Believing in the light, when in the darkness

I usually don't go for modern musics videos. This is a blazing exception

(Although the one line I think I would disagree with in the Barlow Girl's song is "I feel that I'm losing faith, but giving up would cost me everything"
Because Faith doesn't keep you from Losing Everything. Thats what it is, losing everything, for Him.
"Come and Follow me" and the Galilean man turned, walking away from the ships. One by one the fisherman got on their feet, wordlessly looking at one another. The boat was beached, they could hear the water lapping against its sturdy sides. Then first one, than the other, walked away from their ship, their nets, and followed the figure of that Galilean Rabbi, walking towards the hill.
And on the hills of Rome, the old ex fisherman suffocated to death mocked by Roman guards.
"Don't Crucify me right side up, I do not deserve the honor of dying in the exact same way as my Lord" So they crucified him upside down. He followed his Rabbi, his God, to the end.
Follow Me.

Ray of Hope

Yet in the darkness of the cave
Where my heart, my soul does dwell
I see a strand of light, a ray of hope
Started by a spark, a prayer
I know that every spark could start a fire
And sometimes it can get out of control
But with a gentle hand to guide it, I will be ok
I know the source of light
And soon my cave will be filled with its glory

Janna Leah Holmstrom

And the earth will be filled with the Glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. And he carried me away in the Spirit, to a great, height mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of the heaven from God, having the Glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal....then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of hte street of the city, also, on either side of the river, the tree of life....no longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp o9r sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
"And Behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of prophecy of this book"
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Come and wipe away every tear from our faces, and we shall drink from the River of Life, and see you, face to Face. Amen.

Swords, Vikings, and Men of God, fasting for Joy.

There's something about those Dark Ages....when life was hard, and farmers were forced to bang out their own swords on crude home-made anvils as the government crumbled, the Roman's pulled out, the sound of the Vikings landing on the beach, and your children looked up at you with wide eyes.
A time of helplessness, abandoned by "civilization", when simple men had to rise up, to try to defend their homes, and try to comfort the kids and make something to beat back the marauders who come to kill the children, try to defend the helpless in whatever makeshift way you could, and desperately cry out to the God who seemed to be blessing the Vikings...

That though you hunt the Christian man
Like a hare on the hill-side,
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.

"That though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.

"Your lord sits high in the saddle,
A broken-hearted king,
But our king Alfred, lost from fame,
Fallen among foes or bonds of shame,
In I know not what mean trade or name,
Has still some song to sing;

"Our monks go robed in rain and snow,
But the heart of flame therein,
But you go clothed in feasts and flames,
When all is ice within;

"Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb
Men wondering ceaselessly,
If it be not better to fast for joy
Than feast for misery."

A famous tree (suffering part 2)

The Knowledge of Good and Evil was the title of a famous tree. Like that tree, created by God and declared "good", suffering can be used for infinite gain or infinite loss. Suffering is the currency of heaven, redeeming sinners (Isaiah 53) and damning them (Isaiah 51). Suffering has been part of the human condition since the Garden, where God planted the tree of pain. And since the Fall, suffering has been the only way back into the Garden, where Adam once conversed with God. The story of Job is an inside-out Garden, a story of a man forced to eat of the tree and gaining knowledge "too wonderful for me" that led him back into God's presence. The story of Job is a reversal of the Fall, a story in which God beats Satan at his own game. It becomes the archetypal story of victory over suffering and the defeat of death.

Suffering with God

(from the rememberings of a man, who has suffered much)

Many years ago I spent a summer internship in Haiti, in the impoverished, voodoo infested highlands near the capital of Port-au-Prince. One's first impressions of a person or a place are usually the most profound, and I had an impression of deep beauty and deep pain. The very trees that lined the road flamed with red blossoms, six-foot hedges of poinsettia bloomed all year round. Yet the deforested valleys were scarred with white, where tropical storms had created such runoff that the undercut limestone walls were crumbling into the valley floor, making these streams into rubble strewn wastelands as alien as the cratered moon. The slash-and-burn agriculture had created bedrock deserts out of lush rain-forest. Among the mobs of children were those with mottled red hair, characteristic of protein starvation, due not so much to want, as to neglect. The pain of a culture cobbled together out of a thousand African tribes under the slash of the slavemaster's whip, finding in fear a religion that unified their many tongues. I stood one night, under a tropical moon so bright that I could tell red from blue, mourning the death of my host's son, hearing the voodoo drums in the valley, feeling the pain of existence, crying out to God like a woman in labor, wordless tears washing my face--"God, don't you know?" And though I never heard an answer, my pain was lessened, not because the world had become any better, but because God had heard, because my pain was shared. So it was with Job, when God appeared and he finally knew that God had heard his voice. Suffering, spiritual suffering, is solidarity with God.

For RansomedHobbit...

...and all others that are overcome with a longing for prayershawls and Hebrew letters beneath their fingers and sunrise over the Kidron Valley.

For the music mostly, which rips at my heart.

More pictures

Playing tag with Gaal.
This one is very Gaal-ish, do you think so Twig?

I love this one for the fact that Jesus likes lots of kids
He seems right at home in it.
The head of Christ, by Richard Hook



Jesus looking at you like you are the only
little kid in the world....