What dreams may come...

This shall not make sense, but perhaps value may be found in the free flow of thought tonight...


Infinite shades of complexity? Subtle shadows gliding through the folds of memory?
How can we define that which passes through what is deeper than our conscious ability to control? Yet such things compel us, arrest us, occasionally stop us in our tracks.

A night falling into meditation of sorrows would be but a night. Weeping may last for that night, but joy comes in the morning. He who made the sunrise to follow folded the elaborate subtleties of the human psyche, and placed my joy there, beyond the reach of worlds.

Distant strains of a melody too complex to catch, yet the spirit listens and is moved. Dark tides sweep the shores of regret, yet the dawn is inevitable, and that sun will burn away doubt.

The yawning chasm that beckons cannot swallow my life which is hidden in Him who fills all, shall it devour the days of that life spent in the flat lands? Let the fire which He gives kindle those days into a streaming light of purpose. A beacon.

Surely soon the lessons learned in time will channel the time which passes so swiftly.
Spinning the wheels of purpose into a maelstrom of accomplishment, but no pause for rest.

The rest which comes but seeks the cessation of purpose, it seeks only itself.
May I rest rather in Him, resting as one whose labors have not ceased but increase.

The increasing brings purpose, yet the purpose brings increase, a cycle spinning forwards in time, spiraling as it advances, dimensions in dimension. It sums a life, totaling the moments spent and wasted, rested and labored, slept and spent.

The free play of the mind brings forth meaning which has yet no cast, which has not been formed into the structures that fit into a machine. The machine with cogs so tight, so cogent, so cohesive. Yet if the machine be neglected, the play will also perish.

That which is formed gives fullness, and that which is full inhabits the form. So formlessness is a nothingness. He is He without which nothing is strong, no thing is strong, but even nothing is not strong without Him, for all strength belongs to the unceasing source of energy which is energy unto itself.

Harmonies which take form, interplaying with being, drawing the inferences into sight, hiding the complexities behind syntheses of meaning. Becoming the pictures which dry the sound stiff, yet reverberate with its harmonics to begin the music again when another form is found. Flowing onward, never ceasing, bringing all to fulfillment within the web that is Seen. The Picture is painted, yet the Painter does not cease to paint. He who exists in eternal relation in only that which will always have been now also lends to our being that which is both complete and ever being completed. And the song does not end.

Shall the discord be resolved in a long, fiery burst through the pale, or by a grey, rippling drop into the strife? Let it be so now that the rhythm may not be delayed, for this meter should not tarry before the hill, lest the scroll be left there.

As the scroll unfolds, as the pages turn, as the keys advance and strings reverberate and the words are layed down as thickly as the dancing tune demands, let the pauses be merely the cessations which bring the rhythm to be.

Being is motion, motion is sound, sound is thought, thought is light, light is the word, and The Word is Being.

Let him who has ears, hear the sound of the Word, for the Word is moving to light the world's shadows.
Incendite Tenebris Mundi.

And the hour which will once have always been arriving comes, swiftly.

-Joseph

One Great Love

Listening to David Crowder, something comes across and rises in me which I seldom feel from other groups, and that is devotional joy. It's strange that they would be one of so few bands which cause this reaction in me, I am sure many other Christian bands put great joy into their music, and this is not meant as a slight to them. However, for me, something about the way the David Crowder Band goes about it serves as a vehicle for joy more than any other group I know. It may be a combination of several things: technical artistry, musical skill, poetic yet rock-solid lyrics, and their own devotional joy. Perhaps the technical artistry and musical skill allow the truth in the lyrics and joy in the realization of their truth to come through uninhibited.
However it may be, God uses them for me as a vehicle of His joy, and it's one of the better ways to start off a morning that I know of.

I've had a busy time of it since I last wrote.
The Taiwan trip was first, and getting stuck there for a few days (again!). I may record some of my impressions of that trip next entry, as I have not yet written them down. Doing so publicly means not every detail will be shared, but it will be good to have many things transcribed. If anyone can benefit from them, so much the better.

I will only say now in passing that it was a good trip, especially since two of my siblings who had not previously been able to go could join us this year.

Upon returning from Taiwan, I had about two days of self-imposed downtime before I had to start the process of finding a place to live in Dallas for seminary. In this, as in so many things, God's plans were different from and greatly superior to my own, and instead of the decent off-campus housing I had located, I was able to secure a room on campus, only days before class started. This happened due to a missionary friend in Taiwan tracking me down at camp in order to introduce to me a Chinese lady who worked at Dallas seminary who "just happened" to be visiting her while our group was in Taiwan. The lady invited me to visit her church which was in the Dallas area, and gave me her contact information. She later contacted me saying that there were rooms available on campus, and not only was I able to secure one, but received a signing bonus, credit for the campus bookstore which payed for my textbooks. (I think I have payed approximately $1 of my own money for them all, and they are a veritable pile)

Once I was settled in, I was able to visit the church as well, and have gotten involved with the youth group there. There are actually two youth groups, an English-speaking group and a Chinese-speaking group. They are radically different, one being primarily comprised of ABC's (American-born Chinese) and the other of comparatively recent immigrants from asia. Cultural differences are striking; a doctoral thesis could probably be written merely by studying the differences in the two groups at this one church. My intention is to work with the Chinese-speaking group, they are a good group of students, and one full of potential. Lord willing I will be able to write of the progress of that ministry here in the future.

The church itself is interesting. The Chinese congregation is 3 times the size of the English congregation, and the membership is roughly half Taiwanese and half Chinese (there are Malaysians, Singaporeans, and others there too), which in itself is a small miracle and testiment to God's unifying love.

So many blessings in so short a time; the mind is still spinning, but the heart is grateful.

God shows in so many ways that He is a loving father Who knows my needs better than I do, and Who arranges accordingly. So far from being a wrathful Deity waiting to bring pain into my life as a (totally justified) punishment for every sin, He delights in blessing me and showing that He has thought of me and made a plan just for me. The realization hits me often, and never quite loses the sense of a thing being realized for the first time.

Now I'm studying His word seriously in an academic setting, a first for me.
Many have had the joy of their walk and faith in the scriptures leached away at seminary; the enemy must laugh at the irony of going to study the Bible being the downfall of one's faith in it.
Having arrived and started classes, I have little fear of this happening at DTS. Not only do all my professors have a professed and obvious love for the scriptures, but they have cautioned us against this very dryness of spirit which can occur when studying them as a textbook versus reading them as the Word of God. Most have supplied strategies for combatting this tendency.
I have been consistently impressed. No school is perfect, but DTS seems to have intentionally sought the best route for conveying the mastery of Biblical truth to their students for many years, while also seeking to serve God wholeheartedly as an institution. And it shows.

To be able to study here is a great blessing, the magnitude of which I will come to understand even more the longer I stay, I suspect. For now, I simply marvel at the love which can grant such things to someone like me. May His name be greatly praised, for He has done, and will do, and is doing, great things.

More to come...

-Joseph