This Day

I have had hard days this past week, and I have had really good ones. I want the good ones to last, but they don't. There's only enough grace yesterday for yesterday, as much as I want to stretch it out. I know God doesn't think in 24-hour time periods and is not regulated by a clock, but I know that the rythm of life makes a pattern from one day to the next, and that within that pattern, God chooses to act.

Legacy

In my weak pride, I have a hard time taking a compliment. In my strong pride, I want people to say I'm awesome - a prime example of what a human woman was meant to be.

Then, when I get real, when I get humble, I start to think about all the things I spend my time on and how much they matter. And all the things I want to be said about me. And most of it doesn't matter at all.

That's the point of Nicole Nordeman's song, "Legacy." The chorus says:

I want to leave a legacy
How will they remember me?
Did I choose to love?
Did I point to You enough to leave a mark on things?

It's a question I've been asking myself as I get into the prime of my life. I mean, what am I gonna do with myself? What will my life say? I think being well-fashioned in the eyes of the world, in many ways, is not bad - being well-read, being multiculturally literate, and having good manners are all good things. But at the end of my life -

I just wanna hear instead
"Well done, good and faithful one."

That will mean more to me than, "smart," "pretty," or "engaging." It's fairly easy for me to impress people if I want to, and it's somewhat meaningful. But to earn a commendation from my God, well, I don't think that's easy, and it is indeed meaningful.

In, Not Of

So, honestly, I really wanted to write about the Cheat Commandoes today (homestarrunner.com) because it is so funny - the good old laugh-out-loud funny that originally made me like homestarrunner.com.

However, in this blog I talk about songs. So, I'm going to talk about "In Not Of," by Avalon. It's based on the verse that says, though we are in the world, we are not of the world. That's a difficult position to negotiate. How to be in the world, but not of it, especially when it is so seductive an alluring?

This is a beautiful song - highly singable - in fact, I want to sing it in church someday. I think it speaks not so much to how hard it is to be in the world but, for starters, the importance of being in it. I know a lot of Christians are in the world, but some hide out. I sympathize, as did whoever wrote this song, which says,

I hide me far away from trouble
The world outside me grows darker by the day
And so I promise to stay here close beside you
Surely God would want His children safe.

I feel like that sometimes, and fear keeps me from taking the land. In fact, fear of explaining 'taking the land' is going to keep me from talking about it here. It's the concept by which I feel comfortable in the world at all. I hope I make a difference there. I know He's growing His love in me so that I can actually love the world, so even as this song challenges me, it encourages me that something is going right. Here's the chorus:

Come take the light to darker parts
Share His truth with hardened hearts
We are not like the world, but we can love it
Come take the hope to hopeless men
'Til the lost are found in Him
He came to save the world, so let us be
In and not of it.

I know being in the world can go too far, and there are people who've developed really complex ways of addressing how far too far is. I do want to find out more about that, but I know I also need courage to engage with my world.

(I can't tell who this song was written by; here's what the CD jacket says: "Vocal Arrangement: Chris Harris (Nick Gonzales, Grant Cunningham)". )

Lord of All Creation

A moment ago, a hummingbird sipped nectar from an upturned crimson star outside my window. My cat is sitting on the back porch, and even though I can't see him right now, I know he is watching the other cat that is prowling in our backyard. He and I both have our eyes on nature this morning.

For I have chosen no particular song, but rather a subject, about which to write: God's revelation through creation. It seems that since I read a few pages on the subject in Charles Ryrie's Basic Theology that I've heard and sang half a dozen songs about the glory of the Lord and His creation.

I confess it's not something about which I've actively thought much, but I know that when I look out and see the bright magenta of a crepe myrtle against the dark evergreen, and the sunlight dappled through the Georgia pine, or when I see a squirel scuttle across the phone lines, spinning his tail like he's winding up to smack one out of the park, I get happy. In fact, I get a little blessed, and that's what I think Creation is supposed to do for a person.

As Ryrie points out, creation itself is not alone to bring about salvation - only the very specific revelation about the atoning death of Christ is sufficient for that. A person can't get saved by looking at crepe myrtle, but they can get inspired. Something in their heart dilates, and that dilation, I think, is an expansion that gets a heart ready to receive something really big - the awesome revelation of Christ.

On another point, Ryrie points out that creation itself helps to support the argument that there is an eternal creator, which in turn can lead individuals to believe Him by faith. He points more to the complexity of nature than to the beauty of it as a useful proof. From the little I know about science, the beauty that emerges from the complexity of biology is wondrous to me, so I think we're really talking about the same thing from different angles of experience and knowledge.

Creation has been pouring forth speech about the Lord's majesty since before there was writing, before there was math, before there was science. And certainly before there was a formalized cosmology that explained God out of all existence. I have a book sitting next to me on my desk called One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought. The book by Ernst Mayr, published in 1991, won the Phi Beta Kappa award for science. I haven't read it and may not, but I picked it up because it was free and I was intrigued by the title: One Long Argument. What intrigues me is that Darwin's argument, and of course not Darwin alone (and surely I misunderstand or underestimate Darwin and surely, given the wealth of information available and the poverty of my reading on the subject, I am unitiated in such things) but his ideas, in effect, are an argument that invalidates one of the proofs of the argument for an eternal Creator.

It seems like a morbid and defeatist note on which to end, but let me frame it this way: I had never until this morning really thought about how Darwin could affects one's very heart and soul - stealing those rapturous, blessed moments that nature provides, that dilate the soul and prepare me for what I could not naturally understand. Even as a non-scientist, I am affected and a little stirred up by this.