She’s on fire

I met someone on fire for You today.As much as she enjoys e gd times with You,she doesn’t shirk the painful ones.e fruit of Your Spirit stare straight in my face when I’m in her company.When she speaks,authority flows.Her word & deeds are one,& there is no conflict in her love for You and people.Every day,she lives for You & dies to herself.She’s on fire & it’s infectious.Lord,make me a raging fire too.

Why or Who

There are so many ways to look at a problem — or maybe a challenge. We could ask ourselves why something less fortunate happened and then spiral down into depression.

It’s not depression that leads to questions, it’s questions that lead to depression. And not just any questions, but questions that arise when we compare our situation with someone who’s better off. Even then, this is a biased comparison because comparison can also be done with those who are worse off and maybe one will feel better about him/herself. But that is not a very noble way to feel better too.  

So why ask why? What can you do when you’ve found the answer? Can you solve it? Now that you know that poverty is because of man’s greed, can you rid a man of greed? The fight is endless.

There’s another way to look at our circumstances, but it requires that we lay down all the other ways. You cannot look to the sky when you’re looking at the ground. Look at who God is and drop all your questions to the ground.

Who is God?

He’s the One who’s in control

He’s the Father who loved His son enough to put Him to the cross so that the world could be saved

He’s willing to risk being misunderstood while running a long-term plan to love His people. His long-term plan can only be fully appreciated when it has run its due course and not when we’re viewing just valley moments of that grand plan  

He is still God whether or not things are or not

He’s the giver of good things (he is able and willing to use the lives of martyrs to draw many to the truth)

He never gives us more than we can handle

He can never be unfaithful to us even when we are. He’s friends with the broken-hearted. He is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. 

He is God.

Why? I don’t know, but I know who my God is.  

Be strong and courageous and.. take heart.

A good friend who’s in her early 20s discovered she has tongue cancer a few days ago. 

She emails a bunch of her good friends:

“The results of my biopsy are out, and i have cancer. Haha weird to actually type that. I’ve cried and all that but i haven’t felt fear.

I feel like God has prepared me for such a time as this. All these years He has taught me to praise Him in the storm, to trust Him, to know and believe that true hope is believing that God is still God, no matter what He decides to do. I’m quite excited to see what God has to do next!

But i know that it will be difficult and painful. I don’t know the extent of it, but i do know this – God is in control, and i want to glorify His name!

Will you help me? (:

If you see me losing my focus on God, please, I give you full permission, to rebuke me in love and guide me back to God.”

Further down in the email, she prays and exhorts all of us:

“Lord, thank You for loving me and allowing me this opportunity to share and show Your love to the world. You don’t need my tongue to proclaim Your glory (but it would be good if i could keep all of it, thanks), help me to focus on You and You alone. I pray for my friends and family, that just as You have blessed me and remembered me, You will bless and remember them as well. (: help me keep singing!

And i will sing –

·         I am not my own, You are in control

·         I surrender all, all to thee my precious savior, i surrender all

·         You stood before creation, eternity within Your hand, You spoke the earth into motion, my soul now to stand! So i’ll walk upon salvation, Your spirit alive in me, this life to declare Your promise, my soul now to stand. So what can i say? What can i do? But offer this heart, oh Lord, completely to You

·         Etc etc hahaha

Please do not pity me or feel sorry for me. instead, be excited with me for the great things that God has in store! In all your circumstances, be STRONG AND COURAGEOUS! AND TAKE HEART! (:”

ODE Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy

We are the music makers, 
And we are the dreamer of dreams, 
Wandering by lone sea-breakers, 
And sitting by desolate streams; 
World-losers and world-forsakers, 
On whom the pale moon gleams: 
Yet we are the movers and shakers 
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties, 
We build up the world’s great cities, 
And out of a fabulous story 
We fashion an empire’s glory: 
One man with a dream, at pleasure, 
Shall go forth and conquer a crown; 
And three with a new song’s measure 
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying 
In the buried past of earth, 
Built Nineveh with our sighing, 
And Babel itself with our mirth; 
And o’erthrew them with prophesying 
To the old of the new world’s worth; 
For each age is a dream that is dying, 
Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration, 
Is the life of each generation. 
A wondrous thing of our dreaming, 
Unearthly, impossible seeming- 
The soldier, the king, and the peasant 
Are working together in one, 
Till our dream shall become their present, 
And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing 
Of the goodly house they are raising. 
They had no divine foreshowing 
Of the land to which they are going: 
But on one man’s soul it hath broke, 
A light that doth not depart 
And his look, or a word he hath spoken, 
Wrought flame in another man’s heart.

And therefore today is thrilling, 
With a past day’s late fulfilling. 
And the multitudes are enlisted 
In the faith that their fathers resisted, 
And, scorning the dream of tomorrow, 
Are bringing to pass, as they may, 
In the world, for it’s joy or it’s sorrow, 
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing, 
Ceaseless and sorrowless we! 
The glory about us clinging 
Of the glorious futures we see, 
Our souls with high music ringing; 
O men! It must ever be 
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing, 
A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning 
And the suns that are not yet high, 
And out of the infinite morning 
Intrepid you hear us cry- 
How, spite of your human scorning, 
Once more God’s future draws nigh, 
And already goes forth the warning 
That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the corners 
From the dazzling unknown shore; 
Bring us hither your sun and your summers, 
And renew our world as of yore; 
You shall teach us your song’s new numbers, 
And things that we dreamt not before; 
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, 
And a singer who sings no more. 


(1844 - 1881)

On writing

The eight rules to writing short stories, by Kurt Vonnegut:  

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.  

But great writers tend to break all these rules, maybe except one.