By Keith Getty and Stuart Townend
In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.
In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev'ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.
There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.
No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow'r of Christ in me;
From life's first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow'r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow'r of Christ I'll stand.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
The Hauntings at Night
The nights have become ever more sleepless.
The shadows have come alive, their shapes shift, they grin at me, and beckon.
They whisper and tell me things, many things, great things, wondrous things, sad things, horrible things.
Things about my overseas course, my future in work, and, of course, about those subjects that reside deep within the core of my being.
So much beauty and so much horror.
It is not schizophrenia.
It is reality.
The shadows have come alive, their shapes shift, they grin at me, and beckon.
They whisper and tell me things, many things, great things, wondrous things, sad things, horrible things.
Things about my overseas course, my future in work, and, of course, about those subjects that reside deep within the core of my being.
So much beauty and so much horror.
It is not schizophrenia.
It is reality.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
16 Days
I think a return to the tenets of Faith and Strength is in order here.
No more the grovelling to the twisted lies of False Affection- no more.
No more the grovelling to the twisted lies of False Affection- no more.
Friday, September 07, 2007
I Said, Enough
Disgusting.
Disgusting.
Disgusting.
Filthy human emotions and the despicable delusions and fantasies that they induce.
There must be a purge.
But then, O Father in Heaven, what is the point of endowing us with such things as these?
Are they not the things that make us human?
But are they also not the things that make us weak?
And make us ever susceptible to sin and doubt?
Take them away, O God, take them away.
Lest I lose everything because of them.
Disgusting.
Disgusting.
Filthy human emotions and the despicable delusions and fantasies that they induce.
There must be a purge.
But then, O Father in Heaven, what is the point of endowing us with such things as these?
Are they not the things that make us human?
But are they also not the things that make us weak?
And make us ever susceptible to sin and doubt?
Take them away, O God, take them away.
Lest I lose everything because of them.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Enough
Long after the firestorm of hysteria has burnt its terrible course, the smouldering embers solidify into cold, razor sharp rationality.
And with the rationality comes questions.
Questions that are without answers, questions that keep me awake through the long, long, nights, wondering and thinking over again.
But these questions, they are darker and blacker than even the night itself. They are impenetrable shadows, and no light can escape from them. All light that falls on them is ravenously devoured, swallowed up and merged with the great voids of total mystery and helplessness.
And yet I have no choice but to press on despite their looming in my mind, in every waking moment.
I have no choice because I cannot let my future be jeopardised.
And with God's help, I will be victorious- broken and burdened as I am now with insoluble problems such as these.
And with the rationality comes questions.
Questions that are without answers, questions that keep me awake through the long, long, nights, wondering and thinking over again.
But these questions, they are darker and blacker than even the night itself. They are impenetrable shadows, and no light can escape from them. All light that falls on them is ravenously devoured, swallowed up and merged with the great voids of total mystery and helplessness.
And yet I have no choice but to press on despite their looming in my mind, in every waking moment.
I have no choice because I cannot let my future be jeopardised.
And with God's help, I will be victorious- broken and burdened as I am now with insoluble problems such as these.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
28 Days Left
It is oftimes lamented that there is a hyper-abundance of pressing concerns and tasks to undertake which happily occurs concurrently with the severest scarcity of time.
And I have just joined the ranks of the millions and billions of poor souls who can testify first-hand to the truth of that statement.
Forms, medicals, clothing, allowance, bank accounts, insurance, flight details, more forms, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. It makes one sick just to think through the whole grand old joyful rigmarole of administratum and felicitous fusillade of details.
And then there's the reading programme which I hoped would form the backbone of my foundational reading for the upcoming term.
10 months of mental stagnation following the 2 years of mental degeneration (read: NS) have sure done wonders for my cognitive processes, and when you combine that with the sheer abstractness of writers such as Giovanni Sartori and Ronald Chilcote and Robert Keohane, the resultant feeling is disturbingly similar to the proverbial bashing of one's head against a brick wall.
Take Giovanni Sartori and his Democratic Theory for instance. He's not the worst among the three, and he does have long tracts of sublime lucidity that somehow manage to catalyse my comprehension of the most abstract concepts and theoretic formulations, but for the most part he simply goes off into a multi-dimensional line of argument which I have absolutely no hope of following.
He seems at times to be more concerned with word defintions than concept definitions, and though he claims the reverse, it doesn't help that the nature of some concepts is to be virtually the same entity as the word-label that they bear, and this thus leads to total confusion when he tries to define a concept and ends up defining the word. And of course, his lack of real-life, concrete examples (except for his notable chapter on Athenian democracy), despite his claim of taking the historical-empirical approach of analysis, only adds to the difficulty of understanding him and what he is arguing about in relation to the practical issues of today's political world.
Enough. Back to the mental meat grinder. There's still Rousseau's Contrat Sociale to be read.
And I have just joined the ranks of the millions and billions of poor souls who can testify first-hand to the truth of that statement.
Forms, medicals, clothing, allowance, bank accounts, insurance, flight details, more forms, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. It makes one sick just to think through the whole grand old joyful rigmarole of administratum and felicitous fusillade of details.
And then there's the reading programme which I hoped would form the backbone of my foundational reading for the upcoming term.
10 months of mental stagnation following the 2 years of mental degeneration (read: NS) have sure done wonders for my cognitive processes, and when you combine that with the sheer abstractness of writers such as Giovanni Sartori and Ronald Chilcote and Robert Keohane, the resultant feeling is disturbingly similar to the proverbial bashing of one's head against a brick wall.
Take Giovanni Sartori and his Democratic Theory for instance. He's not the worst among the three, and he does have long tracts of sublime lucidity that somehow manage to catalyse my comprehension of the most abstract concepts and theoretic formulations, but for the most part he simply goes off into a multi-dimensional line of argument which I have absolutely no hope of following.
He seems at times to be more concerned with word defintions than concept definitions, and though he claims the reverse, it doesn't help that the nature of some concepts is to be virtually the same entity as the word-label that they bear, and this thus leads to total confusion when he tries to define a concept and ends up defining the word. And of course, his lack of real-life, concrete examples (except for his notable chapter on Athenian democracy), despite his claim of taking the historical-empirical approach of analysis, only adds to the difficulty of understanding him and what he is arguing about in relation to the practical issues of today's political world.
Enough. Back to the mental meat grinder. There's still Rousseau's Contrat Sociale to be read.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)