He is our home.

The real problem of evil is not simply that evil and suffering exists, but rather its ability to separate suffering human beings from the only true source of healing and hope: knowledge of the love of God and a sense of providential meaning and hope. Evil is that which destroys hope in and love for God. Events within the world that bring about suffering are not inherently evil; they can, however, become evil if they are given the power to separate the sufferer from the hope and meaning that emerges from faith and a providential understanding of and relationship with God. - John Swinton from Raging with Compassion

shake the dust

I love when Churches do Art well.

comfort

Yesterday something happened that two years ago would have been the worst possible thing to happen. Today it seems like a distant dream of sorts. Yesterday, a girl I would have given anything to be with got married. It is a funny thing because it is truly the death of a particular dream. No going back.

I’m always thinking about my future self and future situation, I wonder who I will be and what I will be doing. Sometimes I think about my past self and wonder what that self would think about current self. (You tracking?) If my past self would have known what was going to happen yesterday it would have been slightly devastating for him but today its just slightly annoying. Mostly annoying because I’m still single. You can only find so much fulfillment in school, friends, and bikes. Today I am asking my self if I am okay with current self. The truth is that I really am. Sure I wish I had a wife, a fulltime job, a dog, and a sailboat but I know I am where I am supposed to be. In a world where it seems nothing is the way it’s supposed to be, it’s actually quite amazing to know you are in the right place in life. However, it doesn’t mean it is easy to be where you are supposed to be.

Today, I’m in Knoxville, TN for the week visiting my parents over spring break. Its good to be back in Tennessee. I’m sitting in a little coffee shop I like in downtown (coffee and chocolate) listening to Deb Talan (of the weepies) while it snows. It’s good for me soul. A week of Sabbath and rest. She has a song Comfort and it has been one of those songs in my life that restores my sanity and heart when they are faltering. Today my heart is weak and I could listen to this song over and over all day long. There are certain songs in life that connect to you and wont let go. Today those songs are inside of me.

The video is lame but it was the only way to get the song on here that I knew of.

Great song. One of the best videos I have seen in a long while!

I really love this song. But more importantly he is shaving while holding a kitten. Why?

I know that this is not okay. This is not what God intended for his creation. Dominion never meant this.

"The heart wants what it wants." -Woody Allen

But why doesn't the heart want God, trust God, look childlike to God for life's joys and securities? Why doesn't the heart seek final good where it can actually be found? Why turn again and again, in small maters and large, to satisfactions that are mutable, damaging, and imperiled? - Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.

Fact.

There is always a cat within five feet of you. Watching you sleep and doing what you do.

isaac and the ghost

I am in a new band called Isaac and the ghost. We played our first show last week at a Haiti benefit concert and it went really well. We are recording an ep but go and hear a new song, your walk of shame that Isaac wrote and recorded yesterday. www.myspace.com/isaacnathanael

Well, well, well. It seems silence does not become this blog and for that I am sorry. As I type this, my computer doesn’t believe that blog is a word and is desperately trying to make me understand with a squiggly red line.

Agree to disagree.

I do have such high hopes for this blog because of all the wonderful things that pass between my ears during the day that need to be heard by the masses or at least the few of you who read this (or used to). Seriously though, at least a few times a day I will think of something and then think to myself that I need to write about this but then I get home and either forgotten my striking insights or just don’t care and here my blog sits silently or if your lucky I’ll post some hip video, a video that I most likely didn’t even find by myself. So this year I would very much like to keep this blog going and keep it filled with some real stuff. 2010 at least a blog a week sounds fare, don’t you think?

Well, I do.

I flew into Los Angeles last night after a few weeks in Knoxville at my parent’s home for Christmas. It was good to be home. Usually when I first get home I am struck with mass thankfulness that I live on my own and I have an immediate desire to return to my independence but it doesn’t take long to slip into the comfort of being home. I know I am always sad to leave.

While I am sad to leave I am always ready to run into the next ____. I don’t really know what’s next. I mean the rest of my year is practically laid out in front of me so I do sort of know what is coming my way but I am more interested in the next____. Like I said I don’t know what it is.

I never really know what to think of New Year. Leading up to 2003 when I was 17 a man named Dave who was always trying to get to join the NRA, of whom I learned later was never without a loaded gun in his boot, prayed for me at a new years church service. He told me or prophesied over me and said that God told him that the upcoming year was going to be one of the greatest of my life. I guess on first hearing this most people would be pleased and excited. I on the other hand immediately worried about all the other years that weren’t going to be so good. 2003 really was a great year. Maybe God really did speak to him and then again maybe not. I am just glad he never shot anybody.

happy new year friends. may it be one of the best years of your life.

Something is wrong and there is more than this.

No book has been such a pleasant surprise to me as Stanley Hauerwas' and William H. Willimon's Resident Aliens. I was not excited or interested in reading it all but as soon as I found my way into the first chapter I knew that I was in for a serious ride. This is a book simply for people who know something is wrong in our world and it is a wake up call for those who have ignored the problems. I get to see Hauerwas tonight at APU.

"A Church that had ceased to ask the right questions as it went about congratulating itself for transforming the world, not noticing that in fact the world had tamed the church... we would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcends those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price."

a message heard by few.

With God on Our Side - Bob Dylan

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

Oh the First World War, boys
It came and it went
The reason for fighting
I never did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.
With God on Our side - Bob Dylan

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
And if God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.

Watch the video here@ http://gotellthatfox.tumblr.com/
(I got a tumblr so I wouldn't feel bad about posting so many videos on this my main blog. Maybe it will make me write more.)

so funny...

I'll let this speak for itself

Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
Psalm 42:7 (NIV)

Adoption

Ephesians 1:3-10 (ESV)
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ,according to the purpose of his will,to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.




How Glorious