last night’s community group was very encouraging.  it was apparent how much the Holy Spirit has been doing in the hearts of our guys, specifically after pastor Mark’s description of John the baptizer, a great man “filled with the Holy Spirit.” in discussion of what this means, our group opened up and became more genuine very quickly.  taking a brief 10 minutes alone before wrapping up in prayer, I spent some time out on the porch in the cold, still night air.  I took my journal and started writing anything that came to mind. here is what ended up on the page:

november 4, 2009

such a transient people are we, O Lord.
every which way we scurry around following what we believe is a trace of food to lead us to pleasure or comfort.  rarely, if ever, does it yield these things, for we made haste without seeking you first.  God, how I forget that glorious day you killed me so that I might find life!  how I forget that you watch me like I’m an only child, giving me all your attention and teaching wisdom to your foolish boy.  Holy Spirit, fill me until I’ve no dirt left to spit out of my mouth; too much candy has attempted to sweeten, but I’m starting to feel sick.  this night is quiet and still like the rain on a rooftop—may my soul find the time to emulate these traits.

my memory returns with each read of your Word, and you write new ones with the pen in my hand.  grant me peace and the strength to persevere by your grace, that I may forget myself and this world so that I might invest more time in the most important relationship I’m a part of.

if [my] steps are from you, Lord, how then can [I] understand [my] way?

teach me, God, and fill me with love.

Amen

“Did you know broke people can’t help poor people?”

“You’re gonna leave here and go, ‘I already knew all that and I paid him.’”

“There are no good men but Jesus and your daddy.”

“I guess we call them ‘old time values’ because new people don’t seem to have them.”

67% of Christmas shoppers buy themselves a gift at the same time!

“No matter what, I no longer borrow money.”

Dave received much grief for his conservative, long-term approach to investing before the recession hit.  When things went downhill, some of those people now consider him a genius.  ”When the tide goes out, you can tell who was skinny-dipping.”

“You can’t afford it if you didn’t pay for it!”

“We live in a culture where people have forgotten how to focus.”

“If you read through Proverbs enough, you get a Masters degree in Finance.”

“[My kids] are not on allowance; they’re on commission, because ‘allowance’ sounds like ‘welfare’ to me.”

“Bathing and handling your own money: these are two things you should do yourself.”

Some people came to the event thinking, ‘Dave’s going to put us on a budget!’
“No I’m not. You’re going to put you on a budget; I’m going home.”

C.S. Lewis can often word situations in such an elegant way that I prefer to write them verbatim.  Regardless of the beautiful metaphors, he has so accurately described the state of himself and our tendencies toward trivial desires, that I found this all worthy of quoting from the book The Problem of Pain.  Indeed I could use my name in place of all the “I”s, because there is a truth beneath this writing that spans the human condition, connecting both our shortcomings and thus our hope to one person who, with one life, one death, and one resurrection, has redeemed all of these things, making himself our only worthy obsession.

“My own experience is something like this.  I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down.  At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys.  Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times.  I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ.  And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources.  But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days.  Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear.  God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me.  Let Him but sheathe the sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over—I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed.  And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.”

When the revenant came down
We couldn’t imagine what it was
In the spirit of three stars
The alien thing that took its form
Then to Lebanon, oh God
The flashing at night, the sirens grow and grow
Oh, history involved itself
Mysterious shade that took its form
Or what it was, incarnation, three stars
Delivering signs and dusting from their eyes

Sufjan Stevens