my Redeemer is changing me

praise be to God. not just that he has ever so graciously blessed me with passing my finals (!!), but that he has been changing me to be more like Jesus. knowing him more deeply is like a cool stream in the burning desert of my loneliness - my relationship with my God is dimming the desires of this body i live in this side of Home. not that he is making me into a frumpy beige asensate person - instead, he is renovating and restoring my heart, unscrambling all the mess, re-making me into the man he made me to be - his child, pure, holy, his. and whilst i know that this work will not be completed here, there is this indescribable awe and joy to feel him at work in me. and i tremble because i know that "he who began a good work in [me] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (phil 1).

but that is also why i haven't been posting - i know that i am a weak, fallen, sinful man... and i am limiting my internet use because i don't trust myself to remain sexually pure... if you struggle like i struggle, may my God give you his grace and be working in you great change.

turn your eyes upon Jesus.
look full in his wonderful face.
and the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
in the light of his glory and grace

Jesus is all I need.
the love of my God is more than enough - may He never let me see it as a stop-gap fall-back safety-net.

hallelujah!!

listening to Until The Sun Turns Black by Ray LaMontagne
it is awesome.
on a nother no te, i am stil l on lea ve fr om th is bloggi ng busin ess f or aw hile at le ast.

c'est la vie?

mysecret.tv

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.
Walk beside me and be my friend.

- Albert Camus



at least, in spite of it all, we can bleed together, hold each other, and go through it together.

He who has never hoped can never despair
George Bernard Shaw


Love is not a bandage to cover wounds
Hugh Elliott


The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of
Blaise Pascal

man overboard

the longer we stay here,
the more i don’t think we will make it
the desperate way we long for home
we are hoping, we are falling

there’s a man overboard
there’s a lady here with a broken heart
her tears are burning down her heaven
and he is crying for home

it’s morning and the day is breaking
clouds descend to choke out the sunshine
when night falls and sleep should beckon
your mind is buckling down, through the terror

a boy is trembling in the the roar of traffic
a girl clutching roses and a shattered mirror
her dreams are fuelling more of those tears
and he is waiting to collide

the longer we stay here
the more i don’t think we will make it
through

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

George Eliot, Middlemarch

climbing update

in other news, some recent joys:

- 3 new trackside problems at lindfield (east, left side, of the Overhang). these are hereonin named: Don't, Walk, Away.
- did the buttress problem to the right of that trio
- the flare to the right of this is impossible

- couple new lines / variations / sit starts to the right of Kim's Arete on Snout Rock

- me and doogs put up this new crazy brown-underpants problem at Cliff Oval (in Wahroonga) tentatively named: Orange. 2 jugs then big reach to a slopey lip on this slightly overhung face. it's awesome. primarily because we did it. unscathed. (physically).

we, climbers we, rue this rain.

discordance

attending clinics has made me privy to the deeps of so many patients' lives, and this is a broken world. this morning, i saw this 70 year old lady with chronic schizophrenia and poorly controlled diabetes, and she was telling me the pain and frustration of losing her memory, of not seeing her daughter much, of feeling like commiting suicide but being constrained by guilt, of appearing convincingly happy and fine to her friends... yesterday, this 82 year old lady, with disabling rheumatoid arthritis, remarked how rare it was for people to even "have time" for her, given her profound deafness, and to be "treated like a human being".

sure, they sound like cliches. but what: woman on the train looking enviously at another woman, man sizing up the man sitting next to him, woman flipping through magazine, school kid not being able to join in the train carriage banter, people in suits, people, people, people...

i mean, what is the problem here? christians forthrightly posit sin, but there is something awry to know that broken people are held responsible for their actions and thoughts. if a lame sheep dives off a cliff, is that... wrong? if a blind calf is beligerent and riles its farmer, is that... wrong?

i don't think i'm communicating myself well enough here. but: there is a sea of pain and brokenness in people's hearts - and i struggle to reconcile this with the rod of culpability given us.

just floating undefined thoughts from a troubled heart.