially glad for the rain. I am a recent addition to the worship team and this week all the other female vocalists were either gone, or too pregnant to sing. Being the only girl up there is the next best thing to singing a solo so I was fairly nervous. Logistical problems during the worship time make feel like I can relax and worship because no one is thinking about me, they are ether distracted or trying harder to focus on God. This may be a bad attitude. I don't know. As you can see the worship team had to stand close to the edge of the gazebo and we got a little wet. It was fun, I like Colorado weather.

contentment

Philippians 4 "...Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice...Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God...Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."

This is one of those chapters I might be tempted to conveniently ignore - if Paul hadn't written it from the inside of a prison cell. However the whole writing about contentment while in prison thing forces me to take this passage seriously. I'm not a person who does blind faith very well. I have troubles living out the pieces of Christianity that are too deep for me to grasp with my mind. This can make for slow going in my walk with God sometimes. Things like always rejoicing, being content, and being thankful really don't make sense to me. How are we supposed to rejoice when things are going badly? How do we have a thankful heart for the things that suck in life? How can we be honestly content when our needs are not met? I want to obey God in these areas of my life but I don't want to fake it. God sees where my heart really is anyway so there isn't much point in trying to pretend I am thankful, joyful, or content when I'm not.

Lately I've been trying to study artistic composition. The little watercolor paintings I create can be rather uninspiring I think one of my problems is bad composition. One thing I keep seeing over and over is this talk about negative space. Negative space is the empty spaces around the subject of your painting. So say if you paint a vase of flowers the negative space is the blank, uninteresting wall behind that vase of flowers. Negative space is the void. The shapes and patterns created by the negative space, though easily over looked, can make or break a composition. The keep it simple and uncluttered, they help lead the viewer's eye through the painting, they create depth and balance and more. Basically the empty spaces in a painting are very important.

How does this relate to my long-standing dilemma over Philippians 4? Well, I have a problem rejoicing, giving thanks, or being content when the things in my life aren't going as I planned. I have my list of requests I make to God, and many of my requests are things I honestly think I need. I am a light packer, both literally and figuratively, I tend to think the needs on my list are quite basic. God provides but so often He doesn't give me most of what's on my list - He even withholds many of things I thought were very basic. Sometimes it feels like there are a lot of unfilled voids and empty negatives in my life. In response to this I stop rejoicing, being thankful or content. It just doesn't make sense to me how or why I should. I try to do what the Bible says, but blind obedience was never my strong point. However, Paul wrote this convicting passage while imprisoned, and the persecuted church continues to worship God with a sincerity that shames me.

It's so easy to get focused on the negative spaces in my live, the voids, and the places where God's idea of my basic needs turned out to be quite different from my own. I don't understand all the reasons why, and I never will; I'm too small for that. I'm thinking it all comes down to trust in God. Trust that His ways are higher and that Someone smart enough to create the universe is smart enough to run my life. I can obey Paul's words if I can wrap my mind around the fact that God is a master artist. Unlike my little paintings He knows how to use the negatives and voids that life brings and make something amazing out of them. I'm beginning to suspect that maybe the things that God doesn't give us are themselves gifts just as precious as those things we are given.

I've walked with God long enough that I can look back with this new perspective and actually see where and how he has used some of my negatives to weave profound threads of beauty into my life. In hind sight there isn't a rough time that I would go back and trade for an easy time. But I'm so quick to forget what God has done in the past whenever I'm faced with some new trial. It would be laughable if it wasn't so sad. One more thing to put in His hands and beg Him to change in me. Basically I can be thankful, content and rejoice because God knows what He's doing and He never makes mistakes.