Here's the view from our hotel room in Ft. Collins this morning. The picture doesn't do it justice, but we got a layer of fluffy snow last night and it's just beautiful. The snow is also blanketing out the Rockies in the background, which were just gorgeous when we flew into Denver last night.

Melisa as layered up enough to climb Mt. Everest as she left for her EPX08 staff meeting. She's not used to this cold, having grown up in SoCal. My Midwestern blood is still thicker than hers, but I'm become pretty wimpy after living on the west coast for seven years, too. Right now I'm snug in the hotel room blogging on a pretty nice Wi-Fi connection, and listening to David Crowder Band and reading Psalm 63. We'll head up the mountain at 10:30 to get registration and the sound system all ready to go for the start of the event tonight.


Psalm 63
I've been stuck on one particular Psalm for about two weeks, and I just have been mulling it over and over, and praying it out a lot. I've been in a bit of a dry season, and this Psalm has been an oasis to my soul. Here are some of my notes from my study this morning.

• God you are my God. (v 1a)
  
  --> In our lives we must acknowledge God in our daily routines, our life decisions, in thought, deed, and relationships. And God is a personal God. Not only is he OUR God, he is MY God, and he knows me.....he knows you.
  
  
  
• I search for you. I thirst for you like someone in a dry, empty land where there is now water. (v 1b)
  
  --> In seasons of dryness fruitlessness, hopeless causes, in times of feeling distant from God we must - search, seek, struggle, reach, listen, strain, claw-and-scratch, for Him. We must cast aside all unnecessary weight. When a man is stranded in the desert, about to die from thirst, he cares little about the pack he is carrying, or the treasures he lugs, he only cares to get a drink and casts of the heavy weight that only holds him back from his life-saving water.
  
  
  
• I have seen You in the Temple, and have seen Your stength and glory. (v 2)
  
  --> Remember the things that God has one. Let those things, and the glory of God documented in the Word of God INSPIRE us to seek for God. In remembering the sweet taste of a cool drink of water do we hasten our walk toward the source. Let the remembrance of the sweet taste of God's love and the Holy Spirit quicken our hearts to seek him, to search for him, to not be content with staying in the desert. It's not that the journey out of the desert is easy, nor is it short. But you never get out of what you won't leave.
  
  
• Because you love is better than life, I will praise you. I will praise you as long as I live. I will lift up my hands in prayer to your name. (v 3-4)
  
  --> The words, "...all the days of my life..." come jumping out of the page to me this morning. David was a worshiper in all seasons. Sometimes it was worship in laments, sometimes in anger, sometimes in jubilant praise! But it was "all the days" of David's life, and it should be ours. Can I worship in spirit and in truth when I am in the desert? Am I that mature? Most of the time, no. But I can try, and make more effort, and ask God for his grace that is sufficient (as Paul wrote). Praise is something we should do every day of our life if just to acknowledge that God is God, and we are not. But if we understand the depth of God's love for us, even in the desert, we are compelled to do it in response to that love.

Labels: Christian Life, Mediation, Wonder, Worship Leading

Earth's Moon is Rare Oddball
by Dave Mosther
SPACE.COM

The moon formed after a nasty planetary collision with young Earth, yet it looks odd next to its watery orbital neighbor. Turns out it really is odd: Only about one in every 10 to 20 solar systems may harbor a similar moon.

New observations made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of stellar dust clouds suggest that moons like Earth's are—at most—in only 5 to 10 percent of planetary systems.

"When a moon forms from a violent collision, dust should be blasted everywhere," said Nadya Gorlova, an astronomer at the University of Florida in Gainesville who analyzed the telescope data in a new study. "If there were lots of moons forming, we would have seen dust around lots of stars. But we didn't."

Gorlova and her team detail their findings in today's issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Violent birth

Shortly after the sun formed about 4.5 billion years ago, scientists think a vagrant planet as big as Mars smacked into infant Earth and ripped off a chunk of our home's smoldering mantle. The rocky, dusty leftovers fell into orbit around our wounded planet, eventually coalescing into the moon we see today.

The scenario is unique among other moons in the solar system, which formed side-by-side with their planet or were captured by its gravity. Gorlova and her colleagues looked for the dusty signs of similar smash-ups around 400 stars, all about 30 million years old—roughly the age of our sun when Earth's moon formed.

Read the rest of the article

The cosmos is beyond my comprehension. It is interesting to hear scientists try to explain the most incredible, incomprehensible things in human terms. I'm not knocking science, because Science gives us insight into the incredible wisdom, creativity, and intelligence of God's creation. But I think God confounds the scientists by doing things they just can't explain. It leaves us in awesome wonder of Him.

Labels: Christian Life, Wonder, Worship Leading

Have you ever had a moment where God's greatness is revealed in something totally ordinary? It's like a light switch goes on inside that "that something" that is so ordinary is actually quite "extraordinary".

Maybe I'm just weird, and I think too much, I don't know. But this morning, I woke up and there was a marine layer of clouds. This is quite normal in Southern California to all of my Midwestern readers. You guys more often get "fog".



Anyhow, for some reason as I was thinking about the weather, and the nuances of clouds, and ocean, and mountains, and the sun, and the earth's axis, and the earth's distance from the sun, I was awestruck. I was awestruck at God's creativity, that he placed that earth in such a perfect place in the Universe, that we can have a cool morning, and a marine layer of clouds. All of the details that go into allowing that to happen just overwhelmed me.

Like I said, maybe I'm just weird. But the more I learn about the Universe, and its vastness, the more I think it speaks about the greatness of my God.

Labels: Wonder

Charlie Hall (SixSteps Records/Passion Artist) writes:

Of course we know, and have been hearing for a while now, worship is not just the songs we sing. It is a life laid down that says “burn me up God. Use my money, time, energy, skills, family, job, all I have. Help me make you a big deal and pull the attention on you.” Songs are one vehicle that helps a group of worshippers do this. These songs come along and they inspire, remind, and punctuate the life of a Jesus seeker. This being said, the goal of worship is not to just to sing songs.

The goal is Jesus, to peel back the beautiful curtain of “the song” and see the one the song is about. Music, songs, art, are vehicles to pull back the curtain. They reveal Him. When we gather around meeting with God, we can know He is there. But simply knowing He is there and treating Him as the centerpiece of the room is different. We should pull Him to the center of the room and let everyone look on Him and say the most beautiful things that can flow from our hearts.

That is how I approach leading. The songs are built to honor and convey things to him and about Him through art and creativity. As they are sung, people begin agreeing, “yes, God is like that. Look how wonderful He is.” Songs can be sung as songs but there are days when I am tired of the numbness of just singing. Familiarity to anything can create numbness. I want the songs to open up the windows and throw open the curtains to God. I want to pick songs that will engage my heart and leave room for new songs to come and be opened in that moment.

Read the rest at worshiptogether.com

Charlie nails it on the head here. For some reason, Christians fixate on the familiar. I see it all over the Christian sub-culture. If you flip on any Christian CCM radio station for a day, you will hear Matt Redman's "Blessed Be Your Name" about 8 times, sung by 8 different artists, with 8 "cool, new arrangements".

I love Charlie's perspective. Familiarity creates numbness to the message in a song you've sung a hundred times. But something new and fresh brings a song to life, or re-visiting a song that has been off the set-list for weeks or even years.

Be sure to click the link to read the rest! It's good stuff.

Hat Tip: Dan Wilt tipped me off to this article.

Labels: Wonder, Worship Leading