i don’t belong here

(an excellent Switchfoot song that has been in my thoughts lately)

a beautiful letdown.

It was a beautiful letdown when I crashed and burned.
When I found myself alone, unknown and hurt.
It was a beautiful letdown the day I knew
that all the riches this world had to offer me would never do.

In a world full of bitter pain and bitter doubts
I was trying so hard to fit in until I found out…

that I don’t belong here. I don’t belong here.
I will carry a cross and a song where I don’t belong.

It was a beautiful letdown when You found me here.
For once in a rare blue moon I see everything clear.
I’ll be a beautiful letdown. That’s what I’ll forever be,
And though it may cost it all I’ll sing for free.

We’re still chasing our tails in the rising sun
Our dark water planet’s spinning and no one wins. No one’s won.

See, I don’t belong here. Well, I don’t belong here.
I will carry a cross with a song where I don’t belong

I’m gonna set side and set sail for the kingdom come.
Let my foolish pride forever let me down.

Easy living, you’re not much like your name.
Easy dying, you look just about the same.
Would you please take me off your list, easy living?
Please, come on and let me down.
read more

those who believe in heaven…

Heaven has always intrigued and confused me. 1 | 2 One thing I have become increasingly sure of is the idea that our beliefs about heaven affect how we live. The fact that Americans tend to talk so little about heaven tells us something about what our hope is in. Maybe we don’t think heaven is going to be that much better than the comfortable lives we have going on here. Maybe we aren’t sure even heaven exists so we have adopted hedonism and stamped it as Christianity. Just a little persecution, poverty and/or a better understanding of what God is doing in redemptive history might tilt our hopes past the horizon of this life. read more

this is a far country.

As I continue to try and understand what exactly the Bible teaches us about heaven, I thought this song by Andrew Peterson is a great summary of one thing we do know. Paul tells us in Phil 3 that our ‘citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ’. The lyrics to this song are a great reminder to me as I continually have to remind myself that ‘this is not my home.’

The Far Country by Andrew Peterson |

Father Abraham, do you remember when you were called to a land and didn’t know the way?
Because we are wandering in a foreign land; We are children of the Promise of the faith.

And I long to find it. Can you feel it, too?
That the sun that’s shining is a shadow of the truth.

This is a far country, a far country… not my home.

In the dark of the night I can feel the shadows all around me, cold shadows in the corners of my heart.
But the heart of the fight is not in the flesh but in the spirit and the spirit’s got me shaking in the dark.

And I long to go there I can feel the truth
I can hear the promise of the angels of the moon

This is a far country, a far country…not my home.

I can see in the strip malls and the phone calls the flaming swords of Eden,
In the fast cash and the news flash and the horn blast of war
In the sin-fraught cities of the dying and the dead
Like steel-wrought graveyards where the wicked never rest
To the high and lonely mountain in the groaning wilderness
We ache for what is lost
As we wait for the holy God
Of Father Abraham

I was made to go there
Out of this far country
To my home, to my home