You're here with me (take me as you found me)

A good friend and wise man stopped by the nightwatchman post today.  Besides marveling at the view, the trail mix debris, the extravagant artwork (Andy and Lauren), and the beautifully decorated note card envelopes, he told me a little story from his life.  I would like to share a bit of it:
We were musing over love and relationships with young people (these days) and after grinning and chuckling he shared that when he was a young man, he was interested in deep and profound conversation with his (now wife) girlfriend at the time, and how during this one dining occasion they were not really talking,
and he took notice,
and instead of panicking,
or pushing conversation,
he loved it, every second.
Maybe it was in the simple presence that he really saw her, maybe he was overanxious.  Either way, she was there, and he was also there, and that in and of itself was a beautiful thing, a love confirming correspondence.

See Love, romantic love in its purest form, is found and formed in all the feelings and butterflies, late night phone calls, and long drives in the pouring rain.  However, it is confirmed in the jokes, in the down time, in the mundane, in the seemingly insignificant.  Not only that, but love is what we are all striving for.  It is the answer.  "It is the final fight"(John Perkins) 
Obviously we should not be so infatuated with everyone as we are to be with our spouse or even boyfriend/girlfriend, but this is a great place to learn the ins and outs of love and turn them externally, sharing them with the world.  We should not be so infatuated with everyone, yet somehow God is.  And he left us with this simple command.  Love me; and love one another.  He even gave us an analogy:  When He comes back, we shall be like a bride, and HE, the bridegroom. 

Is not romance in every bit of our lives?  Is it not the answer to how we should think of our neighbor, how we should dream of our futures?

Want to fall in Love?
That is not the question: love is present, has been since the start.
Rather the question is:

Want to see the world change?

Fall in Love

the details of this life are breathtaking
and
The lights and sounds call us closer
and
the Hope of the universe rests on us seeing it so 

Fall in Love



listen: (out Tuesday)
Anberlin album preview

Tension and Thrill

"When I look into your eyes, I see, the tip of an iceburg,

When I look into your eyes I see, love is an iceburg,

That throws us into the sea"- Sleeping at Last

The more I live, the more I realize that our lives are lived out, or are supposed to be lived out in such contrasts. When stripped away to it's simplest form, life is truly about contrasts; live/die, Hope/give up, love/hate, peace/war and on and on. It is in the middle ground between contrasts that we are unsettled, that we forget how to live. Because even this middle ground leads, at the end of the day, to an in or an out, a truth or a falsehood. I am really starting to understand what Jesus meant when he said, "let your yes mean yes; and your no mean no. Everything else is from the evil one".

My friends, we need to lay it on the line to truly live!

As I arise into this day I forget about how nice a day I had yesturday, frought with unique and beautiful adventures. Yet, i am reminded of the day by the aches in my bones and muscles. As an outdoor athlete, sometimes going farther means feeling all kinds of sore the following day. Yet, how can I link this soreness to something that was, for all intensive purpose, good. All the while others are arising from their saturdays to soreness, yet they cannot recount it as good, maybe they cannot recount for why thier bodies hurt at all.

I believe this is where the idea and the identity of God show up. How can one tell the difference and who even cares? Between the contrasts of two relatively similar feelings, one feels at peace while the other, through smiles and tired sighs; does not.

The tension is here and yet so few choose to even acknowledge it. It is scary to be on one side, it is lonely and it hurts like hell. But it's reality. Its real and its raw and it is life. And at the end of the day, the thrill far outweighs the tension, and the iceburg is worth the climb.

Hello Love. Welcome! Move. Salvation is here.