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Forgiven

Opening the song with the crack of thunder and the sound of pouring rain, nobody sings a song like this better than David Meece. His piano playing and voice bring a lot of emotion into the music and you can almost feel yourself standing at the foot of the cross of a dying man, soaked by the pouring rain.

How the rain and the darkness that fell upon that day must have hung heavy on the disciples as the few remaining stood watching their leader, the man that they put their hopes in, had been beaten, with all the brutality the Romans were known for, and killed as a lowly criminal.

I wonder if John felt that the world was truly coming to an end. That there was nothing left if the Son of God could be made to suffer and die as he had. What hope was there? If this would happen to a man who had the power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, give sight to the blind and raise the dead and claim to be the son of the Great I Am, then who else could escape the clutches of death? How could there be any hope? How could there be any victory?

Of course if that was the end of the story then we’d all be worse off, but it is not.

But, what is that he just said? Who was he addressing? His tortourers? His killers? The crowd that jeered at him and taunted him in his suffering? To all mankind, across the world? To the past, the present and the future?

The chorus is where Meece’s voice rising with emotion and strength. A statement of victory and hope. This is the strength of the cross that cannot be defeated. It is not in the brutality of the victor. It is in the meekness of the defeated. Though, he dies, yet he lives. Because of his sacrifice, God has given life to us, so that we need not suffer the death that he chose. He has shown us a better way.

The second verse, Meece describes, much like Paul did in books of the New Testament, what Jesus sacrifice on the cross means.

Now comes the final, victorious anthem of tHe victory. Here were realize that the music and the sounds of the rain have turned to the thunderous rise. This is our victory! This is our hope! He has paid the price of our sin! He has risen to life again! Never to be defeated! Never to be destroyed! Death has no victory. The grave holds no sting! Though we may say good-bye to our loved ones, it is only for a time.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef0EMjVOybc&feature=related]

Forgiven, by David Meece

It was a cloudy day
The earth stood still
Man hung crying in the shadows
Of a hill called Calvary
An innocent man, belied and scorned
Had gladly borne the pain
And suffering for a world
That should have died there in His place
And as He did, He said,

“Forgive them no matter what they’ve done
Forgive them and tell them they are loved
And give to them a chance to go on living
And give to them a life that they could
never have before
Father, forgive them”

And to pay the price
He became the sacrifice
Surely, He carried all of my sorrows
And He bore my every grief
And did it willingly
He shed His blood for me
And through the tears, I still can see Him
Gaze with love upon the ones who cursed His name
He gave his all to say

We’re forgiven no matter what we’ve done
Forgiven and sheltered by His blood
And we’re given a chance to go on living
And we’re given a life that we could
never have before

No matter what we’ve done
Forgiven and sheltered by His blood
And we’re given a chance to go on living
Forgiven no matter what we’ve done
Forgiven and sheltered by His blood

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God’s Own Fool

Today I found a piece of paper tucked away with the lyrics to Michael Card’s wonderful song about how the world sees Jesus, as some crazy fool. If you can find a recording of this, it’s worth listening to. The opening phrase says it all for me. Growing up in the church it never occurred to me that the world finds him offensive. And why not? His perfectness shines light in the darkness of our lives and shows us just how evil our hearts can be. But, isn’t that the incredible paradox of the cross? What to the world was loss, was God’s victory!

Powerful words!

verse one
It seems I’ve imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all mankind
But if God’s holy wisdom is foolish to men
He must have seemed out of His mind
For even His family said He was mad
And the priests said a demon’s to blame
But God in the form of this angry young man
Could not have seemed perfectly sane

Chorus
When we in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
When we in our weakness thought we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong
And so we follow God’s own fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable
Come be a fool as well

verse two
So come lose your life for a carpenter’s son
For a madman who died for a dream
And you’ll have the faith His first followers had
And you’ll feel the weight of the beam
So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Have the courage to say “I believe”
For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see



If you’ve never heard this before, watch this video on YouTube. Come be a fool as well!

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On Writing

Last weekend because of my daughter’s interesting in writing, we went to a book signing event at the Seattle Public Library for Kate DiCamillo author of “The Tale of Despeareaux” and “Because of Winn Dixie”. She gave a quote from another author that stated “I hate to write, but love to have written”.

My entire young life I loved to write. I imagined great epic tales and wrote down as many as I could. One of my crowning moments was one of my HS English vocabulary classes where we were to write a story each week using the words we were studying. Most of my peers wrote 1-2 pages a week. I wrote between 10 and 15 each week. My teacher described it as my “novel”.

I went to college and originally planned to go into architecture. However, after taking several writing classes, I rediscovered my love of writing and decided to major in English. I remember writing a short sketch about a battlefield and impressing my award winning Professor.

After finally graduating many people would ask me what I was going to do with an English degree. I explained that I wanted to write. However, because of a lack of discipline and just generally being distracted with life and work, I really didn’t write much after leaving school, even though I tried from time to time.

I got married and started working in the high tech industry, first at Microsoft. Although I had the opportunity to write documentation and do some editing for the magazine website that I worked on, I still didn’t write much. One day, however, my PhD college roommate called me and wanted me to write a manual for a piece of software that he had written. This was exciting and earned me a few dollars. Later I made contact with a small newsletter that was published by the Washington Software Association and had the opportunity to write several articles for their Newsbytes newsletter.

But, life in the high tech industry gets incredibly busy (example — when we were moving our data center in Sunnyvale, CA, I worked four days straight and only got 12 hours of sleep total – half of that before the project started). So, I haven’t been able to write as much as I want. I guess that a little bit of disciple, by forcing myself to write every day is really what I need to do.

This is the reason that I decided to start this blog (which is about whatever I think about) and my technology blog (http://configt.blogspot.com) are all about. I read a lot, mostly about technology, but also about a handful of other topics (politics, business, sports and history) and often have a lot of these things running around inside my head. My goal for this blog is to get those ideas out – train myself to find my voice in my writings and discipline myself in putting my thoughts down on paper.

I hope this becomes a launching pad for more great things to come.

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Reflection

Noun

  • A calm, lengthy, intent consideration [syn: contemplation]
  • A remark expressing careful consideration [syn: observation]

 

Finding time to reflect is often a very difficult thing for me to do. It takes quiet time away from the busy hustle and bustle of life. Considering what I do for a living (working on IT systems) it very often becomes a 24 hour job that never seems to end. Unfortunately this doesn’t always give me the “quiet time” that I need to reflect.

I find that listening to music is often the time that I reflect the most. I also tend to be listening to music as I am driving to and from work (usually an hour long commute), which makes it difficult to write down my thoughts and feelings. However, I also tend to “wear a song out” by listening to those that I like over and over again. This gives me the ability to dwell on my thoughts and emotions that are evoked by certain music and songs.

At some point in my teenage years, I became a student of song lyrics and writing down those that had incredible influence or meaning to me. I can’t even begin to list all the songs that impacted me through the years. One of my favorite musicians became Steven Curtis Chapman, who always seemed to write a song or two that would strike me right in the middle of some struggle that I was going through at the time.

Many of these songs have given me a chance to reflect upon either life or personal struggles that I’ve gone through. Follow my reflections on this blog and you’ll see some of these songs that have influenced me through the years.