Today is Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!

In other words Joy to the World! The Savior reigns! Like, He reigns today. King forever!

I have it so good! Sometimes I'm tempted to be envious of the people around me who have families to spend their Christmases with, because my extended family is spread across the whole US. And I get to feeling down about my life, and how lonely I am.
...
and then i remember
I have a beautiful Saviour, who died that I might live, and today, the day of His birth, is the day that Hope was born too.

Merry Christmas!

God 's Word. 'nuff said.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"
          -Psalm 27:1

"The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts,
and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.
          -Psalm 28:7

Remember the Day

Remember the day that Christ was Born.
From Heaven to Earth He came
Long ago on a blessed morn;
An innocent child to bear our shame.

No sin He knew, no malice fraught
His life from birth to the grave.
Through pain He bore our grief and bought
Us merely from Hell to save.

Remember how angels sang His birth
To shepherds in the field.
His star shone down upon the Earth
And to wise ment light did yield.

His Father's love was very great:
The Son, willing and pure,
Died to save us from an awful fate,
And make Salvation sure.

So remember the day that Christ was born,
And rejoice in Him alone.
For long ago on that blessed morn
The finishing work began.

© Aisha 2007

PIANO!

Hello Everyone,
I just thought I would let y'alls know that I had a dream come true the other day. Sunday in fact. Dad got me a piano!
Those of you who know me know that I love playing the piano, and that not having a piano for the last three years has been a terrible thorn in my side. Nothing quite compares to piano music. That's not to say that I'm any good any more, but I do lovelovelove making that beautiful sound! So many things you can do with a piano.
Mine is a very small electric piano, that fits very nicely in my room, which is very awesome. Especially since I can plug in a pair of headphones and practice late into the night and nobody can hear me. :)
So, that is my amazing news for today! I'll put up pictures as soon as I reorganize my room. It sort of got disarranged in the process of bringing in the piano... *sheepishness*
Anyways... *HAPPINESS*

Beautiful Sorrow

I've been reading this amazing book called "When God Weeps" about the reasons for suffering, what God is doing about it, and why it is beautiful.

This is a passage from the book that really stood out, and made me rethink why I love sadness:

*****

It's humiliating to be sandblasted to the core. The mask of pride ripped away. The veneer of pettiness peeled off. But there's something refreshing about knowing yourself at the core. The vulnerability. The transparency. The "nothing" between God and us.

    And thankfully, God doesn't leave us stripped bare.

   The beauty of being exposed and empty is that God can then cover you. Like a surface that must be scrubbed clean before you can bond anything to it, the bonding of intimacy between God and us won't adhere until the film of dirt goes, the ambitions, the vanity, everything that sets itself up against others and God.

   It's not just that the sin is removed; the saint is built up: "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son" (Romans 8:29). Remember when we said that God delights in his own reflection? That the mirror image of himself is his Son? Think of his joy when he sees Christ in you. Nothing enthralls him more. When the soul empties itself of pride and pettiness, Christ fills it up. It's just another way of saying Colossians 3:3, "For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." You die. He lives.

   Nothing could be more gloriously bittersweet. Not sweet, but bittersweet.

Have you ever noticed that there is a kind of suffering and a kind of dying that we secretly long for, that it is indescribably delicious in a mystical way? This is not ordinary suffering (unless we are masochists). But we want to die when we have a mystical experience. I only felt it twice: once when swimming in the ocean in a great storm and once when first hearing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The French call sexual intercourse le petit mal, the little death. It is an end, a consummation, like death, yet a consummation devoutly to be wished. The mystics speak of their deep desire to die in God, to become nothing in God....What does it mean that we long to die, to suffer total self-loss? And what does it mean that joy is close to tears and that the most wonderful things are not sweet but bittersweet?

*****

My greatest pleasure comes not from seeing a person carefree and skipping through life with the sweet unconcern of the little child. Rather, it comes from seeing the sunshine through the rain - as  it were - in the eyes of someone you know to be suffering. Seeing the smile even while tears stream down his face. Knowing he is experiencing acute pain, whether of mind, body, or soul, but seeing that heavenly light in his countenance anyway, the light of hope. That is why, to a degree, I love sadness. That is why there is more beauty to be found in sorrow than in a life free of pain.

A few lines from a song I recently sang at church go thus:

Only be still and know His leisure,
In cheerful Hope, with heart content.
To take whate'er thy Father's pleasure
And all discerning love have sent.
Nor doubt our inmost wants are known
To Him who chose us for His own.

...God never will forsake in need
The soul that trusts in Him indeed.