Ashes to Embers

The questions will not let me sleep

Answers buried way too deep

In the bottom of a lover's leap

Made by crazy faith...

~Alison Krauss

It has been at least a couple of years since I blogged last, and I feel like I've lived an entire lifetime between now and then.  Some friends have been urging me to write, and coming back to the blog is the fruit of listening to them.  When I came back to the blog I'd created a few years ago, I immediately saw my old blogs and began trying to figure out how to delete them. "What are you doing?" asked my friend. "Don't get rid of those!" she said.  I felt I should delete them because I am different now than I was then.  My writing, therefore, was completely different.  You see, I used to write to vent my frustrations and anger.  Then I stopped writing altogether--it was merely a side-effect of death pursuing me.  I was dying slowly, but picking up the pace.  And when I really got going, I decided to run away from life and God altogether.  I was angry at God.  But in my darkest hours yet, He came for me.  The Lord showed me the futility of the life I was living, and opened my heart to the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  That's why I opened up with the Alison Krauss quotation.  I had so many questions, and ended up with only one answer--the living hope that comes by grace through faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ.  And it seemed to be a crazy faith, but now it is the only thing that makes things of this world sensible.  Anyway, I decided to keep the old posts up.  The Lord has given me a story, and here in these old blogs [in part] lies some of traces of that story.  So go on and read the old ones if you so wish.  You may find that there is a disconnect, and I hope you find that the difference is quite pronounced.  I'm hoping to do more writing these days, whether it be songs, poems, or narratives...and these days, I am finding myself with exceedingly more hope.

A good friend once fed me this line--"ashes to embers"--in hopes that I would build a song around it.  I anticipate coming up short on that expectation, but that phrase does fit my story well.  I was once dead, but now I am alive.  The cold ashes were the remnants of what once was life, and now they have been regenerated into fiery red embers that burn with a living hope.  Ashes to embers...death to life.