This blog is moving!

Upon further review of how Google owns Blogger, as well as my desire to both put out updates and wean myself from Facebook, I'm going to move my blog to WordPress!

https://streamsoflivingwaterflowing.wordpress.com

I will try to update the blog more often than I have in the past couple years.  I would like to record some thoughts on my seminary classes here, as well as talk about Annie's and my life experiences in San Diego.  Your thoughts are welcome. 

Jesus is better: "a Love that will not let me go"

9/29/2013  - OLD POST.  I'm going to finish these old posts and datemark them back to their original date, before I had forgotten about this blog.

I wish to present two tunes that have similar sounding melodies to my ears: "Falling" (The Civil Wars) & "O, The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus"  (text: Samuel Trevor Francis, melody: Ebenezer [Thomas John Williams]).

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/civilwars/falling.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_the_Deep,_Deep_Love_of_Jesus

The Civil Wars' song hauntingly describes the process of "falling" out of love with their spouse.  This process is described as sleepwalking, drifting away, drowning in an ocean of uncertainty and guilt for staying in a relationship that consists "worrying about everyone but me, I keep on losing myself."  The singer calls the relationship as unreal and illegitimate as a walking sleeper would consider her dreamworld to be fading away, unbinding, and empty.  The singer is asking, no, begging to be released from the relationship.  The chord progressions accentuate this helpless and dispassionate plea to be released from whatever bonds their relationship had made.  The verses and chorus alternate between introspective complaint and assumptive futile reconciliatory dialogue from the singer's partner, and the music alternates respectively between slow rhythms during the sleepwalking partner's introspection and fast-paced high-pitch chorus, representing domestic argument.  The music accentuates the story of a downward spiraling relationship and leaves the hearer sad and without closure.

Francis's hymn, on the other hand, describes a progression of expanding love that flows like an ever-widening river.  Jesus's "deep" love begins to be praised from the believer's mouth as a recollection of His saving work in the believer's life, moves on to a call to worldwide praise of Jesus's continuing love in his unchanging intercession for the saints, and concludes with Jesus's superlative love that is heavenly in this life and the next, because Jesus dwells with His people and will bring them to Himself.  The melody "Ebenezer" rolls and repeats itself in an AABA pattern, similar to the pattern of actual waves which systematically ebb and flow in intensity.  The verses of the song also follow this same advancing pattern of Jesus's expanding love, first to the Jew and then to the Greek.  The music spurs the singer on to the 3rd line of each verse, then pivots back to the repeating A pattern for the final 4th line, which reminds the singer that this world is not the end of life and music and joy in Christ.  The story of redemption is the deep love of Christ, which plumbs downward into our immeasureable depths of sin, while also paradoxically lifting us to the heights of heaven.  O Jesus, your deep, deep love "lifts me up to Thee."

Why Jesus is more like the Joker than the Dark Knight.

Scene: The Bat guns the engines of his Batmobile-turned-Batbike and rushes towards the Joker, who walks towards him in the middle of the street, cackling, with his mini Uzi gunning down oncoming traffic.

The Joker keeps muttering "Come on... do it... Hit me!" all the while Batman speeds towards him.

The Batman snarls and swerves around the Joker, laying his bike down and skidding into the wreckage of the Joker's upturned, armored vehicle.  The Joker frowns and smacks his lips knowingly, then approaches the fallen Bat.
--------------------

If Batman had hit the Joker, the Joker would have died from the impact, but Batman's reputation and ability to fight crime as a pure vigilante, a representative of the people, would have been compromised.  In this way, the Joker would win--by neutralizing Batman and proving that people are naturally crooked and chaotic.

Jesus similarly taunts Death and Hell, since if they sting him, they will forever be stingerless, and he will rise again for his innocence and power.

I will ransom them from the power of the grave;
I will redeem them from death.
O Death, I will be your plagues!
O Grave, I will be your destruction!
Pity is hidden from my eyes.
Hosea 13:14 (NKJV)