It is written in our hearts this thing called eternity. Ecclesiastes 3:11(NIV) “ He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Here I am having just turned 30 years old a few weeks ago and this thought still burns in me. It is the thought of forever. For the past 13 years nearly I have been consumed with trying to please God..you know FOREVER!

Of course many theologies have been carved out around the judgment seat of Christ passages. We do believe that sorrow and sadness and tears will be no more! However, could their be room for some of that not based upon some illness inside of God to punish us, but a deeper desire to vindicate our choices. We usually want our choices to only matter when they are good and they deserve a reward, but it seems like it has to go both ways.

God uses the ‘so was that season’ and the ‘so was this moment’ and all the ‘So, I wish I would have done..” moments. As I was watching Paper Towns a few weeks ago(total great and fun movie) he says this one line about regret. Quentin says “The key is to notice it!”

Dwell in the Everlasting Burnings! Shootings are happening an hour away from where I live and its gonna keep happening. I pray it doesn’t but violence will increase and men who love the darkness will let all of us know how much. The church is to be salt and light. The church needs to embrace her pain in order to live this redemptive gift out in the world.

This poem is speaking to a few childhood memories of my sister and myself and my affinity for Mat Kearney songs. His most recent album Just Kids and the song itself speaks of innocence happening in those early years and how we can’t go back to that. Consider your future and in doing so you must live differently! You must take a chance and the nature of His love demands that you do so.

So Was

Reticence about my residence,

Stones up at your window, throwing them,

Casting down my own crowns,

Carry my soul over the hills, over the edge,

Into heaven’s ledge, a name is more fit then

This broken body.

I remember when, we remember when,

We were just kids, we used to sleep on the floor

Next to the heater, for warmth was always a

Necessity, but so was mystery, so was living on empty,

So was the past, so was the present,

So was waiting way to late for another

4 digit code at the gate,

Dryness like December made way for

A whiter January, one not so scary,

For everyone is afraid to slip on the

Black ice,

Aren’t we salt anyway? Aren’t we bright always?

Reticence about heaven’s residence

We have no continuing city..what if it is

This one we already live in? Does L.A. disappear

When He does truly appear?

So was every choice you ever made,

So was every breath you ever did take

So was the pain you chose to embrace

So was a bright new future made out of

A darkened past, a shallow call to go deeper

Then them all!

So was everything we ever did do for You

So was this little lie that sits inside of me

It says choices never matter for God knows

The future!

Well, tell that to the morning when it sucks you

Back into your bed, when laziness lives like a cancer

And claims to have the answer—just rest a little longer

And sleep through your greatest trials,

No, I too say no to all of that!

Every choice is vindicated no matter what

The books say—“so was the old you, so was

The old me, so will be that all that ever was

Will become your story!”