"I checked into a bargain-priced room on La Cienega..."

Those opening lines greet me like the warm embrace of dear friends. I've had the kind of day that demands this album.

A Faculty Devotion

First I'm going to read a few scattered verses from today's readings:

"He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again."

"Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a strong man shouting because of wine."

"In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you."

There's this songwriter named Dan Bejar who is one of my favorite people in music today. The lyrics I can initially pick out of his songs are invariably compelling, but when I write them down or look them up, I discover that they're basically gibberish--random turns of phrase, words strung together in aesthetically pleasing ways. The more I try to wrestle concrete meaning out of them, the more any kind of sense slip away. When he's asked about it, Bejar says that mining for intellectual meaning from of his lyrics is a mistake. He wants his lyrics to do something rather than mean something, to have an affect rather than to have sense.

As I read today's readings I was struck first of all by their beauty. Then I worked through what they meant. Unlike Bejar's lyrics, Scripture doesn't lose shape when you dissect it. It is dense with meaning. Today's readings are about who God's people are, and you can glean a lot of meaty, compelling meaning from them.

That's part of the marvel of Scripture. You can read it many different ways for many different ends, all valuable.

I grew up in the Navigators ministry. If any of you are familiar with the Navs, they have a strong emphasis on Scripture memory. This is a very good thing, but among the Navs there is sometimes a tendency to emphasize Scripture's didactic role to the exclusion of everything else, to drill into the Bible to extract application, application, and only application.

Given what little I've read of Desiring the Kingdom, I'm probably preaching to the choir, but the power of Scripture’s beauty been on my mind. Along with the Bible’s cognitive worth, I think we should also be cultivating a sense of Scripture's life-giving beauty. So, quickly, I'm going to reread those passages and then close with a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer that's been close to my heart these past few weeks.

"He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again."

"Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a strong man shouting because of wine."

"In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you."

Let us pray.

Almighty God, heavenly Father, who hast blessed us with the joy and care of children; Give us light and strength so to train them, that they may love whatsoever things are true and pure and lovely and of good report, following the example of their Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Matthew 7:1-17

In the English Standard Version:

And Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah."

Tents. I've always read it as "tabernacle," like Sufjan--some sort of holy monument of sorts. The ESV translation makes it sound more like Peter's saying, "Hey fellas, you need a place to stay tonight?" Somehow, that's much funnier to me.

Reading that passage led to me to Sufjan, naturally, and that video took me to the following one, which made me think of Sean and Julie and the three of us staring wide-eyed at each other like giddy, awestruck fools five or six minutes into the show. And now I think of the span of time and events between the and now. It's wonderful.

Yesterday I drove home satisfied and filled with pleasant anticipation. My pace was leisurely, the windows down, the warm afternoon sun bright. A song played.

Today I am sitting in my car. Lacking paper, I'm writing on the final blank pages of You Think That's Bad by Jim Shepard.

The windows down, warm afternoon sun bright. A song plays.