Moon

I'm sitting at the computer in our basement, adding some music to my ipod (Keith Green, Rich Mullins, Robin Mark, Steve Bell), and I happened to glance up and out the window that is at ground level above my head.

The moon is beautiful tonight, haloed by clouds glowin eery shades of gray and blue and orange.

Something beautiful, a little gift of beauty from God to me, sitting in my basement.

Coming Home

I've been at home a couple of days now. We got home mid-evening on Wednesday, and I was back at work bright and early Thursday morning. In fact, as today is a bit of a slower day, and I've mostly caught up on the piles I discovered on my desk upon arrival yesterday, I'm taking a few minutes to write this post from work.

I'll put up a fuller post, expounding upon my vacation sometime this weekend, hopefully with pictures, which I shall have to obtain from my friend's digital camera. For the moment, let me just say that I'm glad to be sleeping in my own bed again, that last night I started attending what I think will be a fantastically challenging Bible study, that I'm still very addicted to Gray's Anatomy, that I'm excited about the school in Seattle that I'm thinking about doing my master's degree at, and that I'm hungry, and my lunch hour is in ten minutes.

It was a good holiday, time desperately needed to refocus and breathe again, but I'm glad to be home.

the sun on my face again

Just thought I'd stop in here for a minute. I'm sitting in my friend's computer room in Langley, catching up on a few emails and reading a few blogs.

I think most of you know that the last half of August and all of September was a really deep and struggling time for me. That there was stuff going on in our family life, and stuff going on in my church life that created a great deal of pain and wrestle. That I was tired and worn and dry. Feeling dead and exhausted from thinking and feeling pain so deeply. I haven't cried so much in years.

But the tears, in the words of a Karla Adolphe song "are dampening my soul". I can breathe here. I needed this week away from Calgary, the space and the distance from the things that troubled me. My soul was softened, raked over and bruised this past month. I feel the sun on my face again.

I just wanted to let you know that I feel new things sprouting, there is a refreshment here, a sense of quiet, a knowledge of the rightness of some of the decisions I made in the last week.

And I'm oh so grateful to Jesus for that.

infested sleep

Okay, seriously, enough with the creepy crawly things in my dreams. You may recall that I've had a couple of weird dreams in the last year about snakes, and this morning, well, this morning I dreamt about snails, and slugs, in my bed. Oh yes. It really was lovely. Anyone want to take a stab at why my dreams (at least the ones I remember) so often seem to be about things crawling over, on, or trying to get into me? Cause I'm really not so much into the whole, there are snakes or snails, or slugs crawling over my body phenomenon. If I was interested in that kind of ridiculous torture, I'd go on "Fear Factor" or something ridiculous like that!

A decision made

Yesterday and today didn't go quite the way I planned, but they were beautiful in their own way. My desk is still a disaster zone - something I'm hoping to fix tomorrow after work. I didn't end up verbally speaking the things on my heart, but I wrote them, and I have officially entered a season of transition.

For those of you who didn't know, I've been wrestling these past several weeks with a decision regarding whether or not I should continue to attend the church I've called home for the past three and a half years, or whether it was time to move on.

It's time to move on.

I've had an interesting God kind of day. He woke me this morning. I, like Samuel, didn't catch it the first time, and I hit play on my cd player, rolled over and went back to sleep. I woke again within half an hour, much more firmly awake. It still took me several minutes to get it, but I decided that given the decision I knew I had to make today, it would be prudent to hang out with God for a while. He led me to Isaiah, and I read pages and pages, encouraged and strengthened by the words of the prophet. At one point, (8:11), Isaiah says, "The Lord has given em a strong warning not t o think like everyone else." That caught my attention. I read probably ten or twelve chapters, struck by God's redeeming love, his willingness to use even the harshest methods to draw His people closer to his heart, to create a strong and beautiful remnant for His glory.

Last week I wrote about not being able to escape the passage that describes Christ as "the stone the builders rejected that has become the cornerstone." Let me string together for you several bits of scripture that have begun to permeate my thinking this week.

"The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. He is the stone that makes people stumble and the rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they do not obey God's word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Look I am placing a foundation stone in Jerusalem, a firm and tested stone. It is a precious cornerstone that is safe to build on. Whoever believes need never be shaken. You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God's temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor. And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple."

These are the words of the prophet Isaiah, and the apostle Peter. What's interesting to me is that Peter is the about whom Christ said, "On this 'rock' (Peter means rock) I will build my church." And Peter goes on to say that we together are stones being used by God to build His temple here on earth. And heres's the thing, Christ is with us as we are being built into a temple to glorify the name of the Lord. He is the cornerstone, the foundation without which the temple could not exist. And HE IS SAFE TO BUILD ON. Wow.

So I went to the meeting, and joined the people I love in worship, and prayed with them over some dear friends who are moving away from Calgary this next week, and, as I talked with a friend afterwards, and I left the home I knew.

My time in that community is done. All week I have been without peace as I wrestled and cried and prayed. But today, I felt such peace. It is time to step into something new. Maybe just for a season, maybe permanently.

I love these people, and I will see them often, but God is calling me onward to new things. He has given just enough light for the step in front of me, and I'm taking it. I go forward praying for the community I am leaving, and believing that the heart connections are far stronger than just those of physical proximity on Sundays.

This is right, and I am trusting that Christ will indeed be, "a precious cornerstone that is safe to build on."