Tuesday, December 20, 2011

O Emmanuel [Advent: Day 24 of 28]

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Savior:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Emmanuel. - Isaiah 7:14


Our Hope long-prophesied now comes to us:
Emmanuel, God with us, virgin-born.
Our king and our lawgiver cometh thus:
Of all creation, He is the firstborn.
O, come and save us, Christ, Anointed One,
Who sits on David's throne to set us free;
O come, come Thou who art both star and sun:
Come now, our Hope, and listen to our plea!
Emmanuel, God with us, God on earth,
A sign to all with eyes and ears to know:
A miracle, amazing virgin birth,
For only through our God can this be so.
O come, Thou hope of nations, quickly come
And save before we can to sin succumb!

[Blue/O Antiphon]

Saturday, December 17, 2011

King of Kings and Lord of Lords [Advent: Day 21 of 28]

And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, "KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS." - Revelation 19:11-16

Behold, a Rider on a strong white horse:
He comes from heaven, and in righteousness
He rules the nations; of all good, the source,
And all the wide world He will soon possess.
Our Lord and Savior, Faithful He and True,
With eyes like flaming fire, cometh now,
and on His head are many diadems
Filled with a dozen different sparkling gems.
The wine press of our God His feet will plow;
He comes with wars to soon make all things new.

The Word of God made flesh, His light will shine,
And round Him wraps a robe that's dipped in blood:
The blood of sinners there doth intertwine
With blood of martyrs, saints, a crimson flood.
Now rides He onward, army close behind,
And strikes He down the nations with a sword.
The wrath of God comes forth, yet not unkind,
For He is not just judge, but also Lord.
O, glory to the King of Kings on high,
And to the Lord of Lords who has come nigh!

[Gold/Looking Forward to Christ's Second Coming]

Monday, December 12, 2011

No Longer Slaves, But Sons [Advent: Day 16 of 28]

"I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.' " - Luke 15:18-19

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. - Galatians 4:4-7


O God, I have sinned,
And have become a slave.
I am not worthy to be called Your son.
But You, O Lord, are merciful;
You, O Lord, have redeemed.
The fullness of time has come:
And now through You we are made new.
You, born under the Law, have set us free from the Law.
You, born as a man, have redeemed all men;
And now through You we are made sons:
No longer slaves, but sons of the Heavenly Father.
Now we, by adoption sons of God,
Are heirs also, heirs of an eternal inheritance.
O God, we have sinned,
But in you we are made new;
No longer slaves, but sons.

[Purple/Looking Forward to Christ's Second Coming]

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Sin is Ended [Advent: Day 15 of 28]

For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand, for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the Law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. - Romans 7:14-8:1

Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him. - Hebrews 9:28


Sinful flesh, O, how I hate thee! How I wish to obviate thee!
I am flesh, but Law is spirit, fighting evermore in me.
Sin there was, but Christ has killed it; yet I sin, though have not willed it.
O, how long must these things happen? O, how long must these things be?
For I do what I don't want to, turning from my Lord, from Thee;
No end to this can I see.

Yet, in Christ, my sin is ended, for it's not what I intended;
And, if not my will, no longer I who act so sinfully.
Now, in Christ, no condemnation for those who are new creation:
Christ has died to bear my sin, and now through Him I've been set free.
Twice He comes; salvation first, and second for the saved ones, we,
Waiting for our Lord to see.

[Black/Looking Forward to Christ's Second Coming]

Thursday, December 1, 2011

The Light Will Come [Advent: Day 6 of 28]

The people who walk in darkness
Will see a great light;
Those who live in a dark land,
The light will shine on them. - Isaiah 9:2

And now says the LORD, who formed Me from the womb to be His servant,
To bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel might be gathered to Him
(For I am honored in the sight of the LORD,
And My God is My strength),
He says, "It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant,
To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel;
I will also make you a light of the nations
So that My salvation may reach to the ends of the earth."
Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and its Holy One,
To the despised One,
To the One abhorred by the nation,
To the servant of rulers,
"Kings will see and arise,
Princes also will bow down,
Because of the LORD who is faithful,
The Holy One of Israel who has chosen You." - Isaiah 49:5-7


The light will come to darkened land,
A great, great light from God's own hand;
Into the dark a light will shine
On those in darkness, for a sign
Of that great thing which God hath planned.

The LORD has promised to expand
The breadth and length of His command
As over all the world's wide line
The light will come.

The hopeless world by light is spanned
As comes through Him new life so grand
That He, despised, shall realign
The scattered parts, souls in decline.
Salvation nigh: across the land
The light will come.

[Green/Prophecies of Christ's Birth]

My Redeemer Lives [Advent: Day 5 of 28]

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last He will take His stand on the earth.
Even after my skin is destroyed,
Yet from my flesh I shall see God. - Job 19:25-26

For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol;
Nor will You allow your Holy One to undergo decay. - Psalm 16:10

Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights. - Jonah 1:17


My sin was laid before me, plain and clear,
And I, I fell before my mighty King.
Some hope I hoped to find to calm my fear,
And God then gave his word to stop death's sting.
But O, that lamb that bore, bore everything,
What now to him shall happen, if he dies?
His grave is with the wicked: there he lies.

But Thou, Thou shalt not leave, God who forgives,
Thou shalt not leave his soul down in the grave.
For me, I know that my Redeemer lives:
I'll see Him in my flesh through life He gave.
He went to death, no normal human slave:
As Jonah lay three days within the whale,
So He will lie three days, then will prevail.

[White/Prophecies of Christ's Birth]

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Lamb [Advent: Day 4 of 28]

He is despised and rejected of men;
A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief:
And we hid as it were our faces from him;
He was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows:
Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities:
The chastisement of our peace was upon him;
And with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned every one to his own way;
And the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
Yet he opened not his mouth:
He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before her shearers is dumb,
So he opened not his mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment:
And who shall declare his generation?
For he was cut off out of the land of the living:
For the transgression of my people was he stricken.
And he made his grave with the wicked,
And with the rich in his death;
Because he had done no violence,
Neither was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him;
He hath put him to grief:
When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin,
He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days,
And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
He shall see of the travail of his soul,
And shall be satisfied:
By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many;
For he shall bear their iniquities. - Isaiah 53:3-11 (KJV)


We sinned, which brought upon us death,
A death we can't avoid;
We fasted, prayed, spent every breath
For hope of sin destroyed.

And God delivered: He has said
That paid will be our sin,
For one will come with crownèd head,
And he, though dead, shall win.

He is despised, rejected, scorned,
A man well-knowing grief;
With bruises, wounds, and stripes adorned,
He loves beyond belief.

For we have gone astray, astray:
Like foolish sheep we are,
Yet God will lay on HIM our gray
And deadly sins that mar.

He, like a lamb, for sheep is slain,
Is struck down by the LORD;
He breaks apart the sin-made chain,
And we are his reward.

[Red/Prophecies of Christ's Birth]

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Rain

The rain, damp rain upon the dusty sky,
Makes clear the air, and paints it purest blue;
But as the storm breaks, clouds still sailing by,
Above the floating wrack the sun shines through.
A cold wind blows, and autumn fills the air.
The wet gray sidewalk smells of changing seasons
As drops drip down and splash upon the stair.
O! this, among a thousand other reasons,
Convinces me of God’s great love for man:
That he would bless us with such stunning sights
As sunset-painted clouds o’er sky’s deep span
And whisper through the feel of starlit nights
In cold, crisp air—Ah! what more can be said?
Where God has spoken, how can words dare tread?

Monday, October 10, 2011

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

I have a confession to make: I don't want to graduate. I have less than seven months of school left, and I'm really not ready to be done. I don't think I'm ready to move on into the "real world," so to speak. I want to have another year to finish my book and actually get tired of college. (I'm also still secretly hoping that my books will be instantly successful so I won't ever have to rely on a 9-to-5 job. I would much prefer the flexible schedule of writing, even if I was still writing 40 hours a week.) I also don't want to leave behind all the friends I've made who are two or three years behind me. Sure, I'll be around campus when I have the chance, I hope, and I'll still do things with all of these friends, but... it won't be the same. It won't be as easy as it is right now, when I still go to school here. I don't want to lose that.

But, at the same time, I trust God. I know that he put me both where I am and WHEN I am for a reason. I've always thought that I shouldn't be in the year I am because my closest friends are, with a few exceptions, either older or younger than I am, not the same age. When I'm the youngest in whatever I'm doing (freshman year, in particular), my friends are usually older, and when I'm the oldest, my friends are younger. I don't know why that happens, and I've always wished that I had either skipped a grade or taken a year off or something like that. But, God has me where I am for a reason. I don't know what that reason is, but I trust that God will bring good out of me being where and when I am. It may not be the good I would hope for, but... it will be better than the good I hope for, because, with God, how could it not be? I just have to learn to trust him.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The Hard Things

For some reason, I feel like writing a new blog post. But I don't have a particular subject, so I'm just going to blather on for a while until I run out of things to say.

So I've been writing this book recently. It's interesting. I keep not wanting to write, but once I sit down and start reading, I make a lot of progress in not very much time. Honestly, the hardest part is just making myself sit down to write because I keep telling myself that I want to do something more interesting with my time. Between Sunday and Monday, I wrote over 3,000 words because I just sat down and wrote for a total of maybe 3 hours (probably a bit less, actually). That's a lot of words, considering a full-length novel is usually around 80,000 words. That means that, if I could sit down and write for eight hours a day like a normal job, and sustain only half that pace, I could write a full book (granted, with no editing) in a month. That's incredible. Basically, I just need to sit down and write.

It's funny how many other things are like that, too. Like, homework. Some homework, of course, does take a lot of time, but a lot of other homework doesn't. We just don't start it because we keep putting it off. Procrastination really kills creative productivity. Or, if you expand out of simply talking about time, but just looking at things that are hard to do, it's amazing how many things we fail to do simply because they're hard, even if we actually have the ability to do them. It reminds me of something G. K. Chesterton said: "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried." What's true of Christianity is true of so many other things as well. We look at a task ahead of us, and rather than setting ourselves up in God's strength to overcome that task, we decide it's too hard and pick something else instead. Let's not do that. Let's actually do the hard things, because they're better for us.

Of course, that takes a lot of work. It's really hard to train our wills to go with the things that are hard because we tend to want comfort. We want to feel good, and not actually be good. But in the end, if we take the time to work hard and do the hard things, if we train ourselves to WANT to do those things, it's SO much better than otherwise. I have to keep telling myself this over and over again. I don't do a very good job of it yet, but oh, I WANT to. I want to have the strength of will to choose the hard things and stick with them, because that will make me a better person and will make me more like Christ for the day when I can finally see him face to face.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." - 1 Cor. 13:12

"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." - 1 John 3:2

Sunday, February 27, 2011

The Future

I've decided that it would be a good idea if I posted more things on here. It's been 11 months since I've used this blog, but I think it's a good place to get my thoughts down on "paper." So, if you like to read blogs, please read and let me know what you think of my thoughts. If I haven't posted anything in a while, bug me to put my thoughts down, because I really should. It'll help me, and it might be interesting to you.