something crazy.

i'm in love with an incredible guy and he gave me a ring.

i'm going to be a wife.

it's one of those leaps of faith into His arms. 

i want to see all human possibilities exhausted. 

and i want to trust promises made in centuries past.

and the promises whispered quietly--resonating.

"The harder the promise seems to fulfill, the more our faith honors God." - Piper

today.

how quickly my heart sees You and turns elsewhere for joy and hope. like to myself, my obedience, my faithfulness. and in these no joy and hope can be found. just self-loathing despair. Father, i desire to understand the balance of humility and awareness of sin and living in the freedom of being Your daughter--righteous in Your sight because of the cross. Your love for my is infinite. help me grasp (just a little) what that means. i barely even understand "saved from eternal death". let me know it. and may it be on my mind in proportion to its value, as compared to my sin, in Your eyes. oh! Your love is much greater. greater than me. steadfast immovable. eternal. violent. overwhelming. i won't even compare it to me. let my eyes no longer look at myself--but at You. You, the radiant, precious, merciful King, worthy of not ten looks, but one thousand, for my every one look at my sin.

(background: 1 Chron. 13:7-11)

        "Uzzah assumed that his hand was less polluted than the earth. But it wasn't the ground or the mud that would desecrate the ark; it was the touch of man. The earth is an obedient creature. It does what God tells it to do. It brings forth its yield in its season. It obeys the laws of nature that God has established. When the temperature falls to a certain point, the ground freezes. When water is added to the dust, it becomes mud, just as God designed it. The ground doesn't commit cosmic treason. There is nothing polluted about the ground.

        "God did not want His holy throne touched by that which was contaminated by evil, that which was in rebellion to Him, that which by its ungodly revolt had brought the whole creation to ruin and caused the ground and the sky and the waters of the sea to groan together in travail, waiting for the day of redemption. Man. It was man's touch that was forbidden."

R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, pg 108

um... WOW.

Hither to thy love has blessed me
Thou has brought me to this place
And I know thy hand will bring me
Safely home by thy good grace
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Bought me with His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above.

another eleven o’clock run. no moon. just a million tiny lights over the resting world.

my eye sight is so poor at night, yet it moves me (again.)

O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. (ps 104)



Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.

(isaiah 40:26)

i read about a telescope, NASA's Spitzer, that recorded a gas cavity, W5, 6500 light-years away in Cassiopeia, filled with generations of massive stars.



the human eye can't naturally see the W5. if it could, would dominate the sky--appearing four times as wide as a full moon.

All things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, have been singing His praise since the beginning of time. it's just amazing to think that He would form the W5 and other invisible wonders and slowly bestow on humanity the knowledge to detect His beauty and creativity.

i know what is lost when something beautiful is taken from 3D to 2D.
how much more must have been lost going from 3D to 2D and invisible to visible.

i know so little. i've seen so little.

what is man that you are mindful of him?

look along

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The 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. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

 c.s. lewis