Prospectus

Remember college viewbooks? Those glossy marketing pitches that schools mailed to you junior and senior year after PSAT's and state tests.

Come and see, they beckon. 

Hear what our own have to say about us!

Join us and this is what you'll become.

Join our mission! Catch our vision!

Ah, enlightenment.

So you apply yourself.

The university prospectus.

* * *

I remember viewbooks. How religiously I read them.

I collected them. Fascinating, pretty things of hope, promise, life, future, and identity to me. Tantalizing.

I was sold. Somewhere in a basement in Naperville, there are still 30 some viewbooks fileboxed away.

* * *

Such appeal.

They were an appeal to your freedom and choice.

An appeal to your wallet. All this bang for your buck! Or 50,000 bucks yearly. Worth it!

An appeal to your time. In just four years, they promise, we'll make you youer than you! A difference of a lifetime!

An appeal to your imagination. To become one of those Brooks Brothers-clad souls, walking, laughing, books in hand, a leather messenger slung cross-body, under towering stately oaks and flying stone buttresses. Imagine! the life! the access! the privilege! Join the aristocracy!

(all images above adapted from apply.jhu.edu)

An appeal to your affections.

* * *

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,

where moth and rust destroy...

but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven...

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

// Matthew 6.19-21

"It's obvious, isn't it?" says Eugene Peterson. "The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being."

* * *

The prospectus, appealing to your heart, shows you who you'll become.

And in your choice, your priority, it reveals to you who you already are.

Where you aim your heart, where you set your sights,

There. is your reward, your heaven.

It will dominate your vision, hold your imagination,

warp time and experience,pull your whole life to itself.

Yet once more I will shake not only the earth,

but also the heavens...

in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore let us be grateful

for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken...

August 8, 2007

for our God is a consuming fire.

// Hebrews 12.26-29

i was H-bound.
hopkins-bound. hell-bound.

Christ had mercy on me.

He loves me.

True Sense

Isaiah is probably my favorite book of the Bible. Many mornings spent steeping in its sunrise glory and praying for that hope in Chapter 60 to rise and dawn in my life. In our lives. For Christ, the hope of glory, to come through.

"... and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind."

Today 65:17 filled me with hope and pause. A side effect of heaven is that the new, the real, the true, will so outshine the shadows... But these words for the first time gave way to deep, deep peace about the flashbacks and vivid rememories I've been so fearful of lately.

For years I've counted on being able to think myself into the right corner. God is bringing his grace to reside somewhere deeper in my being than the intellect and deeper than biochemistry, but that pruning has been so painful. I'm verging on crazy at moments.

But it clicked today, that in the new, healed order, there will be no flashbacks. All I will see is the only thing that has been Real all along. Everything else... just shadows of its substance. A dim reflection. So I wait by faith, live by faith. Not by sight, my earthly perception of real and non-real (however reliable that perceiving may be or however mentally stable)--not even by the mind's eye and its crazy ways of seeing. Seen things are transient.

To put stock in worldly sights as though it were real/permanent. Now that would be truly crazy.

One sunrise closer to that day, when we shall see with unveiled faces.

Tears in Heaven

Weep, but not as those who have no hope.
He'll let your tears into heaven, you know--
They're not just gonna disappear like they never mattered.
He'll let them in, so that He can wipe every one of them away.
And you'll see him clearly, with eyes unmarred by tears,
You'll sorrow no more.
Someday, someday soon.
Someday in a short while, He will.
Lord, come dab just a few today.

Learning to Be a Child, 1.

At the bottom of the moody pendulum,

on those days I feel overlooked,

days like last Wednesday,

I just want to be petty.

Do You see me, Lord? Do you remember?

You said I would live Your child forever,

but I feel like I'm growing old and dying, dying, dying...

Forget being the bigger person.

Let me be childish, as a child.

Pacify me.

These are the days that I wrenchingly know,

that my heart is too small for the land beyond the sea,

that I'm helplessly unready for the world I want so badly.

Why is there ugliness left in my heart?

Why does unforgiveness still persist?

Why is the wound still open and stung by salty tears?

Why does hurt remain? And tears, and sorrow?

Why is there working and waiting to do yet?

Why, LORD? When will faith turn to sight?

Bring your frustrations and worries to Him, even if they are about Him.

Franklin wrote, reminding me that I can and should go to my Maker.

And David too, said that I had the LORD's pity:

If you must cry and cry out, include Him in the conversation...

Know that He mourns with you.

My heart heard something true

about the Covenant Keeper's unconditional love,

yet something slighting his trustworthiness, his steadfastness,

His worthiness to be loved, honored, trusted, and feared above all else.

Really? Can I give Him that last-Wednesday heart?

Can I give Him bloodthirsty psalms and abandonment laments?
This heart, with all its doubt and accusations, hurt and dishonor,

Is He patient with it? With my fear and flight?

Know and give thanks, Irene said:

You would not be wanting that world so badly,

if it were not for God's hand that is readying you.

This post is to be continued,

the wrestling to be remembered,

because God cleared his throat,

and this huge age-old mountain in my heart

upped and dumped itself in His sea that day.

how do i approach in a third way that is other from

trembling fear

&

o no big deal

how do i enter the throneroom bold but not brazen,

not presuming but assured.

You're beautiful.

o LORD, haste the day when my faith shall be sight
the clouds be rolled back as a scroll
the trumps shall resound and the LORD shall descend
even so, it is well with my soul

it is well with my soul

it is well, it is well with my soul

when we arrive on eternity's shore

where death is just a memory and tears are no more

we'll enter in as the wedding bells ring

Your bride will come together and sing

You're beautiful.

Desert, 3.

5. Resolved, to sing to the LORD a new song, for My Help and My Deliverer drew me up from the desert pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a solid rock, making my steps sure; He put a new song in my mouth and He will surely always renew the song of the redeemed.

Foundations, 2.

How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord

Lord the ground is shifting beneath me
Rugs, ashes, tile, asphalt
Crawl, tear, and tangle like stormy waves

is laid for your faith in his excellent Word

but Your Word o Lord stands forever
my heart is willing
Your directions feel far

What more can He say than to you He has said?

hide me in all that cannot be sifted or shaken
that I might hear
the deafening still silence of Your Godness

to you who for refuge to Jesus has fled

that I might fear You
sleep soundly in You tonight
love You into tomorrow
every day
until the day
and every day
thereafter