Tag Archives: personify

Decide

Decide: (v) to conclude a question, controversy, or struggle

Shamefully, I am sometimes reluctant to share the mystery and tenderness that faith brings to my heart.

I don’t want you to think I’m religious, so I flirt with blandness.

I’m not proud of this.

But I’m fully aware that fanaticism is the true death of human creativity and the joy that makes this journey reasonable.

So where do you share?

What do you feel?

When I saw the word “decide,” a chill went down my spine.

There are thousands of songs that have moved me over the years, but there’s one that always brings me to tears, even when I just think about it. It might be the gentle breathiness of the atmosphere at the end of a church camp, or the times I was live in concert in front of thousands of folks and the song was sung.

It still gets me.

The music—and especially the lyric—personify the hope that lies within me.

“I have decided to follow Jesus

I have decided to follow Jesus

I have decided to follow Jesus

No turning back

No turning back.”

 

Above

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Above:  (prep.) in extended space over and not touching: a display of fireworks above the town.

I’ve always liked the word above.

Having written a song or two in my time, above happens to be one of those words that rhymes with love. Actually, love is a tough rhymer. You can throw in dove, but how does that ever make any sense? I even heard a song the other day that rhymed love with of. I thought that was rather bold.

Of course, because above rhymes with love, there is a danger of over-use. I guess that would personify the word above. If something is over our heads and doesn’t touch us, it’s pretty non-human, right?

I appreciate the sky, but I’ve never had a conversation with it. Why? Because it’s above me.

I can understand that there are planets over our heads, but that’s about the extent of my involvement with these circling orbs. Why? They’re up above.

Maybe that’s why God has such a big public relations problem. Maybe if we told everybody He had a nice ranch house just outside Paramus, NJ, it would be a lot easier to relate to Him. But since He’s above us, in heaven, and not touching us every day, it’s very easy to start feeling silly about trying to interact with Him–similar to some dude standing in the middle of the street, screaming at the sky.

Actually, probably the smartest thing God ever did was drop down from above, become human and show us love.

Huh.

There you go. That’s why love and above rhyme–because until the love comes from above, we can’t understand … um …

See what I mean? I’ve run out of words to rhyme.