Have you ever actually star-gazed?
Have you ever felt the power of the ocean?
Have you ever laid in your bed long enough to feel the sun on your face?
Have you listened to the silence right outside a city?
Have you run through a grassy plain?
Have you let the rain fall on your skin?
Have you watched a deer walk in the early morning light?
Have you let the sunset take your breath away?
Have you stood behind a waterfall?
Have you watched a grasshopper hop?
Have you ever watched the snow fall from your window at twilight?
Have you ever seen a comet shoot across the sky?

Have you ever wanted to? Have you ever wanted to know that there’s maybe something beyond you? Or have you been afraid that if you stopped so long as to let it change you that you might find you’re not in control? But what if you witness, experience, and live, and find that maybe, you’re just not in control?

Take a chance. Let life change you for the better. Let your heart be alive. Witness what Someone greater than you created. Witness just a fraction of how loved you are.

…because love wins.

“Let God have you, and let God love you. And don’t be surprised if your heart begins to hear music you’ve never heard and your feet learn to dance as never before.”

…because love wins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciW8r-5kCDY&feature=channel_video_title

To the one who’s dreams have fallen all apart.
And all you’re left with is a tired and broken heart.
I can tell by your eyes you think you’re on your own.

But you’re not alone.

Have you heard of the One who can calm the raging sea?
Give sight to the blind?
Pull the lame up to their feet?
With a Love so strong, it’ll never let you go.

No, you’re not alone.

You will be safe in His arms.
Cuz the hands that hold the world are holding your heart.
This is the promise He made.
He will be with you always.
When everything is falling apart…

You will be safe in His arms.

Did you know that the voice that brings the dead to life,
is the very same voice that calls you now to rise?
So hear Him now,
He’s calling you home.

You will never be alone.

You will be safe in His arms.
Cuz the hands that hold the world are holding your heart.
This is the promise He made.
He will be with you always.
When everything is falling apart…

You will be safe in His arms.

These are the hands that built the mountains.
The hands that calm the sea.
These are the arms that hold the Heavens.
They are holding you and me.
These are the hands that heal the leper.
Pulled the lame up to their feet.
These are the arms that were nailed to the cross,
to break our chains and set us free.

You will be safe in His arms.

When everything is falling apart, you will be safe in His arms.

Safe.

…because love wins.

The national debt is a place in which we cannot even grasp it. People grab each other’s lives to tear them down to get money. People are dying in Africa of disease. People are dying in America of affluence. Kids forget to talk to their parents. Parents never see their kids. We all move so fast that we cannot stop long enough to even notice that the colors changed on the trees around us. We eat until we can’t breathe, and we keep our money rather than using it to use our time to help anyone who is falling apart. We don’t sit down and have meals with people, or give hugs when people are crying. We’re all too overwhelmed to notice anything beyond the box that we live in. And we spend all of our lives looking for an answer to our unsettledness.

Stop looking outside for a solution.

Start looking in.

Until we change as units, we will never change as a whole.

Be a drop in the ocean that restores the silence that calms the soul.

Be who you were supposed to be.

And then, when we realize that everything is a heart matter, we’ll find what exactly we’re looking for.

We’ll find the peace we all want when we realize it already lives within us.

…because love wins.

Oh, believe me, I know that line is thrown around often. I know that it’s cliche. (Btw, most cliches are worth listening to. And pondering. But that’s another topic for another day.) I know that people don’t understand what they are asking when they ask it. I know that it’s course. I know that it makes a person uncomfortable. I know that it sometimes doesn’t make any difference when it is answered. I know that sometimes, even when it is asked, it’s never thought about.

But what if you did?

What if you walked out into the street today, and that car didn’t stop like you thought it was going to? What if one of those cars going 70 caught the road wrong, and flipped over, and caught you in the wake? What if you drove too late, and those tired eyes you have actually caught you, and you lost control yourself? Or what if the even more unexpected things happened? What if a blood vessel broke in your brain at.this.very.moment? What if you have a heart defect that no one knows about? What if you tripped and didn’t catch yourself when you fell?

What your mother and father and family and close friends got a phone call about you tonight?

What if I attended your funeral in three days?

No, I’m not suggesting that you live every moment in fear. But what I am suggesting is that in this world where we are harder than cement to the images on the news and the front pages of magazines of starvation and injustice, that we do something. That at minimum, we ask ourselves if we would be content with leaving those people we have not forgiven, or if we would be happy with all the times we were too proud to say, “I love you.” I beg that we ask if people would come to our funerals to talk about the way our lives were light, full of encouragement, and bettered the world every second we lived. I beg that we ask of ourselves if we even understand that one day, we will simply not exist here.

Just do something.

Just learn that you are just not going to live forever. Do you even understand that?

No, I’m going to guess that we do not. Because you see, if we understood that every day of our lives could very well be our last, we would live every moment just so incredibly different than we do now. We would stop for people to cross the road. We would do our homework with joy. We would climb mountains and take photos and write letters and read the Bible. We would fight for the dying, and the starving, and the widows, and the broken. We would never use painful sarcasm. We would hold hands and give long hugs.

And we would cry over the beautiful things in life.

And we would tell every single person in our life about the light within us. His name is Jesus. It’s all we live for.

What if you died today?

Did you live everything thinking you could die today?

Don’t waste time thinking you didn’t.

Start now.

Time is running low.

Because every one of us doesn’t have forever on this earth.

And we need a world full of people living like they aren’t going to live forever.

We need you.

Because Jesus put you here to be alive.

And Jesus needs you to be alive.

So that this world can really never die.

…because love wins.

Tears.

The ever cleansing beautiful pouring of a heart. The pieces of our hearts that we try to deeply to keep within us, not because we don’t want to let them out, but because we’re afraid of how they’ll be dealt with by the hands that are around to catch them. They prove the realness of our humanness. For whatever reason they come, it is of a deep ache or pain or fear or anger. And they express what our words simply cannot. And when someone who looks into those glossy eyes cares, we find the realest, most deep understanding that we will find on this earth. It is in a set of eyes that cares to look into ours through the tears that we see the reflection of the look of our Abba from His cross. We see a love not of convenience, but a love of things unconditional.

Sometimes there isn’t a set of eyes to see my tears. And sometimes I can’t be there to see through yours.

But when I look at the stars, I remember that there is always Someone for us both.

…because love wins.

I live in the most beautiful of places.
I live next to fresh flowers.
I live in a house with roommates that fill my home with laughter.
I live near my mom, dad, and sister with her family.
I live open eyed, where I can see the blue and green of the world around me.
I live next to fountains.
I live under rainbows in rain storms.
I live with nice clothes.
I live with best friends who will do anything for me, any time.
I live near a courtyard filled with oxygen giving trees.
I live near an airport, surrounded by freeways.
I live in a place where I am free to praise my Jesus.
I live with while tennis shoes.
I live near a hospital that could save my life.
I live outside those hospital walls these days.
I live in a place where I can have money.
I live in a place where I can learn.
I live in a place where I can work.
I live in a world so incredibly blessed.

The past few days have been once again, revamping my life perspective.

Last night, I attended a choir concert put on by ten Ugandan orphans. They have no parents, because they died of various reasons that are easily solved here in America. These ten smiling souls travel America singing and performing wherever they can to tell others that there are families across the world that cannot afford any food, or shelter if they are not helped.  My heart broke as I bowed my head, helpless, but able to pray.

An email from my mother shared the news of cancer moving further through the body of one of my favorite friends that I have met through the cancer world. I remember sitting in the rooms where he’s hearing the news he is these days. I know the doctors and nurses that are there to save his life. I know the look in their eyes as they share the reality that this family faces again.

As I curled up in my safe bed last night and prayed for so many, peace met me with the knowledge that I live.

I live freely, abundantly, and with parents, and opportunity, and hope.
I live without cancer, on days that they said I would never have had.
I live eternally, for I have a Savior who has saved my soul.

I have a song that’s been playing on repeat these days at the start of my last semester of college.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBThqMrOLNc&feature=channel_video_title

The lyrics are:

Can You hear when we call?
There where we fall?
Standing our backs against the wall?
Top of our lungs…hallelujah.
Where pain and love bleed into one.
Baby when all you see is darkness,
we all need forgiveness.
Coming round now.

He is there when we call. He won’t let us fall. He stand with us, and breaks down the wall.

So we scream hallelujah.

We live.

…because love wins.

I think about what it will be like the day that you are not with me all the time any more. Each and every one of you, play such a specific and beautiful role in this life.

You paint the sky with your words, and you are among the funniest people to ever live, I am sure. You will notice the simplest beauty to remind my heart what it sees every day, without fail, each time I see you. You will smile that smile across a circle of friends that will light up my mind with the way you understand. You will email, and call, and even facebook chat to create the most perfect of moments. You let me love my life. With your jokes, and with your dreams, and your passion. You light it up with the way you listen, and the way you long to be more like Jesus.

And, you are so incredibly special. But those are not the reasons that you are most special. You, dear friend, form a special role in my life, because you were special before you had a role here.

You were bought at a price. As you fought through your childhood, your mistakes, or your agony, you were paid for. You had dreams that were created specifically for you which laid the path where you would walk. Jesus has been watching since you took your first breath, and before that even. Your toes are numbered, the size of your feet and eyes are precise, and your finger prints were painted upon you with the most incredibly hands that hold the universe. You are beautiful. You are handsome. Those are not definitions the world got to lay upon you, but instead, who you were made to be. Because as you are made, you are most perfect. You are so bright. You will not falter and fail. You have messed up before, just as I have, and you have learned. You have learned your worth, your smile, and your hopes for life. And you have been so perfectly protected all these years.

You, are so special.

You have always been so special.

Now, why would I care to write such a thing? Yeah, I know, we’re all unique. No, see, that’s what you don’t get. You are perfectly you. That is why you are special. What you don’t understand is that you are continually on a journey to be more yourself each day. You were created you, but as you realize who you are each day, you realize how much more special you are than you thought, each day too. You are just so special. As you are. Where you come from.

You just, are.

You make my life a special place because of this. Not because you are something specific to me, but because when you are truly the you you were made to be, you shine a light in my life that I cannot ignore. And when you see the special that lives within you, you push me to remember that I was made special, and that I am special too.

You look to Jesus. You see who you are. And you remind me who I am.

I am so thankful for you, good friend.

…because love wins.