Defender

My amazing cousin Mike Janzen was the musical guest at the Harvest Festival banquet on Friday. He is pretty much my piano hero. I sit in awe as I watch his hands move faster than I am capable of moving my hands, and somehow every note they strike sounds beautiful. Mike is also amazing because he has a wonderful heart for Jesus, and for trying to find out what it means to follow him. This is a song that he wrote that I like a lot.

Defender

To bless the poor with us
To feed the hungry ones
This is what You have taught us
To give as you have giv'n
To bring the orphans in
Is what You've commanded

Yet I am also poor in love
I need You Lord to fill me up

Defender of the poor
Restorer of the broken
Release for the oppressed
A shelter for the homeless
Is this not what it means
To know You, Lord of all
Is this not what's required to
Worship You above

To care for those in need
To set the captives free
To love as You showed us
To leave the harvest fields
For those without to eat
To tell of Your favour

Yet I am also poor in love
I need You Lord to fill me up

Defender of the poor
Restorer of the broken
Release for the oppressed
A shelter for the homeless
Is this not what it means
To know You, Lord of all
Is this not what's required to
Worship You above

- Mike Janzen

On Change

Life is so crazy. One minute you are confident in your position - your relationships, your future, your emotions and thoughts. The next minute, you are thrown into chaos, as you are forced to question things you thought you knew, as your security blankets are snatched away one by one. Life likes to change faces every now and then. Not so much a sudden change, more like a continual morphing into something new. It keeps changing as I change. Or maybe I keep changing to keep pace. Sometimes I feel like I am out of breath, like I can't keep up with all the change. Sometimes I wish the change could speed up, that it would get me through a stage a little faster. I was looking back through my journal tonight, and I saw some random lines I had scrawled out in the middle of an entry a while ago:

Time is a bossy friend
Never obeying, always dictating
Doing things its own way

I think that there is a lesson that I need to keep learning about conceding to change. Fighting it only makes me impatient or nostalgic or some other unpleasant thing. I think the most enjoyable and effective life is one that is lived in an embrace with change.

I'd love it if I had more to say, but I really don't.

Peace

When Peace comes in with quiet steps
And hems me in and speaks to me
He whispers stillness in my breast
A calm as far as eyes can see
And gives me rest

My heart is sore, yet pulse it will
The wounds received can kill me not
And though the pain goes on until
My strength is gone, past ease forgot
Peace rules me still

For in my joy, so in my pain
I know a Hope that leads me on
A Love who softly calls my name
And fills my dreams with coming dawn
This Peace remains

Feeble Beginnings

The sky is charcoal
A slate as yet untouched
Chalk lying on the ground
I pick it up and wonder what to write
In the vastness
Unsure what to create
With the boundless potential
Paralyzed

Upon closer inspection the stars appear
Mapping out a celestial dot-to-dot
And all my worry melts away
As realization dawns with the morning
That I am just a child
Asked only to connect the dots
Already laid out for me