Letters from Lilongwe

My typical morning routine includes taking a shower, grabbing some cloths, eating some cereal and then walking down the parking deck.  The Volvo takes a solid 5-10 minutes to warm up in this cold weather.  Therefore I take a the time to read through a chapter out of the Bible.  This is always a great way to start my day as I remember the things in life that have the most value!  This old engine is pushing me to sit with the Lord everyday and wrestle through his words.   Typically my head unit is playing some music while car warms up.  But this morning as my music was silent the Lord opened my eyes to an image that has never caught my eye.  I have never noticed this simply spray painted statement of "LOVE WINS".  It perfectly meshed with the passage out of Romans this morning talking about being dead to sin and alive in Christ.  Are we to keep on sinning so that grace may abound?  By no means should we take this love that has flooded over us and count it for noth

When the music stops what do I hear? The lack of beautiful music leaves my mind to race to and fro.  Thought to thought I can hardly stop my busy mind as it runs through the forest.  This feeling is quite natural but at the same time feels oh so foreign to me.  For four out of the past five years I have learned to rejoice in the silence of solitude.  Stepping away for times of refreshing walks by the river and hours of restful quite in my room.  This past year I have dreaded the thought of silence because I have felt that my mind was out of control.  Thoughts flashing through my mind would captivate my emotions and steal the affections of my soul.  Therefore I learned how to silence those thoughts by two main techniques.  First, to keep myself busy leaving no room for silence in my life.  Second, keep noise as a filler in the background slowing my thoughts and refocus them on that which truly matter.  This tactic is not one that I fear or desire to change but for the next season I w

Listening through another album from Noisetrade the title of this song cause my eye and prompted me into a post.  As I work through my days at my Co-Op I learn more and more about the expectation of my future that that are born both from my own desires and external pressures of society.  Looking towards my future I see myself following the ways of the world and pursuing a career that I only partially love because I love the money much more.  I see the multifaceted benefits of money and have concluded for myself that I can be very comfortable with minimal monetary wealth.  I see the joys of giving, blessing people around myself, being able to give my future family opportunities that only money can provide.  I also see the destruction that can come as money becomes an all consuming idol that robs me of passion, creativity, and my created purpose.  Therefore this song sparks an interesting inner dialog because I desire to live a life consumed fully by family, community, discipleship and

Looking ahead of the concert schedule I realized that Paper Route was coming to town in mid December and I got excited!  One of my great ways to make computer work fly by is listening to music, therefore this morning I listened through the first Paper Route album "The Pease of Wild Things".  The sounds that this band carries first caught my ear two summer ago when I heard You and I .  Broad sweeping powerful alternative rock with lyrics that stir my thoughts.  I tend to enjoy artists that have spiritual undertones as they speak about life and love. Calm my soul woke me up this morning and I would like to pass along some of the reasons why.  The first verse resonates well with my life as I am learned year by year, making mistakes, living to tell the tale of grace.  A few weeks ago on a trip to TN with some buddies I realized for the first time that I actually forgot a lot of my events in about the last two years of life.  It is really strange but they would speak of conver

So let Go my Soul and Trust in Him The waves and wind still know his name! While eating my breakfast this morning I was thinking through the above lyrics that we sung on Sunday morning at Midtown.  Then a picture landed in my head that I could not shake.  I saw myself holding on to the rudder of a small sail boat in the middle of the storm.  Wave after wave crashing into the boat.  I was standing firm and holding on to the rudder for dear life to keep the boat pointed in the direction that I wanted.  Each time the wind would change direction the rudder would slap me around and I started to see the meaning behind this picture. I try so hard to control my life, my future, my possessions, my friends and at the end of the day I am broken and bruised from the storms of life.  This morning the Lord simply said, let go of the rudder for a while.  Let me take control and let the storm go its course.  Let go of the rudder, the boat will travel where the wind and waves blow.  So let go my

Searching through Noise Trade I tend to find great artists that I would have never encountered.  Yesterday I came across Vincent James and I have been listing to his EP all morning!  Powerful harmonies and strumming patterns that remind me of Judah and The Lion truly brings life from music.  Typically on first pass the musical arrangement is what truly awakes a desire to return to the album again then I tend to find the lyrics to be even more powerful!  This song exemplifies that process as this powerful duet captures the ear and then his powerful motifs about how life that arises in the dawn.   http://vincentjames.bandcamp.com/track/the-dawn-2   Hallelujah I can just start to see the light and this wilderness below  that we had come to know has given light, given life, given hope. Praise the Lord for the dawn!  The night seems so dark, we feel lost in ourselves, lost in our minds, lost in our sin.  Then the hope of light enters into the picture but as we talk abou