SING IT, BROTHA

Tonight I've been back and forth between my Bible and my Human Rights textbook—plenty of truth and sin and good and bad stuff to question and discuss and all that jazz—and I started this whole post on it, which ended up being pretty crappy and inadequate overall. So instead of frittering away hours typing and deleting tired words, I'm just gonna let Ray LaMontagne take over. He sings it better than I can say it anyway.

"How Come"

People on the street now

Faces long and grim

Souls are feeling heavy

And faith is growing thin

Fears are getting stronger

You can Feel them on the rise

Hopelessness got some by the throat you can see it in their eyes

I said how come

How come

Everybody on a shoestring

Everybody in a hole

Everybody in an old jet plane

Crossing their fingers and toes

Government man spin his politics till he got you pinned

Everybody trying to reach out to each other

But they don't know where to begin

I said how come

I can't tell

the free world

from living hell

I said how come

How come

all I see

is a child of god

in misery

I said how come

The pistol now as profit

The bullet some kind of lord and king

But pain is the only promise that this so called savior is gonna bring

Love can be a liar

And justice can be a thief

And freedom can be an empty cup from which everybody want to drink

I said how come

I can't tell

the free world

from living hell

I said how come

How come

all i see

is a child of god

in misery

I said how come

It's just man killing man

Killing man

Killing man

Killing man

Killing man

I don't understand

...

BUT WAIT

Hey friends.

I'm reading some good stuff lately and thought I'd share a few stray thoughts while I'm by my computer.

Usually, I'm pretty good with uncertainty. It's okay with me. When people ask me about post-grad plans, it doesn't freak me out—even though I don't have any sort of packaged answer, I'm mainly just excited about all the possibilities. God desires to do his work in and through me (crazy, right?), and that's what keeps me rooted in peace.

This has been a blessing. But more and more, I realize that this trust and peace only lands on particular things in my life, and there are plenty of other areas of uncertainty that are simply terrifying. I don't think I realized that until this week—until I found myself overly wrapped up in anxiety, picking up Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest for some wisdom and just for good reading. Two things I read that struck me:

...what an impertinence worry is! Let the attitude of life be a continual "going out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have an ineffable charm about it which is satisfaction to Jesus. You have to learn to go out of convictions, out of creeds, out of experiences, until so far as your faith is concerned, there is nothing between yourself and God.

--and--

When God brings the blank space, see that you do not fill it in, but wait....Wait for God's time to bring it round and He will do it without any heartbreak or disappointment. When it is a question of the providential will of God, wait for God to move.

Sigh. I suck at waiting.

Sure, I am eager for what God wants to do—but I am also eager for the things I want, now...and I'm pretty good at filling in blank spaces while I pretend to wait. What an impertinence I am to myself! What a way we humans have of breaking our own hearts.

"Going out" in dependence on God without my makeshift crutches feels a bit like perching on a thin tree branch that does not look at all as if it will support my weight. But, while the branch and my stomach waver, there's a definite thrill to it, right? And beneath the thrill, a truth that I am supported by the one who wholly knows who I am and why I am.

Hmm. Nothing between myself and God. I'm working on that.

TRAIN-RESONANCE

They say if you put your ear to a train track, you'll feel it's train-resonance long before steel hits steel in front of you.

Since I woke up this morning, my ear has been bent to the train track, and I feel a resonance--a surety far off, the quickening clack that keeps my shoulders in tension and my eyes scanning my surroundings for a change.

I can't speak what it is yet--all I have is the resonance. But intuitively, I know it's not nervousness or dread or anything to fear at all. It's a good alertness.

I think God wants to say something today. This Monday is wholly Novembery-Michigan--all sad wet spots and a hung-over grey--but today I distinctly feel God moving underneath it too, among us. I shiver at the spiritual-tremor I feel...and wait, listening.