Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring a chance to be free,
Bring me anything that brings you glory.
And I know they'll be days
when this life brings me pain,
But if that's what it takes to praise you,
Jesus bring the rain!

I am Yours regardless of
The dark clouds that may loom above
Because You are much greater than my pain.
You who made a way for me
By suffering Your destiny
So tell me what's a little rain?

Holy Holy Holy
Is the Lord God Almighty!

Currently Reading When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight For Joy By John Piper see related

A real childlikeness

This is an excerpt from John Piper's When I don't desire God that I have been reading recently.  Let me know what you think - this definitely got the wheels in my head spinning . . .

In other words, what we need is a kind of childlikeness.  And romantic tales are often used to awaken it.

When we are very young children we don't need fairy tales: we only need tales.  Mere life is interesting enough.  A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon.  But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door.  Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales - tales only echo and almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement.  These tales say that apples are golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green.  They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. 

The point is that Christ frees us from self-preoccupation and gives us - yes, only very gradually - a childlikeness that can see the sheer wonder of the staggering strangeness of the ordinary.  Chesteron said that this discovery for him was captured in a riddle: "What did the first frog say?" Answer: "Lord, how you made me jump!"  In another place he says that he came to the point where what amazed him was not the strangeness of people's noses, but that they had noses in the first place.  In becoming more childlike and more able to see glory in the wonder of the ordinary and the routine, he points out that we are becoming more like God.

[Children] always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes all dasies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.  It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

I was especially hit by those last few lines.  Let me know what you think.

"Lord, You're still good"

Lord, you're still good to me,
Even when your face, my spirit cannot see.
Lord, you're still good to me,
You take this broken heart and start again.
Lord, you're still good to me,
When darkness clouds my vision and I cannot see.
Lord you're still good to me,
And you will be good to me.

Lord, you're still good to me,
You satisfy desires and my every need,
Lord, you're still good to me,
You hold me in your arms when I'm afraid.
Lord, you're still good to me,
Teaching me to trust and how I must believe, that
Lord, You're still good to me,
And you will be good to me!

H.C. 4.24.07