New Poem: “Ripple”

A few weeks ago I was asked to write a poem for a Valentine’s Day Banquet / Missions Fundraiser at my home church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  The theme was supposed to be the love of God in relationship to missions.  A dear friend of mine (a gracious, dignified, loving, bold 62-year-old man) is going to read it at the banquet tonight, and 100 copies will be handed out.  Please pray with me that it will encourage and challenge and inspire those who hear to a broader global perspective, increased giving to missions work, a more radical Christ-centeredness, a piercing sense of the reality of heaven and hell and the suffering of Jesus, faith-filled, confident, expectant prayer, and missions mobilization.

Here’s the poem.  It’s called “Ripple.”

Selfish Blogging

Following up on my last post, here’s a quote from xanga’s “Getting Started” tips:

“Have something you’ve been dying to get off your chest?  Post it to your weblog and achieve the cathartic thrill of self-expression.  It feels great to decompress after a long day and write in your Weblog… and if it gets too personal, you can always make your post private!”

Could it be true that “the cathartic thrill of self-expression” is (most) often only the long-promising but short-lasting satisfaction of the flesh in having fulfilled its ever-present goal of self-seeking, self-betterment, and self-promotion?  To be sure, the ability and the opportunities and the feeling of expressing oneself, especially in the midst of aching or rejoicing, is a God-given blessing.  But if I express myself merely “to get this off my chest,” then isn’t it possible and even likely that I am simply bound up in myself?  If so, then the double-edged sword of the Spirit — the Word of God — must be wielded to hack through my selfishness and to make even such a thing as an online journal wholly and purely others-centered.  I write for your sake.  I read for your sake.  I meditate for your sake.  Somehow, someway, I will find myself destitute of personal ambition if I will truly be Christ-like.  It sounds radical, I know.  But perhaps that helps prove, rather than disprove, its biblicity.  Jesus was a radical.  Which makes radically following Him normal.  May we be no less than He was, and may He make us far more than we are.  “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not look out for your own personal interests, but for the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).

First Xanga Post

Perhaps I obtained a xanga site mainly so that I could read, not write.  I have friends and family that have sites, and I trust that I’ll be encouraged, challenged, blessed, saddened, and broken by what I read and meditate on.  I also have obtained a site so that I know how better to pray.  History (e.g., Jim Elliot) as well as the present have shown that most everyone will write things in a journal that they might never express to someone face to face.  I think that this splintering and categorizing of fellowship is a result of the fall, since I think that fellowship has always been meant to be unhindered.  But the reality of the comfortability of personal writing remains.  So, I will read and learn.  I pray that I will find Godwardness and not godlessness in what I read, and that the words of my friends and family will be evidence of the transformation of the Spirit of Christ and not of world-molding.  I’m sure I’ll post my own meditations now and again, but please forgive me if I choose to cut and paste them from my non-xanga journal.

If you pray, I would be blessed if you would pray that my writing on this site would be done out of humility and not out of pride and vain-glory.  Especially in sharing personal thoughts, there is a tendency to focus on oneself and to think and write as if life is a circle beginning and ending with “me” (journals are generally, by nature, in the first person singular).  My conviction is growing firm that my own sharing and communicating of my meditations and experiences (whether in speech or in writing, in person or via a medium) are all for the blessing and profit and encouragement and fellowship of others, and not for the release that I may get from such “venting.”  There is an others-centeredness that ought to dominate everything I do if I choose to be so bold as to call myself a Christian.  I do mean “everything.”  And I do mean “dominate.”  May this site please the Lord, and may He be gracious to us as He grants us the paradoxical blessing of decreasing as He increases.  “Bless the LORD, O my soul” (Psalm 103:1).