I haven’t yet begun to grasp The immensity of your sky of stars. I haven’t started to see your hand In the tiny details of my mundane life. I haven’t fathomed the deepest depths Your love was willing to go Just to be with me. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I that You should see me In a world so full of beauty? Who am I? Who am I? How could You love me When You know me? When You know inside of me? I can’t even start to dream Of all the million many details that You paint. I don’t know where to start When I look around at all Your art. I don’t understand the greatest lengths Your love was willing to walk Just to be with me. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I that You should see me In a world so full of beauty? Who am I? Who am I? How could You love me When You know me? When You see so deep inside me? My darkness trembles My fear begins to shake. My anger melts before Your grace The light erases me. Who are You? Who are You? Who are You that You can love me You can change me so completely? Who are You? Who are You? So much holy, holy are You So much love and passion are You So much light and life are You And You yearn for me to know You. You gave up everything Just to be with me. Note: For some reason, the song “Here’s My Life” by BarlowGirl is stuck in my head: God I’m crying out tonight ’cause I’ve given you my life but I’m tired and I’m missing what’s behind so once more here’s my life
I can’t help but laugh at the almost comical difficulty I’ve had with the paperwork process necessary to secure the job I was recently offered. I’ve had difficult-to-obtain evaluations, duplicated accounts which needed explanation and clarification, overlooked faxes, forgotten reviews, and now the most recent iteration – fingers that won’t fingerprint! Yes, that’s right. I had to get fingerprinted (standard practice in education – I’ve had it done about 5 times now) and the machine wouldn’t accept the scans of my fingers! Finally after 30-odd minutes of trying to get a green light, they gave up and picked the best scans for each finger. The hope is that the ones they chose will be usable and I won’t have to go back and try again! How crazy is that?! At this point I’ve pretty much given up on making it to work for pre-planning and am praying that I make it for the first day of class. Yet He is Holy. Through all of that, He’s still in control. It seems to me that He’s still teaching me to walk in faith (as opposed to just “knowing” the right things). Ecclesiastes 12:12 The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. The word fear always makes me think of a tiny, skeletal man, cowering before a vengeful and furious (usually on fire) being. I don’t think that’s quite the image the author had in mind. Fearing God is one of those things that’s kind of “christian-ese,” like grace or faith. It gets used a lot, but not that many people really understand it. Strong’s definitions for this word include awe, reverence, honor, respect, and astonishment. That’s much broader than the terror and trembling I usually think of. It seems that often in the Christian world today, we tend to emphasize God’s love and downplay the more God-like qualities (like judgment and anger). While this might be good in the sense that it helps people to have a relationship with Him, it’s not good because God is called Almighty for a reason. He isn’t a giant teddy-bear or a wish-granting leprechaun. There’s a huge lack of respect for God today because we’ve read things into (and out of) the Bible. Part of it is the Hellenized culture, but part of it is that we’ve tried to make God “user friendly.” And while that’s all well and good, we’ve lost the awe and astonishment that precede reverence and respect. If, after searching the world and trying everything known and available to mankind, Solomon concludes that only two things matter and one of these is to fear (be in awe, astonishment, reverence, and respect) God, that makes it pretty significant! For me, that might mean being more aware of the complexity of the world He created, or it might mean really studying and discovering the qualities that God applies to Himself so I can know who He is. It might be treating Him less like a cosmic Santa Clause and more like an Almighty, awesome, incredible, overwhelming Maker-of-all-things in whom all things hold together (literally) and without whom all life would cease to exist. If you want to be amazed, read this forward I received from a friend the other day. It’s pretty cool!
Psalm 26:3 For I am constantly aware of your unfailing love, and I have lived according to your truth. I think it’s pretty amazing that David could say this! I’m not sure I could. I’d like to, but I’m not sure I’d be telling the whole truth… Constantly is a pretty big word. This post by Skip Moen kind of goes along with that idea that I have no idea how to be all the things God has for me, and even less idea how incredible God really is: enjoy!
I was looking for something else on Skip Moen’s site but found this (because it’s from today). From Skip Moen’s Today’s Word “The Hidden God” post: The word of God is not an object of contemplation. The word of God must become history” (emphasis added). Contemplate this insight. Biblical revelation, God’s disclosure of His point of view about us, is tied directly to unrepeatable, unique historical events. It comes from outside the schemata of general laws. It has no precedent and no subsequent parallel. If we are to understand, we must realize that God’s word is, in itself, an incarnation. It is God becoming history – our history. The hidden mystery of God splits our chronos, repeatable experience and leaves us with a slice of the divine, exploded in an event in life here and now. The hidden quality of God is discovered in His desire to open a window into heaven. It could not be more momentous. Is that what you realize when you read His word? Do you find yourself captured by a mystery? Are you consumed by the event of His disclosure, stunned by His presence? Do you read the words trembling that God allows you to peek behind the curtain, even if only for a split second? Are you in awe? Or do you read in order to categorize, systematize and universalize? OUCH! I totally read to categorize, systematize and universalize. Sometimes I am captured by the mystery – like with the whole angel thing yesterday… but how often am I consumed by and stunned by His presence? Do I even realize that I am getting a glimpse into the mind and heart of God? That is certainly something for me to contemplate.
Habukuk 2:20 But the LORD is in his holy Temple. Let all the earth be silent before him. People are loud. We talk and think out loud. We yell and cheer. I have a hard time being still and silent. No, I’m not ADD or ADHD or anything like that… but even when I’m still, my mind is going a mile a minute. But God is supposed to inspire awe, and in that awe we are silent before Him. The only time in my life that I can really say that awe of God inspired silence for me was when God met me in my living room a while back. I could literally feel the arms of God wrap around me and hold me. I was speechless then. I was overwhelmed. I was silent. Part of me wishes I felt that more often, but probably because of my business and the chaos of my life, I miss it or just don’t take the time to really dig in. That time was unique. That was God coming close to me when I really needed Him. That doesn’t happen everyday (not in that way). If did, I’d never get anything done. But I wish I could cultivate more silence in my life so I could spend a little more time in awe of my loving Creator. Of course, I’d have to choose to spend that time with Him and not messing around with other things… There’s the rub.