the skies proclaim the work of his hands
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
-Psalm 19
“Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.”
-G.K. Chesterton
I've heard it in the silence
Seen it on a face
I've felt it in a long hour
Like a sweet embrace
I know this is true
It's calling out to me
It's the child on her wedding day
It's the daddy that gives her away
Something beautiful
-Newsboys, Something Beautiful
sun was shining outside and through the crack at
the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From
where I stood that beam of light, with the specks
of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in
the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black.
I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my
eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture
vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no
beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny
at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the
branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd
million miles away, the sun."
-C.S. Lewis, Mediation in a Toolshed
The moon is a sliver of silver
Like a shaving that fell on the floor of a Carpenter's shop...
Be praised for all Your tenderness by these works of Your hands!
-Rich Mullins
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
-Psalm 139
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
-Psalm 139
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them;
it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.
These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire;
but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers.
For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found,
the echo of the tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
-C.S. Lewis
I’m smellin’ coffee, birds are singin’ just outside
Here comes Your mercy streamin’ in with the morning light
Here comes Your mercy streamin’ in with the morning light
-Chris Rice
"WAKE UP, O SLEEPER!
RISE FROM THE DEAD,
AND CHRIST WILL SHINE ON YOU!"
-Ephesians 5:13
So today I see that God's signs and wonders have not ceased. It is as clear as, nay, it IS the noonday sun. It is the bird's song, the spider's craft, and the expanse of the ocean. Yet, for all their beauty and majesty they do not fulfill. They do not give satisfaction, rather they produce inconsolable longing. As Lewis said they are "echos of a tune we have not heard". They are signs hurrying us on our way to their Creator.
"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."
-Romans 8:22.
Now I KNOW why the wolf howls! I KNOW why the trees bend and the earth cracks! Why the oppressed cry, and the lonely search for an embrace! It is because we see and long for you EVERYWHERE, and don't even know that we do! You alone can satisfy...oh God...show us your glory.
-James
