silence

I've had this CD for years, and historically it has not received much playtime. I've taken listening to Jars of Clay's Eleventh Hour album nearly every day. Each track contains something precious, and has resonated with me deeply in different ways over the last several weeks.

The CD was already in my car this morning when I started it and was on the sixth track, "Silence". It's not one I've paid much attention to until this morning. But as I find myself stripped, deeply exhausted, feeling quiet and defeated (we can be really honest here, right??), as I find myself in tears many times in the course of a day, this song gave words where I had none. It gave me permission to ask the question: where are You?

Though I know I can trust God is in this and hasn't gone away, my heart is sore and tired and just wants Him to be done with whatever He's doing.

I'm someone who believes the meaning of a song is inextricably tied to the music, so I'm posting both a video with the song and the lyrics.

Close your eyes and listen. Maybe it will speak to something in you, too.

Take
Take till there's nothing
Nothing to turn to
Nothing when you get through
Won't you break
Scattered pieces of all I've been
Bowing to all I've been
Running to
Where are you?
Where are you?

Did you leave me unbreakable?
You leave me frozen?
I've never felt so cold
I thought you were silent
And I thought you left me
For the wreckage and the waste
On an empty beach of faith
Was it true?

Cuz I ... I got a question
I got a question
Where are you?

Scream
Deeper I wanna scream
I want you to hear me
I want you to find me
Cuz I ... I want to believe
But all I pray is wrong
And all I claim is gone

And I ... I got a question
I got a question
Where are you?
Yeah....yeah
And where ... I ... I got a question
I got a question
Where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?

becoming empty

God cannot fill what is full. He can fill only emptiness -- deep poverty -- and your "Yes" is the beginning of being or becoming empty. It is not how much we really "have" to give -- but how empty we are -- so that we can receive fully in our life and let Him live His life in us.

Mother Teresa
qtd. from a letter in Come Be My Light

quietness & rest

There are other souls who labour and weary themselves to a piteous extent, and yet go backward, seeking profit in that which is not profitable, but is rather a hindrance; and there are still others who, by remaining at rest and in quietness, continue to make great progress.

St John of the Cross ~ The Ascent of Mount Carmel

blossoms photo by kirsten.michelle

point vierge: being before doing

From this weekend's sermon:
The biblical call of what we do is always superseded by the challenge of who we are.

Other notes:
Be like Jesus.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. [Psalm 103:8]

Unless the Lord builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.
In vain you rise early and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat--
for he grants sleep to those he loves.
[Psalm 127:1-2]

Maybe that's why I feel as though not much is going on. There's not a whole lot of doing as I find myself in the midst of my own point vierge, waiting in a place that is the cusp between sleeping and waking, between darkness and light. It is a threshold, a doorway between who I was and who God has designed me to be.

Doing is not the point. Perhaps right now, obedience means sitting still. Waiting.

And so I will sit and wait, hands open: surrendering the old, ready to receive the new.

darkness & dawn photo by kirsten.michelle