10 things that make me smile

1. the smell of Rosie's cookies baking.
2. early morning prayer meetings.
3. the beautiful sunset out my window.
4. how long the smell of my vanilla soy candle lasts.
5. seeing exactly how far away from home I am "door to door" on google maps.
6. making new friends.
7. staying in touch with old friends.
8. bonfires!
9. fireworks in the cold!
10. how freaked out everyone gets when they discover I've already started listening to Christmas music.

helpless

Last night we went out prayer carding. Just walked around asking people if they wanted/needed prayer for anything. We had a brief conversation with a couple who were spending the night on the street because they didn't have any where else to go. We prayed with them and then continued on our way. Somehow offering them a cup of tea or something to eat seemed so small, so inefective. In the face of such an important and basic need what I had to offer seemed silly. I walked away shaken, and it's not the first time.

On my 12th birthday I was going shopping with my mom. We drove past a panhandler on a street corner and I asked if I could use my birthday money to get him some food. While she commended the thought she said no because he would probably be gone by the time we would be back. I knew that it was really important for her for me to use her gift for myself and so I accepted her decision. But I felt so frustrated and helpless.

And that feeling has just been confirmed over and over again. When I see people out on the street I never have cash to give them but I usually run to the nearest drive through and pick them up something to eat. The last couple times they have indeed been gone by the time I got back. And I'm left, once again, frustrated and helpless.

Living in a world so overwhelmingly full of hurt and need is hard enough. But when I seem to repeatedly fail at even the tiny things in front of me it's really hard to keep trying. To not just throw my hands up and surrender to the inevitablity of it all.

What I need to hear is that it isn't inevitable. That small, even tiny gestures make a difference. That the tears I'm crying now have an impact in some way. Because right now I don't know what else to do.

sunny spain

Unfortuately I got sick in Seville and so have no pictures from that beautiful city. But I did have a really good time, all things considered, and didn't miss out on too much as far as the meetings went. I will be looking forward to going back and really seeing everything and soaking up all that I missed.

a very eloquent summary of what I've been learning lately, by Eugene Peterson

One of the stubbornly enduring habits of the human race is to insist on domesticating God. We are determined to tame him. We figure out ways to harness God to our projects. We try to reduce God to a size that conveniently fits our plans and ambitions and tastes. But our Scriptures are even more stubborn in telling us that we can't do it. God cannot be fit into our plans, we must fit into his. We can't use God - God is not a tool or appliance or credit card.
"Holy" is the word that sets God apart and above our attempts to enlist him in our wish-fulfillment fantasies or our utopian schemes for making our mark in the world. Holy means that God is alive on God's terms, alive in a way that exceeds our experience and imagination. Holy refers to life burning with an intense purity that transforms everything it touches into itself.
Because the core of all living is God, and God is a holy god, we require much teaching and long training for living in response to God as he is and not as we want him to be. All our god-fantasies of "give us what we want when we want it on our own terms" in fact do is cripple or kill us. Leviticus is a start at the much teaching and long training that continues to be adapted and reworked in every country and culture where God is forming a saved people to live as he created them to live - hold as God is holy.
The first thing that strikes us as we read Leviticus in this light is that this holy God is actually present with us and virtually every detail of our lives is affected by the presence of this holy God; nothing in us, our relationships, or environment is left out. The second thing is that God provides a way (the sacrifices and feasts and Sabbaths) to bring everything in and about us into his holy presence, transformed in the fiery blaze of the holy. It is an awesome thing to come into his presence and we, like ancient Israel, stand in his presence at every moment. Our Lord is not dwelling in a tent or house in our neighborhood. But he makes his habitation in us and among us as believers and says, "I am holy; you be holy." (Leviticus 11:44)
Once we realize this, the seemingly endless details and instructions of Leviticus become signposts of good news to us: God cares that much about the details of or lives, willing everything in and about us into the transformation that St. Paul later commended:

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." (Romans 12:1-2)

PS, sorry its so long!

i am the deep blue sea

I've had this song stuck in my head for the last three days. It's so beautiful I don't want it to leave.

"I have a friend, the one that I love
Her name is the moon, she holds me close.
When she gets thirsty, I let her drink,
When morning comes, I lay her back down to sleep."

If you want to have a listen check out
www.myspace.com/markmathis

a wasted day

I've been wasting this day trying to make decisions. Trying to be productive. Trying to be creative. Doing nothing of significance. I tried to write a poem... This is how it starts:

Time is passing as I sit here
I can measure it by the scars on my hand
As they gradually fade
As they become a part of me

It gets worse from there...

I had a conversation with a friend this week about life and waiting and how we spend so much of our time waiting for life that life is waiting. I guess that was what today was. I wouldn't call it a life-filled day, but nevertheless I lived it.

priority number one

This was today's text reading:

The Lord has granted me the petition that I made to him. 1 Samuel 1:27

Paul wrote: We know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Romans 5:3,4

Father, God, only you know your plan for us. In our prayers, we confess our weakness and fear when faced with the unknown. We pray we may learn from every circumstance you bring us, and to be faithful to your will for us. Amen.

Last night I was reading the chapter about simplicity in Celebration of Discipline and Richard Foster was talking about putting God's kingdom first. I think this is something key for me right now.

"Focus on the kingdom produces the inward reality... Nothing else can be central. The desire to get out of the rat race cannot be central, the redistribution of the world's wealth cannot be central, the concern for ecology cannot be central. Seeking
first God's kingdom and the righteousness, both personal and social, of that kingdom is the only thing that can be central in the Spiritual Discipline of simplicity. The person who does not seek the kingdom first does not seek it at all."

I have to remember why I am here, what my purpose is. And Ireland isn't it, 24-7 isn't it, it's Jesus.