"Oh How He Loves Us"

This song by David Crowder has been balm.
I thought it was a cover of a 16th or 18th Century hymn.
The theology is piercing, succinct and too great to consider with just a once-through.
In fact, the theology is clearer with free-flowing tears.

So I was surprised that it was written recently, real recently, by John Mark McMillan.

And then, his original lyrics have a story behind them, born out of something that involves grief. I don't know the story yet. The original lyrics state: "Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss..." I liked these but didn't know why until I read this from McMillan's blog:

The idea behind the lyric is that the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth converge in a way that is both beautiful and awkwardly messy. Think about the birth of a child, or even the death of Jesus himself. These miracles are both incredibly beautiful and incredibly sloppy ("gory" may be more realistic, but “Heaven meets earth like a gory mess” didn’t seem to have the same ring). Why does the church have such a problem with things being sloppy?

Do the Right Thing

Running ultras for the right reason....

That is a good thing to think about. It is one of the reasons I started this blog several years back; to wrestle with the questions associated with how I could justify running ultras in the face of a large family, a solo law office, and many other things.

I don't have the right reasons figured out. I have lots of the wrong reasons figured out. But just knowing the wrong reasons doesn't mean that I am doing it well. In fact, I think that one thing I could conclude after many, many miles and a few, fewer ultras is that it is critical to make certain that running ultras does not ruin or diminish the good things one has in life. Keeping tabs on that takes the wisdom of Solomon and much prayer.