On Monday nights since January, I’ve been hanging out with some new high school friends from Young Life. Next week, I get the privilege of hangout out with about 18 of these new friends along with about 380 other high school students from all over at Sharp Top Cove camp. I’m really looking forward to this opportunity to get to know the girls better that will be in my cabin. Most of all, I’m excited about the opportunity to get to introduce my new high school friends to an old Friend. Please pray for our week at camp that kids will get to know Christ and find him irresistible. Pray also that as leaders we’ll be able to create space for teens to wrestle with who God is and what a relationship with him means for their lives.
Food for thought from the Common Grounds blog:
I know that in my own life, this is why the Sabbath is beautiful and yet difficult—because it is really all about trust. It is a weekly reminder and test of where my faith rests. Too often that is a rude awakening. The Sabbath often opens up our hearts and shows us that with our lips we say we believe that God is sovereign—that he loves us, but our lives are often a constant, anxious struggle to secure our own destiny and identity. To cease from our labors is to concede that we are dependent, and to once again realize that much of our paranoia and anxiety is the direct result of the mistaken idea that we can secure our own future if we just work hard enough. Eugene Peterson says it well, “The Sabbath is about God interfering with all the things you think you need to get done, so that you can focus on what he has done.”
I’ve been listening to Brooke Fraser recently. She sings with Hillsong some and also on her own. God always uses music, both secular and worship, to minister to me and encourage me. These lyrics from some of Fraser’s songs have been stuck in my head recently.
Shadowfeet
Walking, stumbling on these shadowfeet
toward home, a land that I’ve never seen
I am changing: less and less asleep
made of different stuff than when I began
and I have sensed it all along
fast approaching is the day
There’s distraction buzzing in my head
saying in the shadows it’s easier to stay
but I’ve heard rumors of true reality
whispers of a well-lit way
When the world has fallen out from under me
I’ll be found in you, still standing
Every fear and accusation under my feet
when time and space are through
I’ll be found in you
Faithful
When I can’t feel you, I have learned to reach out just the same
When I can’t hear you, I know you still hear everyword I pray
And I want you more than I want to live another day
And as I wait for you maybe I’m made more faithful
All the folly of the past, though I know it is undone
I still feel the guilty one, still trying to make it right
So I whisper soft your name, let it roll around my tounge,
knowing you’re the only one who knows me
You know me
Show me how I should live this
Show me where I should walk
I count this world as loss to me
You are all I want
You are all I want
Hosanna
Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like you have loved me
Break my heart from what breaks yours
Everything I am for your kingdoms cause
As I go from nothing to
Eternity
Since my birthday was Monday, I’ve been thinking I should write a birthday post. I was trying to think of something profound to say for my 34 years. I read this today on another blog, and I think it captures who I want to be whether I’m 34 or 104–stretched out in pursuit of the life God has planned for me.
I wrote of her once, “She was the most alive, most vibrant, most winsome woman – and although she was born in an era when a woman’s life was defined by her marital status, Jane’s was not. She kept growing until the day she died – and she encouraged others to do the same. I used to look at Jane and think, Oh, God, don’t let me become like her. Now I remember her and implore him to do just that: to make me a beautiful, loving woman who’s stretched out in pursuit of the life He’s planned just for me.”
Today is her birthday. She would have been 103. A few days before she died at 91, I asked one of the pastors who’d been to see her how she looked. “Like a girl getting ready for her first date,” he told me. And I remembered hearing her singing in her fluttering voice: “The longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows; the more that I love Him, more love He bestows; Each day is like heaven, my heart overflows; the longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows.”
