I yield my flickering torch to thee

O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.


-George Matheson

Joy = Strength

"...the joy of the Lord is your strength."
Neh 8:10

So...No Joy = Weak Christians

"Please...let us be your family." -Dave

"and rain will make the flowers grow..."

overwhelmed

"But what is whelmed? And why is it always 'overwhelmed'? And when did i hit whelmed??....These are the questions i ponder."

-Dana

duality

"This is the queer duality of me..."

-Dave Gass

sloppy

"...So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss..."

-How he loves us

such a way

"I want to live in such a way that people would want to invite their friends to my funeral..."

-Julia

Beautiful Benediction

Each night at chic all 6,000 of us held hands and recited these words-

And now as we go on our way
may Jesus undo our watered-down,
sanitized and sugar-coated faith,
so that we may follow Him into a heroic life
where our comfort zones are undone
so that we are not afraid to become
counter-cultural and counter comfortable.

Holy Spirit, reveal a God who is bigger
than all we can figure out
and who loves us beyond what we can imagine.

Give us the courage and the commitment
to work together so that none
of God’s work remains undone.

Me + God = INSEPARABLE

"I kinda feel like this whole thing is one big VBS....VBS on steroids." -Kara, my amazing roommate here at chic

Just after pulling our prank of the day... "See, you have to do it to the right people... The ones that look like they like life." -Micheal

"same kind of different as me"

I'm on a charter bus shivering because of the AC. Jeremy is in a tent sweating because there is no AC. Happy medium please?

on temptation

watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iszVTWUGQQM

one simple reason:

God is better.

10 things i've learned from being a CNA

1)Always leave home at 1:45...even if it only takes five minutes to get there

2)Never underestimate the power of hard work coupled with compassion

3)Even if you're just the messenger, the nurse will still roll her eyes at you

4)Have the PJ's set out and the bed pulled back even if it's only 3:00pm

5)Don't be afraid to yell at the top of your lungs so that the resident can hear you. Chances are no one else can hear either.
(someone may have told me that before i started working :)

6)If you get down and look the sitting residents in the eyes they're ten times more likely to hear you...and they usually respond better to what you're saying

7)Never stand around. Always be doing something. But...

8)Patience is a virtue

9)If something needs to be done, i might as well do it. (This has changed the way i do things at home too)

10)Gross smells don't bother me when i focus on helping someone who can't help themselves

weighty

"To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son- it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is."

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

fed up with the hair dryer

My hair dryer likes to make it's home on the floor right where the door wants to shut...

"We've got to find a more permanent solution for your hair dryer!"


-Jeremy

the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell

"In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you- the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter."

-C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

at Christmas

"Alright well, have a good life. Maybe i'll see you at Christmas when the family gets together."


-Jeremy, after i informed him that i will be working for most of the next four days