March 2012
1 post
“Through the blackest night, morning gently tiptoes, feeling its way to dawn.”
– Robert Brault
February 2012
3 posts
What if...
…the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you’d turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shiitake you’d...
1 tag
“We must be our own before we can be another’s.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
mahpiohanzia
dictionaryofobscuresorrows:
n. the disappointment of being unable to fly, unable to stretch out your arms and vault into the air, having finally shrugged off the ballast of your own weight and ignited the fuel tank of unfulfilled desires you’ve been storing up since before you were born.
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight...
January 2012
7 posts
2 tags
In Pursuit of Shell Games →
This recent article by Jon Foreman of the band Switchfoot is hauntingly relevant to the recent Austin Stone sermon series on Counterfeit Love and idolatry. Thanks, Jon Foreman, for being a celebrity that “has it all” but counts everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord [Philippians 3:8].
To my shame, I have chased after the apparitions of my...
Travelogue: Entry 1 of 3
I couldn’t be more cliché when I say that studying in China has “broadened my horizon” to dream further and grander than ever before. Being an international and meeting other internationals in an unmistakably international city have stoked the restless embers of wanderlust in my romanticist self. Why keep coming back to China when there are so many other things to do and places to see around the...
“Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and...”
– from Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery
the least jealous of loves
In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles [Williams] is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s [Tolkien] reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to...
bittersweet
what i’ve missed:
the right of way
the sun
first amendment rights
steak, tex-mex
fellowship
driving
southern hospitality
chivalry
old friends
what i’ll miss:
public transportation
taro-flavored everything
accidental hipsters
nonsensical engrish signs
chinese poodles
new friends
Let us follow truth in love
and of the two, indeed, be contented rather to miss of the conveying of a speculative truth than to part with love…True zeal is a sweet, heavenly, and gentle flame, which maketh us active for God, but always within the sphere of love. It never calls for fire from heaven to consume those who differ a little from us in their apprehensions. It is like that kind of lightning (which the...
10 tags
December 2011
3 posts
Godspeed
To glimpse a moment in our Eternity spent with the Everlasting is experience that escapes expression, the beauty of which arouses prompt and present praise. Every week at NICF has been something like this. Regardless of worship style or sermon speaker, the assembly of worshippers from every continent (Antarctica?) and countless countries paints a partial portrait of the coming Kingdom.
Tonight was...
The day is yours...
…and yours also the night; you established the sun and moon. It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter.
白昼属你，黑夜也属你； 光亮和日头是你所预备的。 地的一切疆界是你所立的； 夏天和冬天是你所定的。
~ Psalm 74:16-17
November 2011
4 posts
“Do you think there will there be computers in heaven?…Will they will use...”
– an inquisitive seeker friend
快乐是什么？
Some of my thoughts on “The American Dream,” in response to the short essay prompt “What is...
Love
by George Herbert (1593-1632)
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lack’d anything.
‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here’; Love said, ‘You shall be he.’ ‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my...
The Christian dogma of the double nature in man—which asserts that man is disintegrated and necessarily imperfect in himself and all his works, yet closely related by a real unity of substance with an eternal perfection within and beyond him—makes the present parlous state of human society seem less hopeless and less irrational.
~ Dorothy Sayers in Creed or Chaos? (1947)
October 2011
3 posts
To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will...
Me: what's your tumblr name? food4fish88? eli_whitney?
Jonah: lol eli_whitney. i should use that one more. that one was brilliant.
Me: haha. yes...that one has cotton neglected.
...
Jonah: and interchangeable parts. allegedly.
Me: what, you don't believe that he did?
Jonah: i dunno.
Me: why not? why would eli about something like that?
...
Jonah: seems like its more than a one man idea.
Me: i'm sure the idea had been looming in the air for awhile. but eli knew just how to spin it.
Jonah: i see what you did there. spin? cotton gin? nice.
Me: finally! acknowledgement.
SOS
Psalm 8:3-4
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
Masked in light and by darkness few, the heavens above yet still revere. Sinking heart soul plead for rescue, faithful Father to your love draw near. God draw near.
September 2011
2 posts
“You know what music is?
God’s little reminder that there’s something else...”
– August Rush (2007)
We Have an Anchor
by Priscilla Jane Owens (1882)
Will your anchor hold in the storms of life, When the clouds unfold their wings of strife? When the strong tides lift and the cables strain, Will your anchor drift, or firm remain?
We have an anchor that keeps the soul Steadfast and sure while the billows roll, Fastened to the Rock which cannot move, Grounded firm and deep in the Savior’s love.
It is safely...
August 2011
3 posts
story enough
…He told me a story. Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story. And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief. What? Humanity sins but it’s God’s Son who pays the price?…What a downright weird story. What peculiar psychology. I asked for another story, one that I might find more satisfying. Surely this religion had more than one story in its...
“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before...”
– C.S. Lewis in Till We Have Faces
July 2011
3 posts
listless
Sometimes obedience means:
acting cold
playing cool
holding my breath
holding my tongue
avoiding your face
seeking Your face
being completely honest
being thoroughly judicious
waking early to stir the silence
sleeping early to still the seething
refraining from long showers lest the mind start thinking
abstaining from mellow music lest the mind start reminiscing
convincing the brain...
Seasons
“It is a story about relationships in time. It is a dance between a day and a year. And it is the music of a birth, a life, a death, and a rebirth. It is about cycles that we experience in our brief stay here on Planet Earth.” - Mae
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it....”
– Howard Thurman, an American author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader.
June 2011
3 posts
“O Love, that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee...”
– George Matheson
Walking with God
by William Cowper in Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1772)
Oh! for a closer walk with GOD, A calm and heav’nly frame; A light to shine upon the road That leads me to the Lamb!
Where is the blessedness I knew When first I saw the LORD? Where is the soul-refreshing view Of JESUS, and his word?
What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d How sweet their...
May 2011
5 posts
oh
my God, how many times have you found me here? i pray for meaningful relationships, for a fulfilling career, for rescue from heartache, for healing from affliction…for escape from my circumstances. with much passion, i make my appeals as if i believe their realization would actually bring me contentment. yet in my soul i know that none of the above will ever satiate the hunger inside.
oh...
蔡依林 - 天空 (Sky)
聽著自已的心跳 沒有規則的跳躍 我安靜的在思考 並不想被誰打擾...
“You mustn’t be frightened if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than...”
– adapted from Ranier Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet (changes marked in CAPS)
Concert of Hope
did You rise the sun for me? or paint a million stars that i might know Your majesty?
Thanks for the reminder tonight, Judson.
April 2011
5 posts
No Mere Mortals
by C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory
It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.
It is...
“When our depravity meets His divinity, it is a beautiful collision.”
– David Crowder Band
Tangent
In the domain of infinity, our existence can be thought of as a single point—a discrete event along the continuum of space and time. Like tangent vectors to a circle, we graze this world at but one point of intersection. Life is birthed in this infinitesimal expanse—wherein we are to abide. Yet in this world we are foreigners, far-flung from the home from which we came and to which we will return....
Interlude
Imagine your life as a symphony—a single continuous composition made up of many movements, each characterized by different keys, tempos, melodies. Sometimes the music is upbeat and lively, inciting delight. Other times the music is suspenseful and uncertain, inducing anxiety. And then there are times when…
All of a sudden the key changes and the tempo drops. A forlorn darkness propagates. What’s...
February 2011
1 post
Repairers of the Breach
[Ezekiel 22:24-30]
“Son of man, say to the land, ‘You are a land that has not been cleansed or rained on in the day of wrath.’ There is a conspiracy of her princes within her like a roaring lion tearing its prey; they devour people, take treasures and precious things and make many widows within her. Her priests do violence to my law and profane my holy things; they do not distinguish between the...
January 2011
1 post
“People with the strongest and healthiest sense of calling are not obsessed with...”
November 2010
1 post
Dear self,
You of little faith, why are you so afraid? Jesus is in the boat. Fear not for He will pilot thee.
October 2010
2 posts
孙燕姿 - 這一刻 (The Moment)
...
August 2010
1 post
givesmehope:
On a mission trip last week, my team commented on my infectious joy. Few of them know that mere months ago, I was half-suicidal, depressed, cutting, and spiraling in the worst way. I still have days that I can’t handle myself, but for the most part, I’m happy again. God’s subtle work in my life GMH.
May 2010
2 posts
givesmehope:
Today, I learned that my ten-year-old brother has cancer. After crying for a while, he looked at me, and said, “Why are you crying? It’s just another test from God. And we will surely pass with flying colors.” My little brother’s optimism GMH.
Child-like faith GMH.
m-flo loves 加藤ミリヤ - One Day
This song reminds of...