Dear Theophilus

This is post #2 of 4 on the 4 songs I wrote for school... This is one of my favorites. The songs works and it recorded well. I have been toying with this song for a long time, so some of you may have heard it before - sorry. Lots more banjo, no drums, lots of electric guitar and one of the best guitar solos I have ever come up with (which is not saying much if you know me :)). One of my learning objectives was that I wanted to seek traditions outside of my own. The Psalms have not been a major part of my worshiping tradition in my home church. More than that, before coming to SPU I was unsure about the Psalms. I wrestled with David and Solomon and their roles in scripture. I mostly avoided them, not finding much value in them at all. I think my issue was that David and Solomon both started great but devolved into a mess of a family that ultimately cast the people of God into the stone ages and persecution and exile. I think I was hurt because the church taught ab...

So, I wrote 4 songs for this project I had to do at school... It is this class where I could do a project, literally almost anything, where I synthesized the material that I was learning. I decided to write and play some songs. These are not finished. I have my favorites. The next four blog posts will be about these four songs. Here is a playlist with all 4 on youtube. You can easily listen to any of them. I am going to blog about what I was attempting to do and say in each song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3udEpVy92w4&list=PL3A3C391AEE5B22F5&feature=plpp_play_all The first song is my LEAST favorite but it has been knocking around in my head. It is called "Rise Up!" “Rise Up!” With your left hand you clear my path, With your right you hold me close Your Holy fire all around me will be my light home, it will be my light home Rise up our God the Lord above, You are the great and Mighty One You stay our enemies away, you pour ...

We just passed the halfway point in Lent (March 15)! And if you are like me, you have failed at your lenten practices many times over. " God is light and in God there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5) / "God is love" (1 John 4:8)   It is at this point that I have to remind myself of a few things: (1) I do not practice and observe Lent to make God love me more and (2) I am a broken person who can't even live up to my own standards and practices let alone that of a infinitely holy God. God is light. To walk in light is to have all brokenness and rebelliousness exposed. The darkness of my soul cannot exist in the light. Dark cannot exist in light. I have two choices, to find a way to get rid of the darkness or hide from the light. Everyone has darkness and brokenness. Sometimes I want to downplay it. Sometimes I want to ignore it. Yet Lent is the perfect time, not only to work at exposing light into the dark corners, but coming to grips with our own brokenne...