A monkey song
and jesus songs and heathen songs
We went to the supermarket yesterday. My sis & bro-in-law handled the groceries. Smol nephew and I bopped around, poking at packaging and generally admiring the expansive selection of dairy products. As we entered the fruit section, we were soon ensconced by an unnecessarily giant cardboard display of monkeys hanging off palm trees. Tedders pointed at his favorite. The banana. I started to sing a a silly little canto tune:
河邊有隻羊
羊邊有隻象
樹上有隻馬騮精
好似你咁樣
Roughly translated as:
Next to the river is a sheep
Next to the sheep is an elephant
Up in the tree is a monkey
That looks just like you!
I heard a gasp behind me. Surely my canto isn’t thaaat bad, I muse. An azn uncle bored wide-eyes at me, looking stunned and slightly like he was about to scold me. Then he beamed. I haven’t heard that song since I was a youngster, he chattered, thank you! That made me really happy!!! Then he sauntered off with a cluster of bananas.
May the tune also brings you even the teensiest bit of random joy today hehe. Credit to my dad who used to sing it to us maa-lau-jings all the time 🐒
grace hunters
CCEF describes a critical aspect of the work of counselors:
Seeing God's grace in action, calling attention to it, and encouraging those we counsel to step into it all the more.
I like that job role: Grace Hunters.
a podcast
I’m a big fan of JHP+PP (jackie hill perry + preston perry). All their podcast episodes have at least a five dozen mic drop moments. Here were a two of my favorites from a recent one called We Are All Just Jars of Clay:
Sometimes God allows evil to draw us closer. There are still some remnants of sin that I want to wring out of you. I want to sanctify you so that the Enemy has nothing to work with. I want you to remain in Me. So the Enemy doesn’t have any foothold over you.
God is with us. The power of God’s presence in the midst of a trial or the storm—this is what the Enemy wants you to lose sight of. God never said he’d come to earth to take away our problems. He said he came to earth to be with us. I will be with you until the end of the age.
a scribble
I found this scribbled in an old notebook I was leafing through:
Jesus says ‘Come to me all who are weary’.
Jesus assumes we are weary.
For all of us who need a reminder of our gentle Savior we can go always to, especially when we are oh so tired 🥹
another scribble
I found another scribble from 20 August 2022:
Ray Ortlund talked about how churches must have a culture of gospel + safety + time. I particularly liked how he expounded on time.
Roughly translating my chicken-scratch:
God is in no hurry, so why are we?
Time is God’s creation and servant. He can bend it to our advantage, so we can relax on the deadline of our own sanctification and fruit-bearing. So we can be patient.
God is calm. God is patient.
Because he wants to create something beautiful.
And beauty is never created with haste.
God is merciful to us for no reason. We have to provoke God to wrath. But never to love.
jesus songs
A theme over the weekend seemed to be you are not your own. I liked these songs that remind me of this truth:
I Am Not My Own by Skye Peterson & the Gettys
And if He has redeemed me, I am not my own
The measure of my worth is His love alone
He declares my standing, and He declares my state
So I will know myself by the name He gaveI belong to the Lord, I am not my own
I will honor Him for this I know
I belong to the Lord, I am not my own
I Belong to Jesus by Brooke Ligertwood
When it's clear the world is not my home
Or if I forget it's not
May He turn my eyes upon Himself
So it's Him for whom I longFor I belong, I belong
Yes, I belong to Jesus
He is my rock, my strength, my song
Yes, I belong to Jesus
heathen songs
A year later, and I’m still obsessed with the Barbie songs. Here’s an incredible cover of What Was I Made For by Abi Carter. And then her cover of my favorite Sara Barielles cover of Sir Elton’s classic Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. All of them performed live 🤩. Let’s bring back those glitter specs.
a nonviolent resistance to evil
I’ve been loving the BibleProject’s video series on the Sermon on the Mount. Their latest 7-minute video explores how to treat people you can’t stand. I like the final lines:
Jesus holds up God’s indiscriminate, generous love as the model. The call is to become peacemakers, who are inviting others in, working to mend every broken relationship at every level in our communities. It really is a radical way to live. Jesus calls it ‘becoming complete’. Be complete as your heavenly Father is complete. It means imitating God’s generosity to both friends and enemies. Because for Jesus, creative love is the only pathway to peace.
a psalm
More chicken-scratch from this week. Breaking down Psalm 107:
There’s a pattern, a poetic a-b-c structure as the logical rationale for why “the Redeemed of the Lord tell their story, and tell of his works with songs of joy”:
a: We cry out to God for help. (“then in your desperate condition, you called out to God”)
b: God rescues us. (Same power to rescue, but in different ways each time)
c: We praise God. (“so thank God for his marvelous love, for his miracle mercy to the children he loves”)
TLDR: God saves. Always in the nick of time. Cry out to him. Declare his goodness.
Thank you for reading, friends! Happiness can’t be bought, but it can be adorably shuttled around in a shopping cart:
love,
reb