25 January 2010

The Vision – By Pete Greig

So this guy comes up to me and says:
“what’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open my mouth and words come out like this:
The vision?
The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn’t even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.

They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision ?

The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to loose,
that they might one day win
the great ‘Well done’ of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don’t need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”.

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners. Martyrs.
Who can stop them ?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them ?

And the generation prays

like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive

Inside.

On the outside? They hardly care.
They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives – swap seats with the man on death row – guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.

Don’t you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdo’s! Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be.
It will come to pass;
it will come easily;
it will come soon.

How do I know?

Because this is the longing of creation itself,
the groaning of the Spirit,
the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great ‘Amen!’ from countless angels, from hero’s of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

19 January 2010

We can only
do what it seems to us we were made for, look at
this world with a happy eye
but from a sober perspective.

Auden

15 January 2010

Addressing sin

I often keep incriminating things. Rather, am not hesitant to write on paper the things in my heart that are sinful. Addressing sin by looking it directly in the eye, this is necessary for its mortification. I rarely get to the point where I would rather not write it out, not bare my sinfulness to myself.

Tonight, I began writing and stopped. Erased. Started. Erased. Deleted the file. No evidence, right?
But the evidence is within. Killing sin is not for the squeamish, or faint of heart. It is not for the weak. It is for the courageous and noble-hearted.

So wrong. How very twisted. Only the humble can come before God. Sin is killed in us because we are not saviors to ourselves. God help us the moment we try to face our sin with a self-determined courage.

Maybe I will go back and write out what was troubling me, the sin in my life. Not because I can face it, but because I can't. And because I have a High Priest to intercede on my behalf.

13 January 2010

Waiting

The old, wooden gavel fell crisply,
echoing as it had no business doing.
Actually,
I had no business listening
to sacred court.
I stood, not waiting
for a pardon, but a command.
My stomach, abdomen clenched,
stiffened.

Those seconds before a storm
smell wondrous.
It's waiting for the ruin
that takes steel.

12 January 2010

"Create in me and in your church a sense of profound respect for questions of conscience. We are so lax. We have nothing of a watchman mentality. We trumpet our freedom in the gospel, but our living looks more like an easygoing indifference to matters of right and wrong. Lord, we even feel superior to previous generations of believers, who at least took moral questions seriously. We view their faith as strict and narrow. But we ourselves are so soft, so casually compliant, so unthinking and undiscerning and uncaring, we are no different from the world around us. We are the influenced, not the influential, because our faith has no moral power, no unbending resolve, no heroic defiance grounded in profoundly held personal conviction. O Lord, awaken us! Enlighten our darkness. Sensitize our dullness. Give us backbone. The world will never be won by Christians like us. "
~Ray Ortlund, Jr.

09 January 2010

Love-Sara Groves


love I made it mine
I made it small I made it blind
I followed hard only to find
it wasn't love
it wasn't love

love of songs and pen
oh love of movie endings
takes out the break
leaves out the bend
misses love

love not of you
love not of me
come hold us up
come set us free
not as we know it
but as it can be

love's reality
is not a passing bravery
it holds out hope beyond what's seen
the hope of love

love not of you
love not of me
come hold us up
come set us free
not as we know it
but as it can be



08 January 2010

What I would like to be able to draw:

-people, ninjas, warriors, princesses

-castles

-boats, sailboats, large ships with mast and sail, Viking ships

-trees

-my dreams

Favorite places:

-Jennings (for fun, not study)

-Pinnacle

-Grandma’s in Oklahoma

-Starbucks with a friend

-running trails

-outside under the stars (Joseph’s house works well)

Concepts I would like to express better:

-my melancholiness

-how one can be secure in faith (or, what that feels like)

-the pleasure I get in rain, snow, and stars…bonfires too.

-the concept of poetry being more than words

-intense longing that is like groaning

-the dreams that are not dreams

-love