Another poem and a few thoughts…

Here’s another poem I wrote about a week ago. I’ve been going through what some might call writer’s block and this poem is the first one in a very long time!  I wrote it in a place of just being amazed all over again by God’s grace and patience.  I kind of felt like the prodigal daughter, too scared to look my Father in the eyes because mine was filled with regrets and failure.  But even though I make so many mistakes there’s forgiveness in the heart of the Father.

Today my one friend and I were talking about how we so easily fall into sin or stumble from God’s way for us.  One thing she said is that we fall so easily because we’re not reading the mapbook.  And when we do read the Bible we’re only hearers of the word and not doers.  You see, we have to live it!  And I know that I’m guilty of many times taking the easy way out.  I read a verse that so clearly speaks to me and then I just carry on and to my own regret choose to ignore the life-giving words of my Saviour.  And that’s one of the reasons why I find myself in this place of failure time after time.  And then I’m amazed by God’s patience with me.  How He shows compassion and forgives me even though I don’t deserve it at all.  Like the father in the story of the prodigal son:

“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” Luke 15:20

I can never ever understand God’s grace…

But here’s the poem:

These footsteps run deep

I’ve been here before

This place I have come to know

But I don’t want it to become my home

 

Temptation, oh you come for me

And too many times I fall

This flesh is weak

Too many regrets to call

 

Now I’m back at Your feet

Regrets sting my eyes

Avoiding Yours I kneel

How many times must I be found in need?

 

My Jesus, oh You come for me

When too many times I fall

Even though I am weak

Your grace covers it all

Just felt like writing

I just felt like writing now.  I’m kind of sad after watching My Sister’s Keeper this afternoon and I need to write.  Because that’s  what I do when I need to process things. Wow, that movie is so sad! Wait, a better word would be heartbreaking. And it really made me think about a lot of things.  Like what I would do in a situation like that.  Or how deep a mother’s love must be for her child.  When do you  stop fighting?  How many kids are out there going through the same thing? How many mothers fighting everyday to keep their children alive? And  not even to cancer, but maybe even just fighting to put a meal on the table every night.  How many broken families are there out there?  Goodness, I am asking a lot of questions!  But these things are real and are touching my heart in a very profound way.  Maybe I am just a little too soft or too much of a thinker.  Leo Tolstoy starts his book, Anna Karenina with a brilliant quote: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ”

Wow, there is always more than meets the eye.  Oh well, I don’t have answers to any of those questions I just asked.  And that’s okay.  I just needed to get them out of my system to deal with the sadness.  There you go, that’s a weird blog entry that doesn’t really fit in anywhere.   But that’s it.

Don’t mind the crazy talk…

I don’t really know what I’m going to blog about. I just very much felt like writing right now.  So don’t read too much into this.  Just doing something as it comes to me, very far from my normal way of thinking about things way too much and turning a thing over and over in my brain until it seems like a mountain I will never be able to climb.

This is a very weird place I’m in right now.  Kind of confusing but still not to such an extent that it’s scary.  Very strange indeed.  I’ve been trying to figure out a lot of things lately, figure out some people (don’t even try! it’s hopeless!) and most of all figure out what led me to this place.  And I can’t even describe what this place looks like, it may be somewhere in the recesses of my mind or it may be some place I haven’t been in such a long time that it has become strange.

Golly gosh, I am starting to sound like a crazy lady!  Should never have read The Bell Jar! Think it’s having an adverse effect on my mental health!  Anyway,  all I know is that I feel weird and like I should be sitting somewhere under a tree and reading to my heart’s content.  That would probably cure this whatever it is!  Could it be that now that I’m 21, the downward spiral of losing one’s mind starts… Why didn’t anybody warn me about this?!

Okay, enough with the crazy rant and weirdness.  I wonder how many times I used the word ‘weird’ in this blog entry.  So this was my crazy probably boredness-induced rant about I honestly don’t know what.  Hope it didn’t scare you away forever. I’ll write something that makes sense as soon as I get rid of the crazy person inside my head. Haha, totally random! I’m just going to end this right now!

Where in the world…?!

Wow, I haven’t blogged in a very long time!  And there are a few very valid reasons for that!  I had a short but nice holiday by the beautiful ocean.  Oh, and right before we left my computer switches off and doesn’t want to wake up again.  Right there is where I started panicking!  So my baby had to go to the hospital and luckily she’s all better now.  So I didn’t have computer access for a while.  Anyway, I’m back now. (Yippee!)  Back to blog and um…  Yes.

To every hurting girl out there

She

She’s been looking
Searching for someone
She’s been giving
Giving herself away

Can’t live with herself any longer
Her heart shattered in pieces
What’s left inside her
Is screaming for some kind of love

Alone in a crowd
Guilt haunting her path
The tears threatening to give way
To whom will she turn today?

The salt taste in her mouth
She cries out to Him instead
Her heart found a Healer
Love’s washing the pain away

As she looks into His eyes
She sees a peculiar thing
Scarlet tears flowing
Every drop slowly making
Her wedding dress white again

Mended heart, no longer searching
Found a love, pure and redeeming
These tears still not running dry
But now they’re tears of joy

Open up your eyes!

Have you seen things around you lately? Have you seen the people around you?  Or have the blinkers of familiarity limited your vision?

The other day I was sitting in a coffee shop, busy with one of my favorite pastimes.  No, not drinking coffee this time around!  I was people-watching.  After sitting there for a while I was once again amazed at the diversity of the Homo sapiens.  This led me to a conclusion about the creativity of the Creator!  I mean, when last did you really notice how unique every person is?  Not even mentioning DNA or genetics now.  So many times we do not even see the signature of God on the people around us.  Even though the Word says that He knits them together.  Plans them carefully.  We tend to get caught up in the biological things like genetics etc, instead of getting caught up in the One who designed it all.  It is sad how our eyes are blind to all the miracles around us.  6 Billion people breathing oxygen and as many hearts beating at around 70 beats per minute on this planet we call earth.  Flowers opening up every morning, the sunrise and sunset. The stories the wrinkles on an old person’s face tell.

I think many times we can be so blind and focus on circumstances, not seeing God working around us.
A good example of this in the Bible is in 2 Kings 6 when Elisha and his servant see things from two very different perspectives.  The Syrians were out to get Elisha and surrounded the town of Dothan where he and his servant stayed.  Early the morning Elisha’s servant went out of the house and saw the chariots and horses surrounding them.  Not something you’d want to see outside your house!  Anyway, he goes back to Elisha and says to him that they are most definitely doomed and will have to think of some brilliant plan to escape this one.  Now listen to this: Elisha simply says that there is no reason to be afraid.  He and his servant have more on their side than they have on theirs.  His servant must have thought his master had gone blind during the night!  But Elisha’s eyes were actually wide open! More so than the servant’s! He prayed that God would open the servant’s eyes.  The Lord answered his prayer and when the servant looked again he saw a heavenly army surrounding them. What a sight that must have been!

You see it’s all about perspective.  How you look at life.   Do you see the faithfulness of God beyond circumstances?  Do you see the grace of our Maker in just waking up every morning?  Do we really see?

Open up your eyes!  See the Artist’s painting everyday in the skies. This is something I have been noticing lately.  The other day we were driving up to Pretoria and I was privileged enough to see one of the most beautiful sunsets in my life so far.  Something that intrigues me about sunsets is that they seem to get more breathtaking the longer you watch.
I want to encourage you to see the small miracles in every moment of every day.  I know this also challenges me.  Someone once said that if you get to the end of a day and you haven’t seen a miracle, you didn’t look for one.  That is so true.  I bet that if we really looked you wouldn’t find enough hours in the day to praise the Lord!  See God working in people’s lives and His signature written all around us.  Remove the blinkers and take a good look around.  Our God lives even though circumstances tell us differently!

Thought-provoking article

I was looking around on Radiant Magazine’s website and started reading this article: http://www.radiantmag.com/2008/11/choose-this-day/

Wow, it’s so relevant and I have a lot to think about now.

“Choose this day whom you will serve.” (Joshua 24:15, ESV)

Music is all around you. You just have to listen…

Listening is all it takes for you to be captured.  There’s something about music that draws people in.  It’s like a universal language.  All people anywhere in the world, make music, in some form or another. Life is like a series of songs from beginning to end. Life begins and someone sings a lullaby to a tiny baby to help him or her fall asleep.  Life ends and the people sing a song at a funeral to remember the person by.  And everywhere in between you’ll find that life is strewn with music notes.  Sometimes they don’t come out as expected, maybe a little false, but they’re always there.  Sometimes the most beautiful songs are played, yet it’s music that remains.

I have never met a person who didn’t like music.  Maybe a different style of music, but never someone who totally dislikes anything musical.  So what is it about music that so captivates us?  Is it maybe that the Composer of music is also the Composer of life?  I believe that God is the author of music and that He created it with a special power of touching our very souls.  And music does touch our souls.  Science has shown that music has a profound effect on our emotions.  It goes much deeper than that…

So, if life is like a song and every day is like a part of the symphony, what are you playing?  How does your song sound?  Every day you have the chance to compose another part of your symphony.  My question is what does the Composer hear when He listens? He is listening.  He doesn’t have to, but He wants to hear your song.  But is it a pleasant sound to His ears?  Or does it break His heart?

He is also playing a song to you, believe it or not.  Are you listening?  Since before the world began, He has been making music.  When He created man, He gave him the gift of music.  Man decided to play his own tune and rejected the Composer, never realizing that by rejecting the Composer, the music couldn’t live on. Music could not fully exist without the Composer.  Then one day on a hill called Calvary, He gave them the gift of His own Son.  He played them a love song never heard before.  Some listened, but others didn’t want to face the music.  That very same love song is still playing and still people choose to listen or ignore it.  The thing is, this love song does more than touch your soul.  It touches the spirit.  Listening and accepting it will change your life. And that, my dear friend, is guaranteed.  As not accepting it could make the difference between life and death.

So what have you done with God’s love song?  And what song are you playing to Him?  He is there, listening. Hearing every note, whether false or in tune.  Will You accept and be touched by the most beautiful song ever played, a symphony of redeeming love sung by the Great Composer Himself?  Can you hear the music?  It’s there; you just have to listen…

~Me