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Sitting in darkness long,
Too long to know the absence of the light.
Quiet blanket of sorrow my familiar companion.
Midnight calls me home.
Redeemer comes calling.
Mighty arm takes hold of my prison door.
Nobel Liberator driven by call for my freedom.
God-Man wakes the dawn.
Brilliant light, piercing dark.
Meteor shower, drops of golden rain.
A million points of light piercing darkness all around me.
Swiftly, now…He comes.
“I am the Lord; in its time I will do this swiftly.” Isaiah 60:22b
I had just a few moments before time to reign in the chaos and put dinner on the table. I slipped out onto the back deck with a glass of water and collapsed wearily into a chair. Somewhere inside the house children were giggling and wild. Two began to argue, their angry bickering filtering out to me through open windows. I dropped my head into my hands, closed my eyes and sighed.
God reached down into my mind and stirred tendrils of memory….
The trail was terrible. Washed out places here, logs fallen over there. All along the edges tall grass and shrubs clogged the way. Just terrible. But….I kept on running. “Maybe it will clear in a moment,” I thought. “It’s not that bad…” I lied to myself.
Thorns clawed at my bare legs.
“It’s better than no trail at all…”
Then, suddenly….the trail was just gone and I was skidding to a stop to keep from splashing into the muck beyond it. There I stood – bloody, muddy and exasperated. All of that pain and misery, and it led to nothing at all.
The memory faded as God whispered…
“Are you at the end of the path, child? Are you ready to listen?”
Sometimes life is like that isn’t it? We so want whatever path we have chosen to be the right path that we ignore all signs to the contrary. We just keep waiting for it to get better, or lie to ourselves that it is not so bad after all. We don’t even stop to ask God if it really is His plan for us. We are already committed. Invested. Oh, so noble and all the while finding ourselves moment by moment filthier and more wounded. Then, to our dismay and shock we find we are standing at the end. The end of our possibilites, our strength, our hope…
The end of ourselves.
And the beginning of something infinitely better.
“Father, I’m tired. I need help. I’m going to ask you for the moon, the stars and everything in betweeen…”
It must have been what He was waiting for all along.
“…if you treat your disease with the emotional gravity and sense of hopelessness it deserves, you will ensure your quick death.” – Tim Chavez, journalist, reflecting on his battle with cancer.
“What can take a dying man?
Raise him up to life again?
What can heal a wounded soul?
What can make us white as snow?
What can fill the emptiness?
What can mend our brokenness?
Brokenness….
Mighty, awesome, wonderful,
Is the Holy Cross.
Where the Lamb lay down his life,
To lift us from the fall.
Mighty is…the power of…the Cross.”
Chris Tomlin
“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians 1:18-20
God has called me to hope and abundant life; a calling that is driven along by his incomparably great power.
Will I believe?
Five kids. One old beat up minivan on the way to school. Some days, it is chaos but many other days, it is a holy place.
“What do you think about God?” I ask them. “Proverbs 24 says that if we falter in the face of adversity, our strength is small. Yesterday, my strength was small. You know what I did? I agreed with God about it. There was no point in pretending to be strong because God sees our hearts. So, I said, ‘My God, my strength is small today. Will you please give me some of yours?”
“What do you think about God?” I repeat. “Do you think He looks down in disgust at us when we tell Him we are weak and need His strength? No. He smiles and says, ‘I’m so glad you asked! I am happy to give you some of my strength. I am (in the words of The Shack) especially fond of you.’”
I look into the rearview mirror to see a sea of small faces smiling at the thought.
What do you think of God? Do you believe he is tender? Do you believe that there are times he sprinkles special blessing into your life just to say, “I love you?”
I know my front porch swing is one of those kisses from God. It is the quiet place where He sings over me. The sun on the back of my neck is His favor. The cool breeze rustling in the Tulip Magnolia is His breath. The shade overhead is the shadow of His wing.
I come here every morning with a cup of tea, my journal, and God’s love letter to me. I have no agenda. I don’t direct the conversation. I just enjoy communion with The Father.
Inside the house, dirty dishes fill the sink and dust bunnies rule the floors. The laundry room I worked so obsessively to clear over the weekend is piled with smelly, wet sheets. There is always something to do, somewhere to be, some task that has awaited my attention far too long.
And so I steal away to the porch swing to hear the voice of God. I let Him sing over me for awhile.
What do you think of God?
When it comes to our destiny, and the abundant life God has ordained for us, the question is not whether or not we can figure it all out; or if we are strong enough, talented enough, or ambitious enough, but whether or not we are willing to stay by the Father’s side so that we may be led.
If we will just stay, He will be faithful to lead us into the great adventure for which we were created. He wants us to live out our story.
And he can bring a plot line of adventure out of any setting.
Do I trust God with my story today?
“For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, (“Daddy” in Aramaic) Father’. The Spirit Himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God’s children.” Romans 8:15-16
