Jennifer Kay Smith
in love with creativity & its sourceArchive for worship
candles :)
we had our first saturday night gathering last night. 16 people were there!
it was great to spend one-on-one time with God, with no agenda, time limits, or structure.
we often spend hours at church talking about god, about god’s characteristics and what we can learn. we encourage people to spend time with God at home, developing that relationship.
and if we’re being honest, how often are we truly worshipping God when we sing and pray at church?
when we go through the motions, no one wins.
i pray this is a place where we won’t go through the motions.
david crowder & david lott
we saw David Crowder Band tonight in Cincinnati with some great ministry friends. i’ll post the video tonight on youtube. it was a great concert. he hooked up a guitar from guitar hero to play like a real guitar. 
as some of the songs played, i was overwhelmed with thoughts and images of what praising God in heaven might look and feel like. tears streamed down my face as i pictured david standing next to me and worshipping God with all he has.
it was so wonderful to watch david play guitar and worship. my heart melts and crumbles when i think about him. i miss him so much. i still don’t believe he’s gone. i miss him for all he’s missing with alisha. i miss him for all he’s missing with aaron. i miss him for his family. why is life like this? why are the people we love so dearly taken away before we’re ready? i feel so helpless.
the rest of the concert was good. we didn’t realize there was no seating so we got to stand for almost 4 hours. we also realized how old we felt! our backs hurt, the music was loud, our feet hurt, etc.
what’s happening to us?!?
more on yearnings
what are the parts of your shadow you keep under wraps?
healing vs. curing
in death, there is a crisis of meaning. we argue people back into hope through the community.
we all yearn to be more deeply human
we live in the space between what we yearn for (love, creativity, etc.) and the thing we get. that space is sacred. it’s agonizing and amazing.
so we build taboos around the yearnings and make them negative things OR we delude ourselves into thinking we’re going to reach the promised land. then the second we arrive at our yearning, we want more.
teachers have votes, not vetoes in your life.
life is 1% my effort and 99% grace.
we tend to make a partial truth a whole truth, then it comes back to destroy us.
when we worship in community and we don’t leave with more compassion and love, we are practicing idolatry. we’re worshiping ourselves.
- Rabbi Irwin Kula
