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| as i look forward to what the future holds, i can't help but look back and reminisce on the past year. a year ago i had just graduated high school and was weeks away from moving into the dorms at sfa and starting college life.
i can't tell you how many preconceived notions i had of what my freshman year of college was going to look like. i had so many things that i wanted to see happen...and thank the Lord that none of those things happened. i came into the whole thing with all these ideas...i had my whole future planned out (like anyone can do that!). i knew where i was going to go to church. i knew what kind of people i'd become friends with. i had everything planned out.
like i said...thank God i didn't get what i wanted. the church i thought was going to be my church...well it wasn't. i see nothing wrong with the specific place, but it didn't feel like that's where God had placed me. then all of a sudden one day, God gave me an awesome opportunity and responsiblity to lead music every Sunday at a church i had never heard of before. unsure, i tried it out for a few weeks and i found out that it was exactly where God wanted me to be.
and the people i thought i'd be friends with...that threw me off guard. i met some of the most unique individuals i had ever come across. i found some of my best friends this past year in the most unlikely places. i met people whose personalities i thought would have hindered me from wanting to have a conversation with them, much less becoming best friends with them. these people taught me a lot about myself...and helped me see the world a lot differently than the way i thought i had it figured out.
i suppose i say all this to say this: i have no idea what the future holds. but i know who holds it. and i made the mistake last year of planning how i thought i wanted things to be...and being so disappointed half of the time about my failed plans that i didn't see the much better blessings that God had placed around me. it's only now i can see how all the things i saw as failures were really preparing the way for the blessings that God had for me.
i don't want to make the same mistake. i know God has so many things in store for this next year...and i don't want to make big plans or have hopes and ultimately set myself up for failure because things don't turn out the way i thought they would. but at the same time, part of me wants to think that these desires that i have for what i want to see in the future are really things that God has in store...and not simply things that i want.
i guess there's nothing wrong with having hopes. maybe there's nothing wrong with having plans for things i want to see occur. maybe the catch is that i just need to keep my eyes open and my heart open to accept other things that God might bring my way and not let disappointment hinder my ability to see the much greater things that God has for me.
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| You are a wolf in sheep’s disguise
You were my demise
And now I’ve opened my eyes
Now get away from me
You come so innocently
But you don’t have me fooled, you see
I’ve finally opened my eyes
Now get away from me
You want me to believe
That you come in peace but I
Will not let you deceive
Now get away from me
Now why can’t you get it?
I’m not who I was then
So leave, take your traps and snares
And get away from me
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| God's love has probably been the theme of this summer for me.
we've been playing "the love of God" almost every sunday, which is a timeless hymn that states if the whole ocean were filled with ink and the sky was a canvas, there wouldn't be enough ink in the ocean, and even if there were, the sky wouldn't be big enough to convey how much God's love for us is.
i wrote a song earlier this summer, because i was so amazed at how God forgives us for our many crimes against Him. He has always loved us and always will!
then Sunday me and phillip wrote a song tentatively titled "poison" for our band, something personal, which asks the question of why do we always seem to run from God's love and back to the things that will kill us?
as i was working on this song earlier yesterday, i took a break and was listening to a song by eastmountainsouth, a modern folk band, called "still running". the words were taken from an essay by annie dillard. and the words of this essay simply blew me away at how much i could relate to the author.
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God in the doorway
by annie dillard
one cold Christmas eve i was up unnaturally late because we had all gone out to dinner--my parents, my baby sister, and i. we had come home to a warm living room, and Christmas eve. our stockings dropped from the mantel; beside them, a special table bore a bottle of ginger ale and a plate of cookies.
i had taken off my fancy winter coat and was standing on the heat register to bake my shoe soles and warm my bare legs. there was a commotion at the front door; it opened, and the cold wind blew around my dress.
everyone was calling me. "look who's here! look who's here!" i looked. it was santa claus. whom i never--ever--wanted to meet. santa claus was looming in the doorway and looking around for me. my mother's voice was thrilled: "look who's here!" i ran upstairs.
like everyone in his right mind, i feared santa claus, thinking he was God. i was still thoughtless and brute, reactive. i knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love. santa claus was an old man whom you neer saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you'd been bad or good. he knew when you'd been bad or good! and i had been bad.
my mother called and called, enthusiastic, pleading; i wouldn't come down. my father encouraged me; my sister howled. i wouldn't come down, but i could bend over the stairwell and see: santa claus stood in the doorway with night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; santa claus stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and repeating merry Christmas, merry Christmas. i never came down. i don't know who ate the cookies.
for so many years now i have known that this santa claus was actually a rigged-up miss white, who lived across the street, that i confuse the dramatis personae in my mind, making of santa claus, God, and miss white an awesome, vulnerable trinity. this is really a story about miss white.
miss white was old; she lived alone in the big house across the street. she liked having me around; she plied me with cookies, taught me things about the world, and tried to interest me in finger painting, in which she herself took great pleasure. she would set up easels in her kitchen, tack enormous slick soaking papers to their frames, and paint undulating undersea scenes: horizontal smears of color sparked by occasional vertical streaks which were understood to be fixed kelp. i liked her. she meant no harm on earth, and yet half a year after her failed visit as santa claus, i ran from her again.
that day, a day of the following summer, miss white and i knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass. it was a large, strong hand lens. she lifted my hand and, holding it very still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm. the glowing cresent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point. it burned; i was burned; i ripped my hand away and ran home crying. miss white called after me, sorry, explaining, but i didn't look back.
even now i wonder: if i meet God, will He take and hold my bare hand in His, and focus His eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?
but no. it is i who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. miss white, God, i am sorry i ran from You. i am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. for You meant only love, and love, and i felt only fear, and pain. so once in israel love came to us incarnate, and stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
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why do i run away from this love?
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| howdy folks! i've got a new song uploaded, called "don't know what to say".
you can listen to it here:
http://www.purevolume.com/lukelengl
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don’t know what to say
verse 1
so it’s time that i was honest
with myself and you
‘cause apologies don’t mean a thing
when i keep doing the things i do
keep doing the things i do
chorus
cause i don’t know what to say
i don’t know what to do
i just want what i had
i want what i had with you
with you
verse 2
and i know what i told you
that this would never happen again
but now we’re here, and as it appears
i don’t know where to begin
where to begin
repeat chorus
bridge
i know what i’d do
if i were in your shoes
but you’re not me
no judgment on your face
instead i feel your embrace
and i hear you whisper so silently...
“there’s nothing more you have to say
there’s nothing more you have to do
don’t you know that i’ll always love you?”
(what more can i say?
what more can i do?
all i know is i don’t deserve you)
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behind the scenes:
this song is not at all what i had planned it to be. it ended up being the "pop"iest sounding thing i've recorded (yet). just like children, you can control songs during their infancy and early childhood...but somewhere along the way they kind of just take control. so i let the song take control, and this is how it ended up. anyway, i'm happy with it. it turned out better than i had expected, especially after so many runs of recording the vocals. i must have sung this song a million times just to get this five "good" minutes that you hear. thanks for listening. hope you enjoy. i hope to have more songs up during the summer (granted that some songs get written, and then get recorded).
-luke
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| c.s. lewis. what a brilliant man of his time. you probably know him best from his fictional fantasy book series, the chronicles of narnia. i haven't read those books, though i'd like to. i have seen the motion picture that was released two years ago for the first book.
anyway, by what i have read, it's easy to see that the faith that this man had was genuine. he genuinely believed this christianity that he wrote about. he was not originally a christian. he was a very outspoken atheist, and through his pursuit to prove that God didn't exist, he came to the conclusion that God had to exist. there was no way around this truth.
i have been reading mere christianity by lewis, and i highly recommend that you pick up a copy and read it. he definitely highlights some very strong arguments to this existence of some sort of higher power in this universe, and after that, he explains why he thinks that higher power is the God that christians worship.
go get mere christianity. go read it.
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