Thursday, November 22, 2007

Hang Drum...Not Hum Drum

I was cruising around Youtube tonight and totally by accident came across this amazing instrument called a hang drum (pronounced hung drum). Oddly enough it originates not in the Caribbean or Thailand, but in Switzerland. The sound is absolutely mesmerizing and sooo melodic. If you go on Youtube and type in hung drum you'll find tons of videos. This is the video that got me hooked. It actually made me miss the family jamming nights with the Pedersons, Adairs and Toppings et al; those were truly pieces of heaven. I hope you enjoy


Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Servant Of All

So there I was during worship this last Sunday when the team started to play this song about Jesus being the servant of all. I was drifting in and out of a great prayer/worship/meditate place when all of a sudden this thought really slammed into me.... Jesus servant of all. It opened a door that I haven't really looked into before, at least not for any length of time. This is probably because I spend most of my meditative time being blown away by His majesty, which encompasses His divinity and His humanity but most especially His character. His majesty lifts my eyes up to see Him seated in the heavenlies far above all the riff raff bs that tries to elevate itself in His face. It is humourous to me to see someone try to get 'all up in His face', but that is a rabbit trail for another day. When I think of Jesus as a servant I begin to see a few things more clearly.
  1. Jesus doesn't mind the title. The depth of this humilty is unsearchable and yet it is part of the core of who Jesus is. Of all the titles His is given this one opens the door the widest to the character traits of mercy, justice and compassion.
  2. This should begin a revolution in my prayer life as the fact sinks in that He is never put out by a request for aid. I have known this before, but not at the level of partnership. It has always been a servant and master kind of thing or at least a teacher and student relationship.
  3. This shows up so much of how we structure leadership and how we approach leaders. In fact this may explain why we tend towards a religious mindset so often. Even in our best efforts our tendancy towards religion creep along beside us because we find these parts of God so foreign to our thinking.
  4. This makes serving easier. I know that sounds weak and pathetic, but it is true. Knowing that in serving I am elevated with Christ makes it so much more fun. There is nothing threatening about it at all because when I go low I am with Jesus and He is above all pricipalities, powers and names that can be named so there is truly nothing to lose. Sorry if that sounds crass, but I find it very liberating.

I will leave it at that for now because I hear my wife doing the dishes and I want to have some fun too.

Yeah God!

Thursday, November 01, 2007

WOW

As I was busily driving around today in the GTR Mazdarati I started to think about a discussion that Cris and I had today. There was a bit of a disagreement which I thought we had resolved and yet something was niggling at me from the back of my bean. Normally I would shelve this as some kind of mental warfare to derail what had been a good day and a seemingly good resolution to a minor crisis, but I have been allowing these things to ramble of late and see what God may be saying in it all. This time He showed me that even in my best intentions I had allowed the blinders to be slipped over my peepers and had acted in a self preserving manner. The issue that we discussed was not what was important, the fact that I put myself first and proceeded with a self justifying mindset is what was important. It blinded me to what was pivotal for my wife.
At this point it is important that I rabbit trail back a few years to a question that I posed to God. It was all about the meaning of holiness. For years I had heard and read about this word, but had little or no real understanding of what it meant in practical terms which made adhereing to 1 Peter 1:16 difficult. After a while it dawned on me that I could actually go to the source and ask God what this word meant (duh). He replied that holiness is the complete, undivided, unwavering and unending devotion to the object of your love. This blew me away on so many levels. The particular level I need to address here, though , is my wife.
What I realised is that I had not approached the whole incident from the standpoint of holiness, not to God (whose laws state I am to love others as myself not after myself), nor to my wife (whom I am to love as Christ loved the church). I had to call her back with this renewed perspective and apologise for not seeing what was important to her and actually acting like it was important. It went well.
I thank God that He is slowly softening my hard bean and dropping in some jewels in the process. I also thank Him for a wife that sees this and is patient. She's solid gold that woman.