The Rabbit Room

Colors

by Ron Block

In honor of the Hutchmoot session on collaboration, here’s a rough mix of a cut from my new record, co-written with fellow Rabbit Roomer and Hutchmooter Rebecca Reynolds. She wrote the lyrics, and I came up with the music.

Nashville’s Jeff Taylor is on accordion, and my fellow Union Stationer Barry Bales played bass. I used a 1946 Martin 00-18 for the fingerpicked part and a 1938 Martin D-18 for the fills and leads. 

“Colors” Rough Mix

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The colors of this town are sometimes blinding
The city streets all pulse with yellow light
And every passing motion
Spins the wheel of lost devotion
Through strangers brushing shoulders in the night

We are inclined to whispers
We are inclined to dreams
Inclined to something more than all we’ve ever seen
Walking in love’s shadowlands
A drummer from a sidewalk band
Makes me long for home
Makes me long for home

Everything Broken and Everything Beautiful

by Ron Block

Since late August I’ve been co-writing songs with Rebecca Reynolds (aka “Becca” here on the RR). As a songwriter, never prolific, and often completely mired in a swamp of doubt when writing, I have read many books on art and creativity; Art & Fear by Bayles & Orland, The War of Art by Pressfield, On Writer’s Block by Nelson, On Writing by King, Walking on Water by L’Engle, The Music Lesson by Wooten, along with books like The Success Principles by Canfield, and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey. In talking with Rebecca I quickly became interested in her research on creativity and how it operates, due to my personal search and frequent sense of lack in certain areas.

What Is Love? Part III – Suffering

by Ron Block

What Is Love? Part I – Definitions
What Is Love? Part II – Gethsemane

Jeanne Guyon wrote, “You must see the wisdom of God’s plan in allowing . . . troubles to happen . . . There are two ways of handling little children. One is to give them all they want when they want it. Another is to give them only what is good for them so that they will grow up into maturity and not be spoiled. Your wise Father chooses the best way for you.” (Intimacy With Christ)

If we are parents, giving our children a strong sense of being loved through attention and affection is the foundation. But it is also imperative to allow appropriate suffering into our children’s lives. Without it they cannot grow; without it they will be left without empathy, compassion, self-discipline, respect for authority, and will not accept responsibility for their actions.

What is Love? Part II – Gethsemane

by Ron Block

What Is Love? Part I – Definitions

No discussion of love can be complete without regarding Gethsemane. In this second Garden, the divine love of the Father in the spirit of Jesus wrestled with the soul of Jesus, a war inside one body. This Man who had gone around saying “I and the Father are one” and “When you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father” saw a separate will within himself, self-preservation rising up, self-love. “If there is any other way, let this cup pass from me.” I don’t want to die by execution, have my soul be despised, rejected, and to become sin and have my spirit separated from my Father. Anything but that. Was it wrong to feel this way, wrong to desire a way less painful? Obviously not. Temptation is not sin.

“Let this cup pass from me.” He wrestled, like Jacob with the angel, but Jesus wasn’t saying, “I won’t let you go until you bless me.” It was, “Please, if there’s any other way, get me out of this.”

What is Love? Part I – Definitions

by Ron Block

The world has a lot of definitions for love. Deep affection, fondness, tenderness, warmth, intimacy, attachment, endearment; devotion, adoration, doting, idolization, worship; passion, ardor, desire, lust, yearning, infatuation. Compassion, caring, concern, friendliness, friendship, kindness, charity, goodwill, sympathy, kindliness, altruism, unselfishness, philanthropy, benevolence.

When I see the Jesus of the Gospels, I see the best of these definitions displayed, his deep affection for John, the tenderness toward Peter after his denial. I see his compassion and goodwill poured into the woman in John 8, and that little man Zacchaeus. I also see his anger toward the Pharisees, a love for sinners turned upon the self-righteous weapons of comparison and self-vaunting used to destroy lives.

Commandments and Our New Identity, Part V: Knowing Who We Are

by Ron Block

Although we may believe Jesus died for our sins, and has given us Heaven, we often carry the weight of a lie within our hearts, thinking the commands are there to obey by exerting the power of our will; we attempt to find our identity in obedience. We think success in obeying means we are “good,” and failure means we are “bad.” This is the living death of which Paul wrote in Romans 7. It is the wretched-man existence, not the new creation life of union with Christ. It is a Christian saved from Hell in eternity by grace but trying to get free from the hell of his present sins by the exertion of his own will power.

This is the backwards Christian life. To oversimplify, we think erroneously that we’re saved from Hell so we’re to try by our will power to show God how grateful we are in return by being good, by trying to keep his commands.

This must be reversed.

Commandments and Our New Identity, Part IV: Betting the Farm

by Ron Block

Our identity in Christ has profound practical applications, and each one of those sounds across the landscape of our new life with the promise of hope and strength. We are new creations, holy, one spirit with the Lord. We no longer live but Christ lives in us as our righteousness. We now are to live by reliance on him. These statements ask us to move differently into each day we are given, but what does it look like experientially to put our entire spirit, soul, and body into faithing in the new Reality?

Commandments and Our New Identity, Part III: Fruit Production

by Ron Block

I walked down our gravel drive along the fence and saw a little fruit-pod on a vine. God started me to thinking about it.

A tree grows in good soil. It produces fruit. The fruit carries the seeds. The fruit hangs over other ground. It falls, and bursts open. If the ground is receptive, another tree begins to come up. The fruit, the flesh of it, is the thing that carries and eventually nourishes the seeds as the fruit falls and time goes on.

What if in the church we were often rejecting real, full-on spiritual fruit production and trading it for a little fruit mixed with a lot of self-effort and busy-work? What if we were so infected by the way the world thinks and operates in its “Just Do It” attitude that we are missing out on the miracle of being branches dropping love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, humility, and faith into the lives of those around us – effortlessly, easily, freely?

Commandments and Our New Identity, Part II: Sons of Self-Effort or Sons of Promise

by Ron Block

In Genesis 15, God speaks to Abram and says “I am your shield and your exceedingly great reward. Abram says, “What will you give me, seeing I have no children? At this point my servant Eliezer is my heir!” God then reiterates the promise made to Abram in chapter 12 of making him a great nation, with descendants as many as the sand and stars. Abram faithes in God, and God counts Abram’s faith as righteousness. But then God says, “I’ve brought you from Ur to give you this land as an inheritance.” And Abram pulls a Gideon on God: “How do I know this is true?”

So God makes a covenant. Animals are killed, and the pieces divided, and normally both parties would walk between the divided pieces, amidst the blood, to make a covenant together.

But God puts Abram to sleep, and walks the covenant alone. He was making a point; this was to be a one-sided promise, God keeping his word, not based on whether or not Abram fulfilled his side of a contract. It was a covenant of grace to Abram which did not depend on Abram’s performance, the promise of an heir.

Commandments and Our New Identity, Part I

by Ron Block

In my dialogues with others about grace, forgiveness, and our new identity in Christ, the question is often raised, “What about the commandments? Don’t we have to keep the commandments?” Let’s look at the Ten Commandments for a moment:

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.

2. You shall not make any carved images to bow down to.

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

5. Honor your father and mother.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. You shall not covet what belongs to another.

A fairly daunting list, but that’s only ten, and in very simplified, easy form. Jesus came along and said that to hate someone in our heart is the same as murder, and to look upon someone with intent to sexually desire them is the same as adultery. Then the Apostle Paul comes along and says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for her.” That makes “Don’t commit adultery” look like child’s play. Husbands, love your wives sacrificially, patiently, lovingly, never giving in for a moment to selfishness or being a tyrant or passivity or a harsh word. Likewise, “Do not steal” in the New Covenant becomes “give, give, give,” the opposite of stealing.