Melodious Music

Ephesians 5:18-19 ~  ". . .  be filled with the Spirit . . . singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God . . . "

John 7:38 ~  "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."

Before I even begin I must say for accountability purposes of myself that in the passage in Chapter 7 of John, I find an interesting addition to the Scripture - what appears to be almost an after thought, or a side not, is actually quite possibly the essence of this Word.  The Author who is infallible and NEVER wasteful did not intend for . . . "as the Scripture has said" to be an after thought in are awareness.  It is quite possibly the pinnacle of this passage - as the Scriptures have commanded, that is how we are to believe.  We as creation do not determine what belief will be - He has already detailed that plan for us, repeatedly and clearly in the Word of God.  I think we in our Western religious arrogance have redefined this - "he who believes in Me" - to suit our liking.  Our rewrite of the Word is quite carnal and fleshy in the writing - it pleases me and it pleases you.  It is not too hard, nor too offensive, we write the sting out of the sacrifice of "belief in Me."  Before I spin a web in which you no longer like me, I will stop myself and weave that web another day, in another post.  It is of absolute necessity that we talk of this awful and damming rewrite but it demands far more then a simple paragraph.  We will reconvene on the subject another now and the accountability is upon you and upon me to demand of ourselves that we look at this apparent after thought - "as the Scripture has said"- with far more intensity; for millions of eternities hang on this very Word - "as the Scripture has said."

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Living a life fully surrendered to Jesus (as the Scriptures have said . . .) allows the inner man, the spirit man to make melody unto the Lord and living waters flow as melodious tune and music moves as healing waters flow and a flesh, soul man becomes a spirit man.  With every blow to the flesh, with every sacrificial way the river lows wider and stronger and swifter.  With each moment of death to self the melody moves sweeter, the purity of the music masters the heart and soulish man looks much more like the image of the Jesus Man.  As surrender to Christ's cross ways overwhelms the hourly cravings of self - the rivers of living melody flow freely from our heart's borders unto the land of the walking dead.   But, while the music masters a sweet melodious way, we must fix our eyes on Truth - the sweetest music was wrought in the anguish.  The crushing of self on our Christ's cross way, it is surely the Only Way.

Waters flow most freely from rivers pathed with purity - no impurities of self to block the water's way.  For of our self is ALL impurity.  That which you prize the most in you, is likely that which is your deepest impurity before the cross of Christ.


What is you admire most of you?  And yes, we do admire the me and the you - in most of our conversation and much of our thought you will hear the hidden traces of self love.  And that in which we admire the most of ourselves is often that which so profoundly impedes the flow of sweet melodious music and the swiftly passing living waters.

If you are a true follower of Christ, if you are fully surrendered to your Savior - note that I did not say if you attend church regularly, have a fish on your SUV, graduated from the seminary, post Scripture on your Facebook page, vote conservative, attend Bible studies, or have even read every book ever written by Beth Moore (truly!  How many books must one woman write before we all just study the Word of God for ourselves?!)

None of the above determines whether you or I are a true follower of Christ.

Yet, if you are a follower of the Living Christ, then you have an inner man who has and is communing with the Spirit of God.  And this spirit man knows in the most profoundest of ways the deep degradation of your soul and flesh man.  Your spirit sits currently at the feet of Jesus, continually worshipping the God of heaven and earth - he KNOWS His goodness and your constant depravity.  Our spirit man knows.

Your spirit man desires and loves to make melodies unto his Lord.

But, your soul and your flesh man wage war for control and vie for a constant say in what you will do and say.

Your spirit man lives under the beauty that is the flow of the living water but your flesh man silences him with an astounding amount of self - love.  For there is no living waters in self nor lovely melodies in the carnal man.

Through materialism, narcissism, vanity, arrogance, pride, love of self, love of money, love of luxury, love of safety and comfort and on and on we silence the spirit man's flow.

And the walking dead do not hear your melodious tune to your glorious Maker.

They can not hear the music over the din and racket you raise about you.

It is time to silence the selfish, soul man and the silence comes only through crucifixion.  Death to self and life to music wrought unto the Lord is that which He has commanded of us.

The walking dead desperately need to feel the flow of living waters from you.  And me.

We dare not deepen their death through this continual din and racket of self.  

For we will stand accountable.

The Dance of the Dying

It is likely I would have written it differently.  Very differently.  An easier word laid down on a less sacrificial line.  I surely would have written a way, a word, that did not include the agony, the dying.  The repeated death.  It would have certainly been an easier word.

Clearly, I was the wrong author for my story.

Fortunately, I had laid pen in His hand long ago and the Author of the Ages lays down the true word of my life’s tale.  He pens the word that is needed, desperately needed in my existence.

I exist only as His words written into my days.  The pith, the very marrow of our being demands His needed word.

And yet, we all must decide for self - will we willingly read His word into our days or will we wrest pen from Author’s hand to lay a gentler word, an ease into our days?  We must decide.

Poetic agony - beautiful poetry etched into a deep and sustained agony.  Lines of loss that lay the foundation of Beauty.  Beauty written in to the pages of our days, the true storybook of our life is often penned in pain.

It is a Mystery - poetic agony.  Words of a beautiful death.  The beautiful dying.

It is a Mystery I surely would have been too weak to write.  

I am hardly able to accept, to receive the poetic agony - I would have been entirely incapable of crafting that word.

And there in lies the bedrock of my trust - the essence of why I continue to follow this Author, to pursue this particular piece of Artistry.  For the depths of the strength, the awful pith of His power to pen a Word of such a wonderful Sacrifice.

The Poetic Agony of the death and resurrection - the Beauty of the Sacrifice, the astounding love buried deeply right before our eyes is enough to confound the ages.  We can not understand for we surely NEVER could have done such an awfully beautiful thing.  

It is the Mystery I can not decipher and yet, I know it as I know the very beat of my timid heart.

Mystery that holds me transfixed, even in the loss, even in the hurt.

It is just enough and yet profoundly far more then enough to eternally call me Home.

And yes, this was a summer to write Home about.  And I did, many times over.  I wrote Home, desperately.  I pleaded with Home, daily, hourly - I needed all that I could only find at Home. 

It was a summer of many endings and the birth of new beginnings.  New beginnings that this weak writer never would have had the courage to write.

It was a summer of much loss, and at the repeated moment I knew that I had nothing left to lose - another loss would be penned from Home.

I prayed prayers I NEVER dreamed I would pray and I asked myself a thousand times over, “How did I get here?”

And the answer would always return the same - “Your Author loves you and He knew of some needed loss in your life.”

Needed loss I could not perceive, could not in the slightest see but He saw and in His infinite love He would write the agonizingly beautiful death of myself.

I died a thousand times a thousand these summer months.  And oh, what a sweet death it was.

And I will die a million more.  And oh, what a sweet death it will be.

And yes, beauty is certainly in the eye of the Beholder and my Beholder sees beauty in the scarring.

The marring of myself looks only as the ugly agony to others but to my Beholder He see only the lovely in my ugly.

Yes, the Mystery of the Ages.

And a summer to write Home about with much gratitude - the lovely loss is my deeply needed Word.

I pray for grace to dance through the dying.

Disturbance

“An artist is a disturber, one who upsets the comfortable people.  Not to punish but to open the eyes.”      

               ~ “A Cry of Stone” by Michael O’Brien

A true artist disturbs.  A disturber.

I struggle against the apathy that resists the agonizing labor to disturb.  To disturb another I first must disturb self.  A willingness to disturb a selfish, lazy heart - a slothful scribe such as I.  Tis certainly a laborious task.  Forgive me Jesus.  Jesus the True Artist, the Disturber Whom disturbed the long line of time.  Jesus, Who rent eternity wide open to you and I.  Whose ultimate disturbance offered you, gave me - the heavenly opportunity to step out from under linear time.  To disrupt the here and now, to lay bear the barrenness of our finite space and our limited time.  To disrupt this finite moment and to move into the limitless possibilities of mercy and eternity.

Forgive me Jesus.  A slothful scribe who can not be disturbed to offer up a moment of a minute sacrifice of the slightest disturbance.

We who are too busy with the emptiness of limited time, too consumed by the nothingness of our space when it is void of praise - how can an emptiness and a nothingness be so terribly consuming?  It is yet a subtle guile of the crafty serpent to lull the land and whisper the lullaby of into sleepy man’s ear.  The barrenness of our moments when no disturbance is offered to lay wide the emptiness of time that holds no worship, that barrenness will kill the soul with consumption.  

Worship hallows the moment I occupy and the disturbers wake the slumber-er to see the barren cavity begging to occupied by that rightful worship.

Our world needed a Disturber to show our catastrophic need to hallow each second with the rightful worship.  The Disturber came and we did surely see and yet now, so often we do need to see again, and again, again that gaping hole that screams for the hallowed filling of the rightful worship.  So, He would call us to disturb in the here and the now, to remind a world again.  To disrupt our pitiful narcissism, to disturb our sickening trend to selfish implosion.

A disturber to take eyes of our silly now and remind of the Ultimate Disturbance that laid wide the eternity of mercy.

Heavenly Father, change a slothful scribe to a disturber.  An artist.