flighty, fickle, fleshy people

Oswald Chambers (1874-1917), who is best known for his daily devotional My Utmost for His Highest, abandoned his art and archaeology degree to obey a calling to ministry. Once in seminary he found it unsatisfying and the Bible dull, so he traveled, married, and finally came back around to founding a Bible college in London. Only four years later, he followed a calling to the war and was placed as YMCA chaplain in Egypt. Here he was not killed in the Battle of Gallipoli, but almost a year later at the age of 43 of a ruptured appendix!

This renowned author only wrote one book himself, Baffled to Fight Better: Job and the Problem of Suffering. His wife “Biddy” (Gertrude Hobbs), who Chambers married while seemingly running away from his calling to ministry, was a stenographer and recorded his lessons verbatim. She spent the rest of her life compiling her records to publish the bulk of the work that bears her husband’s name.

God blows my mind! He uses flighty, fickle, fleshy people to accomplish his work and it amazes me every time I think about it. Just like with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, Daniel, Moses, Jonah, Samuel and David, God accomplishes his will in spite of our shortcomings. Literally, thank God!

my eyes are ever on the lord

I am so thankful for David. His poetry reveals so much of the heart of God and, in contrast, the heart of man. I was initially drawn to the strength of language in the second half of Psalm 25 with which I couldn't write but felt myself. And now I know the tenderness of the first half which I pray for myself and you.

Is God not amazing that he blesses us with words and language, poetry and song, to express the intense feelings and emotions within us? It is only with these seemingly inadequate words that we can communicate with Him, our Creator and Savior, and it is only with these that we can communicate with each other the beauty and splendor and hardship and turmoil of this world. Incredible.

I'm posting the rest of Psalm 25 for you. On its own it is beautiful and complete, but I hope you will also read Charles Spurgeon's commentary from The Treasury of David. This man was a genius, his words a gift. http://www.studylight.org/com/tod/view.cgi?book=ps&chapter=25&verse=1#Ps25_1 (You have to read each verse separately but it's well worth your time!)


To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
in you I trust, O my God.
Do not let me be put to shame,
nor let my enemies triumph over me.
No one whose hope is in you
will ever be put to shame,
but they will be put to shame
who are treacherous without excuse.

Show me your ways, O Lord,
teach me your paths;
guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.
Remember, O Lord, your great mercy and love,
for they are from of old.
Remember not the sins of my youth
and my rebellios ways;
according to your love remember me,
for you are good, O Lord.

Good and upright is the Lord;
therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.
He guides the humble in what is right
and teaches them his way.
All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful
for those who keep the demands of his covenant.
For the sake of you name, O Lord,
forgive my iniquity, though it is great.
Who, then, is the man that fears the Lord?
He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.
He will spend his days in prosperity,
and his descendants will inherit the land.
The Lord confides in those who fear him;
he makes his covenant known to them.
My eyes are ever on the Lord,
for only he will release my foot from the snare.

Psalm 25:1-15

i take refuge in you

A Prayer of David.

Turn to me and be gracious to me,
for I am lonely and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart have multiplied;
free me from my anguish.
Look upon my affliction and my distress
and take away my sins.
See how my enemies have increased
and how they hate me!
Guard my life and rescue me;
let me not be put to shame,
for I take refuge in you.
May integrity and uprightness protect me,
because my hope is in you.
Redeem Israel, O God,
from all their troubles.
Psalm 25:16-22

And I pray for you,
be encouraged,
and know that you are loved.

amusingly arrogant

I must follow my previous, quite satirical and borderline rude post with the following quotation I happened upon today.

Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.

Sydney J. Harris, a genius of a journalist said that, and I wrote it down because I am sure I am that arrogant young (wo)man. I learn things in school or on TV or even in a bible study and repeat them with some claim of ownership as if the person listening to me should thank me for imparting this enlightened bit of information to them. Even the small, insubstantial connections I fully believe that I have drawn completely on my own are all silly and immature.

Thank you, Mr. Harris for serving me a slice of humble pie today. I have no idea of the context in which you wrote such a one-liner, but I appreciate your insight.

Here are a couple other quotations of his for thought:

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

lessons of a third-year

As a going-on-fourth-year architecture student, I can look back and say that I think my brain has been overhauled. I feel that I have now been sufficiently trained to see and consider e v e r y t h i n g. I cannot walk or bike or drive or sit anywhere without dissecting the room, street, or park in which I presently exist into its constituent parts – those that I know of and have seen used (un)successfully in project XYZ, those that are new to me, and those that I dislike – and then judge each part’s and the greater whole’s purpose and success. I’d tell you it’s exhausting or annoying if it was, but I can’t.

Since beginning my schooling in the UTSOA this training has hyper-developed my natural audio-visual learning style as I am expected to recall Building DEF by I Also Wear Cool Glasses and its structure, environmental controls, and location for impromptu use in a review at any given time. Lectures consist of a presentation with hundreds of images, hopefully laid out in a consistent format as my more anal professors would demand. Class discussions compare and contrast theories and ideas across countries and decades.

At first, I was completely lost. I felt like everyone was speaking another language and all I could do was hold on with the few words I knew, but it all comes easier now. Everyone will always know something that I don’t, and I think that’s the point. Now, however, when someone refers to a sexy section that Another Designer Photographed in Black published in PERIODICAL from an Exhibition with White Walls, I might know what they’re talking about.

here goes nothing

I’ve been unconvinced of blogs’ effectiveness in reaching a readership until recently, when I noticed how many people are doing it. It surprised me to realize who was “blogging,” (by the way, new words like blogging and tweeting crack me up) and that the subject matter was more than “Today I woke up and stubbed my toe on the nightstand. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” So to jump on the bandwagon, I too want to share with whoever cares the thoughts and questions that pop into my head. I have to admit that I have pretty low expectations for anything I write to change someone’s life or make a difference in the world, but I like the idea of possibly continuing the conversations I have with friends or exposing some half-baked idea to you, whoever you are. So, please don’t take anything I say as anything more than a cyber version of verbal processing and, most of all, please contribute. I’d really like to hear what you think.