The Call of the Wild

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won’t keep! Something must be done about them.
-Alfred N. Whitehead


No matter what anyone tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
-Mr. Keating, Dead Poet's Society


Herein lies my life, the call of the Wild, the road to freedom
and cost of it; begin here and never stop, or else
stop here and never set out.
-me

It's been a long time since I've heard words that call forth life instead of stagnating it, fencing it in. Words can do either one. But not the words of Life, not the words the disciples heard day in and day out, even the ones that cut to the bone, as often they must do if they genuinely are words of life. Those words are soft, like the wings of a mother hen enfolding around her chicks, and at the same time sharp and jagged, like the slicing rain pouding with a biting horizontal wind.

I've been wooed, as so many are, by the love of God in Christ. Broken by it. Pierced and filleted open. But today, I stand (stripped, as I often am) watching this Savior love, and I'm busted by it. Because, as much as this love is mine, is for me, as much as the cost of the extravagant sacrifice is for my own freedom and invitation into the heart of things with God, it is also for my neighbor. My own call is to love like this - gently, wildly, sharply, with abandon, unto death.

At least part of that love is displayed in speaking the truth, which always gets one in trouble if the truth is what, and all, that is spoken. Speaking the truth in love means, necessarily, that it is spoken in love for the hearer as well as in love for the message. That it is spoken as a whole truth, and holy.

And so, a part of the invitation of Christ is to go it with Him, to ride with Him on his white horse, to go after the hearts of His beloved bride. And He has given me so much to pour out - life in my bones, fire in my belly, desire deep in this beating heart of mine. Ideas and gifts and talents, passion and faith and love, filling this heart of mine that He's also given as a gift... both to me and to the world.

Jesus, yes. Again today, yes. Where else would I go? You have the words of life. And into me You pour them, you offer them, spoken in flesh, written in blood, given in Spirit. I know so little of what it means to really walk with You... but I have seen it, some. Like Job I cry out, "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen You!" I co-labor with You in this Kingdom for the hearts of Your wildly pursued and extravagantly loved bride... as Your friend, as Your "Sought After," as Your man. I give myself over to You, my life a living worship to You.