7.26.2005

Random Morbid List

OK, so the things ON the list aren't so much the morbid bit here, it's what the list is for...and I reserve the right to grow it at anytime in the future...in fact, I'm certain it will grow. Somethings may drop off, others may replace them, or maybe it'll just grow and grow and grow...we'll see.
So why is the list morbid? It's a list of songs I'd like at my funeral. Maybe they're preludes, maybe they're before or after, or at the reception, (wake, whatever)...but these are songs I like, songs that I think do a good job of expressing how I feel about life or grieving, or loss or whatever. I just like them, and I think they'd be appropriate at a funeral.

And no, I don't think I'm going to be dead anytime soon, nor am I even remotely suicidal. Just...Odd. But then, if you know me, you knew that.

So, in no particular order and without any further ado: The first 3 entries

Mercy Me, Homesick
Natalie Grant, Held
Cindy Morgan, How Could I Ask for More

Musical Musings: "Your Love is EXtravagant", Casting Crowns

Your love is extravagant
Your friendship, it is intimate
I feel like moving to the rhythm of Your grace
Your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place
Your love is extravagant

Spread wide in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin
No greater love have I ever known You considered me a friend
Capture my heart again

Your love is extravagant
Your friendship, it is intimate
I feel like moving to the rhythm of Your grace
Your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place
Your love is extravagant

Spread wide in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin
No greater love have I ever known You considered me a friend

Spread wide in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin
No greater love have I ever known; You considered me a friend
Capture my heart again

Your love is extravagant
Your friendship, it is intimate


In case you haven't figured this out yet, I usually muse about songs I like. This is one of them. It's simple, it's lovely, and even if it is a bit repetitive...there are worse things to repeat.

God's love as extravagant. Have you ever paired "extravagant" with God before? Had it ever occurred to you? American Heritage Dictionary defines extravagant in some interesting ways.
extravagant adj.
Given to lavish or imprudent expenditure: extravagant members of the imperial court.
Exceeding reasonable bounds: extravagant demands.
Extremely abundant; profuse: extravagant vegetation.
Unreasonably high; exorbitant: extravagant fees.
Archaic. Straying beyond limits or bounds; wandering.

God's love as lavish? Exceeding resonable bounds? Extremely abundant, profuse? Even exorbitant or straying beyound the limits or bounds. Have you ever thought of God's love that way before?

Yet that's what He is, that's exactly how to describe His love. I've long said that the Bible, from cover to cover, is a love story. It's the expression of God's love for us and the lengths to which He's gone to demonstrate it to us. You see love in the moment of creation, and I can almost hear the way the Word caressed the words spoken "Let us make man in our image". Can you hear the love there? "Come on, Dad...let's make them like us!" Oh, you can't? How about when you remember that creation was undertaken knowing that Man would stumble, would fall. Knowing that the death of Christ on the cross would be necessary to redeem us, listen to Him again. "Come on, Dad...Let's make them like us!" You don't hear God tempering love there...you don't hear the thing I think when I hear that. "Are you sure? You know it will cost your life to redeem them again. They'll hate you, they'll beat you, and they'll kill you. Are you sure you want to make them?" It's not until later you realize the extravagance of love that says "I know what's coming, I know what they'll do...and I love them, Dad, you love them, I love them, and I could no more not love them than I could cease to exist. Come on, Dad...Let's make them like us!"

What about in Daniel, Chapter 10? Christ appears to Daniel in a vision, and when He speaks to Daniel, he says "You who are treasured by God..." Treasured by God! Or John 3:16? God loved the world SO much that He gave His only Son!

John 13 introduces the last days, the last hours of Christ's life, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. The first verse...and this makes me cry, just to read it... John 13:1 says "Having loved His own who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love." He washed their feet, but I think the love he showed them encompassed far more than that simple act of service. I think that statement...that He showed the full extent of His love...John's referring to the crucifixion.

Giving your life for the one you love. That exceeds reasonable bounds, that pays an exorbitant price. That's extravagance at it's best.

There are some reading this now who don't understand what I'm blathering on about, not yet, anyway. But I'm praying for you, dear reader, those who understand me as well as those who don't, that you may come to know just how extravagant God's love is. I'm praying that you will see what Jesus did when He showed the full extent of His love. I want you to fall in love with the Savior who's given everything for love of you.

7.25.2005

Musical Musings: "Held", Natlie Grant

Natalie Grant - Held
From the album Awaken

Two months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To Think That Providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling

Who told us we'd be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
We're asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it's unfair

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We'd be held

This hand is bitterness
We want to taste it and
Let the hatred numb our sorrows
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We'd be held

If hope is born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait, for one hour
Watching for our Savior

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We'd be held

This is what it means to be held
and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We'd be held

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and know
That the promise was when everything fell
We'd be held


I don't really know where to start on this one. I'd heard it before, but when Katherine sang it in church yesterday, it resonated with me, and I've been thinking of it ever since.

I think we all forget sometimes that, just because a Christian is saved, just because they have the abundant life that Jesus promises (John 10:10), that we'll never have trials, never have difficult days. We forget that Jesus told us plainly that we would have troubles (John 16:33), but not to worry, because He overcame the world. The promise was never that we wouldn't have troubles, that we wouldn't have trials and heartbreaks. That's the point of Job; God never told him why He allowed Job to suffer. It didn't matter. The question isn't why do we suffer, it's how do we respond to suffering?

We all have things in our lives that seem terribly unfair. There are things that happen in and around us that any attempt to explain away just belittles. There are hurts that shatter the heart beyond our own ability to imagine how they'll ever be healed. Chances are good you know exactly what I'm talking about, you've survived a hurt like this, or you're still struggling through it.

Infertility is proving to be one of those heart-shattering hurts. I've dreamt of my children, woken from my sleep to find my dream so vivid, so real, that I had cradled my dream child in my sleep. I've named them. I ache to hold them, and yet I wonder more and more often if I ever will. I don't question whether God can give me children, I don't question if He is in control in the midst of this. I know He is. I know that, if and when He's ready for my husband and I to have children, it will happen, and we'll concieve. But in the day to day, faith in God in the salve I have to soothe this mother's heart that bleeds within me.

This is what it means to be held. Not to be kept from hurt, but to be held through it. This is what it is to be loved, and to walk each moment, each hour, each day, in faith that God is in control, and that nothing can seperate us from that love...not even the deepest heartaches.

The promise was when everything fell, we'd be held.