Amazing!

My faithful Father, Enduring Friend

Your tender mercy is like a river with no end

It overwhelms me covers my sin

Each time I come into Your presence

I stand in wonder once again

Your grace still amazes me

Your love is still a mystery

Each day I fall on my knees 'cause

Your grace still amazes me

Your grace still amazes me

Oh patient Savior, You make me whole

You are the author and the healer of my soul

What can I give You Lord

What can I say

I know there's no way to repay You

Only to offer You my praise

Your grace still amazes me

Your love is still a mystery

Each day I fall on my knees

Cause Your grace still amazes me

Your grace still amazes me

It's deeper, It's wider, It's stronger, It's higher

It's deeper, It's wider, It's stronger, It's higher

Than anything my eyes can see

Your grace still amazes me

Your love is still a mystery

Each day I fall on my kness

Cause Your grace still amazes me

Your grace still amazes me

(Phillips, Craig & Dean)

I went to the mall yesterday. It was crazy with activity....Easter shopping. Everyone wants a new spring outfit to wear on Sunday morning. I wanted something new, too. I kept wondering though how much the truth was impacting those all around me. Do they know the story? Do they know what He has done for them? AND if they know it, does it amaze them anymore, or has it become just another holiday? an old stale, familiar story?

Sometimes the story is all too familiar to me, too, but yesterday I had Good Friday on my mind. I remembered that before the resurrection came the cross. I cannot for the life of me (and honestly, for the "life of me" is exactly the reason) figure out why God would do what He did.....for me......for me? It is this amazing thing that no human mind can begin to comprehend, so we make it something less than what it truly is. It is mercy outpoured. It's unconditional love. It is undeserved grace. It is forgiveness. It is AMAZING!

Please take a moment to follow the link below and watch:

http://www.worshiphousemedia.com/mini-movies/26/Are-You-Amazed

On Writing, or Not

This could be the longest stretch of blog nothingness. If I have any followers, I apologize for the neglect. Honestly, I want to write, I just haven't. Yes, facebook is stealing some of that time. I'm not sure why I am letting it, though it is fun to check in with people, see their pictures and what is going on in their lives.

While I haven't been writing much here, I have been writing songs, and that is very good! I'm excited about it! I keep pressing on in that aspect of my life! I want to give myself a small pat on the back, because it is something I've purposed to do and I'm doing it. It is very time consuming, however, and I work on it on many different levels. There is the writing itself, and the re-writing and the re-writing and the re-writing.....but there is also piano lessons, practice, theory lessons, studying about writing, attending writer's groups, participating in venues to put the songs "out there", recording the songs (even simply), etc. You get the point. It takes time! Time well spent!

Writing here is important to me, too, however. I just have not acted like it lately!

All He Wants

"We may desire to bring to the Lord a perfect work. We would like to point, when our work is done, to the beautiful ripened grain, and bound-up sheaves, and yet the Lord frustrates our plans, shatters our purposes, lets us see the wreck of all our hopes, breaks the beautiful structure we thought we were building and catches us up in his arms and whispers to us, "It's not your work I wanted, but you." ---Source Unknown

Do What You Want to Do

I jumped into something new. Oh, it's not actually a new thing, just new for me......facebook. It has been fun, and I have connected with highschool friends and even long lost cousins. I think though that it is a time stealer. Remember I am the one who is constantly frustrated by not having enough time to do all the things I want to do. I succumbed to peer pressure. There is no other excuse. It has definitely crowded out blog writing time and I love writing this blog. One of my main goals here was simply to write. Each time I write I have the opportunity to become a better writer and my hope is that it would spill over into my songwriting. That can't happen if I don't spend time doing it.

One of my favorite sayings is: "You get done what you spend time doing!" That couldn't be more obvious or true, yet we often meander through our lives wondering why we aren't accomplishing anything. I think what we are really pondering is why we don't do the things we really want to. We let all kinds of things creep in and steal time. Some of them are urgent and we have to tend to them, others just quietly squeeze their way in and we hardly notice. We start to wonder where all our time is going and eventually when we stand back and take a good look we start to identify the time stealers. ( I am envisioning a spoof of a horror flick right now called "The Time Stealers!!" O-o-o-o...scary!)

Anyway, what am I going to do about it? One thing I have done this week is to set my alarm every single day. There are days when I don't have to be anywhere, I could sleep in, but if I get done what I spend time doing, then I better get up and do it.

Can't say it better....

The reason I call myself a Christian is not because I manage to subscribe, at any given moment, to all the truths that the hierarchy of my church insists I believe in; let alone because I am a good person or a good Catholic. I call myself a Christian because I believe that in a way I cannot fully understand, the force behind everything decided to prove itself benign by becoming us, and being with us. And as soon as people grasped what had happened, what was happening, the world changed for ever...

... And the world as it was - as it still is -was unable to tolerate this immense occasion; and so Jesus was executed and the life more in touch with divinity than any other life was ended abruptly, when it was still achingly young. The existence of such a life was both so wondrous that it changed everything; and also so terrifying it had to be snuffed out.

The point of this incarnation was surely not to construct a litany of offenses by which we are to judge our own lives at any moment, to force us to thrash and writhe in a constant ordeal of self-criticism and guilt. The point was merely to be with us; and by being with us, to show us better how to be human, how better to embrace our lives by accepting the divine around us and inside us. ----Andrew Sullivan

It's Quotable.....

"People are always better than the stereotype we try to stuff them into."
--Lonni Pratt

I Don't Like It!

Tonight I took a minute to run through blogs I follow. We all must be busy, because no one is posting very often. I throw myself in with that crowd. A few of you have even let your blogs run dry. Hm-m-m-m....are we just too busy or have we run out of words? I doubt our stream of thoughts has ceased and we have all become brain dead. I honesty love blog writing, so why have I been delinquent? It is the tyranny of the urgent I suppose. It is what it is, but I don't like it. 

There is another thing that I don't like. Tonight I went to a songwriter's group. I tossed a song out there to be critiqued. I listened to the comments following the presenting of the song. They were good comments, some suggesting changes here and there. I don't mind the critique, it is a good thing. It gives fresh eyes and ears to something the writer is just a little too close to. What I don't like is my reluctance to change the song. It  isn't because it doesn't need changing and not because it couldn't be a better song. It does and it could. I am just tired of that song already and I want to move on. I don't like that my tenacity has ebbed away. I don't know what to do with this attitude, but I know I don't like it.