The Stormy-Hearted

The sea is never still; it pounds on the shore, restless as a young heart,
hunting. The sea speaks, and only the stormy heart knows what it says.
-Carl Sandburg

The community Jesus has invited us into as we share fellowship is the company of stormy-hearted ones, who have set their faces toward the Wind. The sun sets past some distant land, and the haze and glow of twilight settles first over the mast, and then the trim, and then our faces. The rope that once rested in our hands, with one end tied firmly to the dock, floats now on the restless sea. We have let go, deciding to let the breeze that's kicked up this evening give its all into these sheets. The wind of God's passion for us has taken us out onto the High Seas. We have set sail away from predictable, "responsible," organized, sanitized beliefs and lives, pushed out into deep waters, because we are ready to walk humbly with our Lord. We are ready to push toward and pursue others' hearts, just for the sake of their hearts, for freedom, and because we know they are worth it and they matter, because we matter and have mattered to God and we really believe and set our hope in that.

We have decided to trust in this wild, unfettered, unflinching, humiliating kind of love and model our lives after it. We are ready to move with the Spirit of Christ -- to be motivated, to be changed, to be daring enough to live in freedom and bold enough to believe it for others even when they can't believe it for themselves and love even if it doesn't immediately change things and to be meek enough to rejoice in inheriting something great from the Kingdom... maybe even, maybe even Christ Himself. And maybe, just maybe He is after all our hearts' greatest desire, underneath everything else. Maybe He really is our hearts' true home, the Lifter of our Heads, the Joy of our Salvation.

This kind of believe can be hard -- hard enough to take all the guts and violent faith within our hearts. The Kingdom advances by these violent and stormy hearts of ours.