Hymn

If to distant lands I scatter
If I sail to farthest seas
Would you find and firm and gather 'til I only dwell in Thee?

If I flee from greenest pastures
Would you leave to look for me?
Forfeit glory to come after
'Til I only dwell in Thee

If my heart has one ambition
If my soul one goal to seek
This my solitary vision 'til I only dwell in Thee

That I only dwell in Thee
'Til I only dwell in Thee

Sunday Scribbles

We will not be put to shame when we live for Him. He will expose everything for what its supposed to be. We will be vindicated. God will set us right. If you feel different, there is a reason for that because we have been set apart. Because it is part of our identity. Jesus is praying for us to rise up- for faithful men and women to rise up. Like Daniel. Like Moses and Noah. Live in radical holiness and radical purity. Paraphrased words by Pastor Larry @ CCFC

Be Near by Shane Barnard

You are all
big and small
beautiful
and wonderful
to trust in grace through faith
but I'm asking to taste...

for dark is light to You
depths are height to You
far is near
but Lord, I need to hear from You

be near, oh God
Your nearness is to us our good

Your fullness is mine
revelation divine
but, oh, to taste
to know much more than a page
to feel Your embrace...

(psalms 73:28; 139)

The Thief by Brooke Fraser

Your eyes are full,
full of the future of us
The air changes as you look across
at me in that wondering way

It is as if
I knew you before we spoke
Do our hearts know something we don't?
Conspiring, converging
without giving us any say

You sing me to sleep,
talk down my walls
Look through my windows as I wait
You could be the thief
I give the key to

You're ruining me
with secrets and gestures and looks
With sonnets and second-hand books
Playing the chords in me
nobody knew how to play

You sing me to sleep,
talk down my walls
Look through my windows as I wait
You could be the thief
I give the key to

It fits in your hand like the water in rain
It unlocks our two different selves
and shows we are the same
Rather than wait 'til I
put me out for the taking
You're breaking
You're breaking into my heart
and I'm letting you

Your eyes are full,
full of the future of us

Bird by Bird

"So I grew up around this man who sat at his desk in the study all day and wrote books and articles about the places and people he had seen and known. He read a lot of poetry. Sometimes he traveled. He could go anyplace he wanted with a sense of purpose. One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around."

"Do it every day for a while" my father kept saying. "Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things."

"I wrote a lot of other things, too. I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship's rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down."

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up."

"Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do--the actual act of writing--turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward."

Basic mysteries

"Nietzsche had argued that music is beyond rational understanding: it is too close to the basic mysteries and contradictions of existence; it touches and conveys realities for which words or logic are inadequate; it is, in Nietzsche's words, 'a realm of wisdom . . . from which logicians are excluded'; and it thus reminds us of the limitations of our power to understand the world."