Happy birthday Mies

...on the day I was fifteen minutes late to visualization studio


and happy charrette month. may the laser times be ever in your favor.

Holy, holy, holy! though the darkness hide thee
Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see;
Only thou art holy, there is none beside thee
Perfect in power, love, and purity

Never hasting, never wasting.
There is no time to slow down

to long for redemption

I have never sensed such a powerful longing for God's redemption in song as I have listening to Steven Curtis Chapman's album "Beauty Will Rise".

S.C.C. wrote these songs during the grieving process after his daughter Maria Sue's tragic death. The story is easy to find - the Chapmans were interviewed by the likes of Larry King and Good Morning America.
King David cries out to God for His redemption again and again in the psalms, and honestly sometimes when I read them in the morning I seem to long more for my oatmeal and peanut butter or more time at my studio desk than for God's redemption in my life, in our lives, as the bride is being perfected and all of creation longs.
S.C.C.'s songs make it agonizingly real for me. I know that every single word in these songs is coming from a heart that is crying out to Him with its every fiber, with every ounce of energy and faith that it is able to summon. When he sings "I trust You", he means it.

Do you long for redemption? Are you homesick for Home? Or have you become okay with the way things are here.

This world will disappoint us again and again, even if we thought we stopped expecting anything better from it a long time. The greatest despair being what comes from within the sinful self. But as far as we may feel from Him (we are never really far, He's always right there), we trust that He redeems, He restores, He renews. Omniscient, omnipotent, unchanging, holy, perfect in wisdom, compassionate, abounding in love, He makes all things complete and whole.

Life is painful. God is good. I'm writing this down for the dark days that will come in our short, yet somehow long, time on Earth.

Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
...But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.

Psalm 73.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.