I love how similar these four photos are, in their simplicity and composition and style... yet how they clearly all tell different stories and create completely different atmospheres... Actually i have purposefully ordered them in a way which tells my own story, but i doubt that order will make sense to anyone but me...

Photos by: 1. Berta 2. Coquinete 3. Nicole Lynn 4. Coquinete

The greatest good.

I was just looking through my blog at things i've previously quoted, and came across the following, which i feel like quoting again today:

"O Lord, if this were lost instead,

And all I had was you, I would

Be rich, and have the greatest Good." - John Piper

"This is the true bride, the one who says to Christ:

I do not want what is Thine, I want Thee, Thyself.

Thou art not more dear to me when i am doing well,

nor less dear when i am doing poorly." - Martin Luther

"He is indeed enough. He is not all we would ask for (if we are honest), but it is precisely when we do not have what we would ask for, and only then, that we can clearly perceive His all-sufficiency. It is when the sea is moonless, that the Lord has become my light." - Elisabeth Elliot

"Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing." - Psalm 34:!0

Upside Down

"What looks like failure, is success. What looks like poverty, is riches. When what is truth, looks more like a knife. It looks like you're killing me, but you're saving my life. All just because i see things upside down.... What looks like weakness, can do anything. What looks like foolishness, is understanding. When what is powerful, has not come to fight. It looks like you're going to war, but you lay down your life. What looks like torture, is a time to rejoice. What sounds like thunder, is a comforting voice. When what is beautiful, looks broken and crushed. And i say i don't know you, but you say it's finished." - Derek Webb

Do you see ?

"Have you seen the old man in the closed down market, kicking up the papers with his wornout shoes, in his eyes you see no pride, hands held loosely by his side, yesterday's papers telling yesterday's news. Oh how can you tell me you're lonely and say for you that the sun doesn't shine? Oh let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of london, i'll show you something that'll make you change your mind. Have you seen the young girl who walks the streets of london? Dirt in her hair and her clothes in rags, she's no time for talking, she keeps right on walking, carrying her home in 2 carrier bags. In the all-night cafe at a quarter past 11, same old man sitting there on his own, looking at the world over the rim of his tea-cup, each tea lasts an hour, then he wanders home alone. Now have you seen the old man outside the seamans mission, memory fading with the medel ribbons that he wears, in our winter city while the rain crys little pity, for one more forgotten hero, and a world that doesn't care. Oh how can you tell me you're lonely and say for you that the sun doesn't shine? Oh let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of london, i'll show you something to make you change your mind." - Ralph McTell

A classic song. I was just listening to it and thinking.... I was thinking that there are so many people in this world who are just like the people in this song.... who no-one really notices, who no-one really sees, who the world turns a blind eye to, cos it's easier than actually seeing and actually knowing and actually caring and actually loving them. And the thing is, i think there are two types of seeing. You can see with your eyes. Or you can see with your heart. We see all-sorts with our eyes every day, and barely even absorb it... but we see much less with our hearts. I want to see people through the eyes of my heart more.. or through the eyes of God's heart. And i don't just mean so i feel pity for them and cos i think i have something i can offer them.. but more because i realise at the end of the day we are all alike... in our loneliness, in our brokenness, in our sinfulness, in our need for others... the thing is, i need others and can learn from them, as much as they may need me and can learn from me... And more often than not, i think what people need is just someone to stand with them, to love them no matter what, to not judge them or give up on them, or write them off... so that in their loneliness they know that they are not alone after all. Maybe just the simplicity of loving, accepting relationships is of more value than a lot of wise words we may try to offer.

And i truly think that the most outcast social reject is as much made in the image of God and is as much able to teach me about God as some well-revered preacher. And the funny thing is, i often feel most aware of God's presence when i am chatting to someone who society would completely reject... it's almost like God so dwells with the downcast and the humble and the broken, the people who just are what they are, that actually if you want to find Him there is more chance of meeting Him in them, than there is in a Church meeting where people are striving to look holy and pleasing in the sight of others. I'm not judging Christians... don't get me wrong.. i love meeting with Christians and when i'm cut off from their company i feel like a piece of coal that's taken out of a fire and starts to go cold. But it's just that at the times in my life when i have felt most broken and most desperately in need of Jesus' presence, i have felt more inclined to find a homeless guy on the street to chat to, than i have felt inclined to go to a church meeting. I don't really understand why, i'm just being totally honest. I'm not judging the Church for this.. i am as much a part of what makes the Church what it is as anyone else.. so in judging them, i am also judging me. But i've just realised again the last few years, that when you reach a point of desperation, nothing but the real living presence of Jesus will suffice... and it's at those times that you notice how much cultivated religion there is in a Church, and how much you desperately just need that raw reality of Jesus.. the Jesus of the Bible, who sat with and ate with sinners more than law-keeping religious men... the Jesus who had no-where to lay his head, and who completely gave Himself, to the point of death, for others... the Jesus who says 'come to me, all you who are weary and i will give you rest'.. the Jesus who doesn't care about success, or money, or social-standing, or numbers but says 'blessed are the poor in spirit.. those who mourn.. the meek...those who hunger and thirst for righteousness"... and the God who delights to dwell with "him who is contrite and lowly in Spirit..."

I don't really know what the point of this post is. I guess i'm just grateful that God sees everything and notices everything.. that there is no-one who goes unseen before God, no-one who is completely alone, because God is completely aware of everything.. all our unseen struggles and all our unseen battles. Yet at the same time i want to be a part of a people who do see others, who do care.. and i want to be part of a people who are so real and raw that they truly are a vessel for the real and raw presence of Jesus. I feel such a massive awareness of the fact that there are so many people out there who's only hope is the real Jesus.. who aren't gonna tolerate man-made religion, or half-hearted attempts to show what Jesus is like.. who need nothing less than whole-hearted brotherly love... people who are so thirsty that if they don't drink straight from Jesus, they are literally going to die... like we can't be offering people a version of Jesus that is muddy with our own religious attempts, but we have to be offering the real Jesus..... like we have to be so real and broken ourselves that we just have Jesus living in us and people see Him, not our attempt to be 'like Him'...... and if i'm honest, i feel like there is a massive barrier between the white-middle-class-church and the average-thirsty-soul that i don't even know how it's going to be broken down.. even though i am in a Church and part of a Church, even i'm acutely aware of that barrier and even i feel like i don't fit there, so i don't really know what it would be like for some people..... i feel like the barrier has to be broken down though.. like there is an urgency for it to happen... like it's a matter of life or death....life and death for the people of God, as much as life and death for those who don't yet know Him.... like i'm so thirsty for the living real presence of Jesus amongst His people, and for His people to be completely absorbed and focussed on Him...

"Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me..." - Matt 25:40

"'Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and i will give you rest,' He said. I could find no invitations towards success or superiority in the invitations of Jesus. Grace, like water, flows to the lowest parts." - Philip Yancey

With your bricked up doors and flowing springs...

Call me strange, but i actually love these buildings, with their bricked up doors and crooked beams. I saw them in Sheffield today; it's a city full of such places.... and i must have taken at least a thousand pictures in my mind. It's also a city full of water and full of springs... a good combination i think. The old, the broken, the run-down remnants of what once was.. buildings that have stories etched into their bricks and mortar, that stand as a visual reminder of what's hidden in the lives of countless nameless faces scattered throughout the streets... brokenness, crookedness, bricked up hearts and tattered minds..... but merged in the midst of this are fountains of water, like hope that springs up, declaring that one day these stoney streets and stoney hearts will break and overflow with rich life again. At least this is my prayer. And this is my plea. I love those walls exactly as they are... in all their reality, with all their marks and crumbling ways... in the same way that i love the people in that city, with all their flaws and all their heartache and all their worn-out dreams.... yet i long for restoration, i long for newness, i long for their freedom... i love that city and the faces held within it.... and i long for that city too, with a longing that's not my own..

As i drank from the sky...

The sky last night was incredible. I watched it as we drove north and let it wash over me and still my thoughts.... it was so vast that i felt like i could suddenly breathe again, like i was drinking air that unlocked my muscles and caused my lungs to move freely, unrestrained by any other force. I hadn't been aware that my lungs had felt encaged, until this point. In the same way that a city-dweller doesn't know how polluted the air they inhale is, until they stand by an ocean and absorb the fresh sea breeze. Or in the same way that you forget how much noise daily filters through your ears and fights for your attention, until you're presented with silence. Sometimes we don't even know how much we miss something, until we find it again. Even if what we miss is simply the absence of something: the absence of unwanted sound, the absence of pressure, the absence of ropes that bind.

But as i drank the sky, i experienced more than just the absence of restraints, it was like i was satisfied and deeply content. Like the expanse merged my senses into one - tasting of beauty and lightness that filled my heart with song. My insides had been given something, and not just momentarily freed from something. As i was wrapped in the sky which had no ends, i knew my smallness, i knew my nothingness, that i'm just a drop in the ocean.... yet it felt good to be so small, to be just a tiny part of something much bigger... it felt good to just be in awe of the One who is so big and is so vast. Like i existed just to drink from and glorify His vastness and His beauty and His greatness. I was looking at the sky, but in that sky i found again the One who formed it, and i realised again that our deepest joy comes as we simply admire Him.

Strangely, when i arrived home, i had severe chest pains all evening. I couldn't breathe well anymore, and felt sick, yet i still felt revived from the drive we'd taken through the expanse of beauty that was the sky, and i'm thankful for this.

Like a mighty river...

"Let justice roll down like a mighty river, let righteousness flow on and on, 'til the desert becomes like the garden of Eden, where the nations will come and be healed, and the glory of God is revealed..." - Chris Christensen

Photos by Carf

Let righteousness flow...

Breathe Life

"You turn my ashes into beauty, turn my sorrow into joy, breathe life, breathe life. You take these dry bones make them stand, put a promise in my hands, breathe life, breathe life. Before creation's time, majestically You reign, You patent Your design and all that You have made, Creator God, breathe life in us. We took eternal life and traded it for dust, Your perfect sacrifice has brought it back for us, You hold salvation in Your hands. The idols of this World will fade to shades of grey, when marked against the One who is the only Way, bright shining sun that lights my path. Wonderful, marvellous, You make all things new, i was dead, now i'm alive all because of You. So i will go and tell the World how great You are. 'Cos You turn a heart of stone, into a welling spring, breath life." - Andy Smith

Kissed a guilty world in love..

"Here is love, vast as the ocean, Loving-kindness as the flood; When the Prince of Life my ransom, Shed for me His precious blood.... On the mount of crucifixion, Fountains opened deep and wide, Through the flood-gates of God's mercy, Flowed the vast and gracious tide; Grace and love like mighty rivers, Poured incessant from above, And heaven's peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love." - trad.

Love

"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." - Ephesians 4.2