The Poem of Your Life

An old song, from 1994. I have been on a bit of a retreat for the last week, with lots of time in my car. I pulled some music, and grabbed this CD by mistake. Not that I don't like it, I was just shooting for another one by Michael Card. Anyways, the album is called Poiema. The first song, titled The Poem of Your Life really struck me.

Life is a song we must sing with our days
A poem with meaning more than words can say
A painting with colors no rainbow can tell
A lyric that rhymes either heaven or hell.

We are living letters that doubt desecrates
We're the notes of the song of the chorus of faith
God shapes every second of our little lives
And minds every minute as the universe waits by.

The pain and the longing, the joy and the moments of light
Are the rhythm and rhyme, the free verse of the poem of life.

So look in the mirror and pray for the grace
To tear off the mask, see the art of your face.
And open your earlids to hear the sweet song
Of each moment that passes and pray to prolong
Your time in the ball of the dance of your days
The canvas of colors, of moments ablaze.
With all that is holy, with the joy and the strife
With the rhythm and rhyme of the poem of your life.

So I find myself wondering: do we live our lives too small? Do we allow everyday life to become mundane? Do we lose the reality that God Himself, the One who made and sustains us, the One who loves us to the point of His own pain, that He Himself shapes every second of our lives? Do we forget the truth that we live our lives in front of a crowd of witnesses, not jeering our failures, but cheering our success; pulling for us and rooting for us the way I do when my boys play games? Do we even remember that the angels themselves look with wonder on us as they see the magnificent love of God expressed in the lives of His redeemed children?

There is a point perhaps in understanding that this life is temporary, but not because it is unimportant. There is nothing unimportant about any of our lives - God has laid out for us a life that is to be a song, a poem, a painting.

My heart cries for this to be true. As I write, I ache for this to be a reality. I hope as you read you feel it as well. Tear off the mask, see the art of your face. Sing, dance, exalt in the poem of your life. It is why He made you.

A Wild Creator

I am reading a book titled Wild At Heart. In it the author makes the statement that our creation is wild, but good. He uses as examples the jungles of India with their tigers, the desert Southwest with its rattlesnakes. You could also look at the fearsome beauty of the Grand Canyon, where discovery always includes great risk. His point in the book is that God Himself loves adventure.

This got me to thinking. We assume that much of the risk in our world is a result of the fall: that tigers eat people because the world is broken. Many creationist theologians even argue that animal death is a result of the fall - that in Eden, there were no carnivorous animals.

But I wonder. If the image of a fierce and wonderful God that we see in Scripture is accurate, perhaps He made these things just so from the beginning. As Lewis says in Narnia, "He isn't safe, but He is good." I wonder sometimes if it wasn't always this way. He didn't make us, especially men, to look for safe. Perhaps the God who loves a good adventure built such a love into us as well, and made for us a world of adventure, not always safe, but definitely good.