what breaks your heart?

So, a couple of good points from church tonight that I want to fully work out in my head.

1) "A love for God is married to a love for people. When you divorce the two, you end up with zealots bombing temples and people doing mercy killings and a whole lot of hatred. It just doesn't make sense."

2) So, there are seven words in the bible for "praise." Hallal, which means to be "clamourously foolish," Yadah, which means "to extend the hand" and physically extoll the name of God, Shabbat, which means to "shout" for Jesus. Gil, which means to "dance and twirl around" with God, Taudah, which means to "give thanks for what God has done and what we think he will do," and Barach, to "recognize that God is the origin of success and blessing." There's a seventh one, but I forget it.

Point of all of this is that praise is so incredibly unburdened, undignified, about raising our hands up and dancing around and not shutting up and closing our eyes. That what I have a habit of doing. Not that it's less meaningful, but it's just... it's not what was meant by praise. And the thing is, there really is an internal (spiritual, I guess. I'm not really well versed in it yet) release when you throw up both hands and just say, "you know, God. I'm not here to win over the cute guy three rows behind me. because whatever. I'm here for you, and you don't care about any of this." It's always been hard for me, since I spent high school as that girl who criticized a lot of things. When you're critical, you cut your feet right out from under yourself. You give yourself nothing to grow in that's good; just a lot of things that you don't want that you hate.

Rylee told me today that Jack and I would never have worked out (for a myriad of other reasons, however) because he's really cynical, and really critical, and I'm really not. I kind of rallied to that later tonight, after that sermon. I'm really glad I've grown up past that point. Because when you're there, you feel like you're as grown up as you could ever be. And then you look back and laugh at yourself.

Also, I'm still totally hung up on this line. "The Greek word for worship is to turn and kiss. You can't talk when you kiss, so how can you talk when you're really worshiping?" Ahh. He's so incredibly right and this is so unbelieveably beautiful to me that it kills me. Like, the concept of a really, really deep and prayerful and "to the heart of the issue," facedown-sort of worship session is, really, more intimate than a kiss. Funny, because I can only just barely understand that. I recognize that, of the four (is it four? geeze.) guys I've kissed, I've never been as close with any of them, or even bordering on it, that I've been with God. And thank the Lord for that, because geeze, two of them definately turned out to be losers.

But, you know? Really praying? It's like kissing God. It's like getting your cheeks so close to each other without touching that you can feel the other person's face so strongly you can't take it. It's the "come close" feeling. Extravagant worship, extreme love. If I could highlight that second bit, I would. But I think this is sans boldface. Damn.

3) I haven't read the gospels in a while. Like, a couple of months. So when we flipped to Luke 7, this note (one of many) fell out onto my lap. It had this (and other stuff) written on it, "I believe in the God of miracles. However God breaks your heart, I believe he sends a message of love and peace, hope and life. Do you know how your heart breaks?"

I haven't seen this in a while, but the underlined bit, "do you know how your heart breaks," really jumped out at me like a knife. Because I'm one of those people whose heart breaks for a lot of things and a lot of causes and, mostly, for a lot of people, but this just made it so painfully obvious. What the hell am I doing? If my heart breaks, why am I not doing something? That happens for a reason. Pity is not without reason.

I am in love with Jesus. So much so that I want to go outside and sing and dance around.

Thanks God for refilling me and bringing me back home. I feel like I get in this cycle of not being as attuned to you one day, and then a little more the next, until suddenly, I feel like I'm in PA and you're in India.

Thanks for always being closer than my skin.