The Undone

It’s 3:00 AM when I awake. The apartment is a winter day quiet, the kind where fresh-fallen snow has muffled the sounds of the day into an almost tangible silence – you can almost feel it like you can the cold under your feet. The padded carpet makes little noise as I stumble, half-awake, into the living room where soft light from the parking lot filters in through the slats of the window blinds. The cooler air making its way in through the door jam betrays the frigid temperatures of the night air outside. Autumn came in suddenly this year, and is leaving quickly, as if Winter is elbowing its way in with its long, icy fingers and soon with long, icy months.

But, in all its untamed nature – or because of it - winter brings with it a certain romance. Stepping outside this early morning I am immediately transported into a different scene than the softly-padded carpet and whitewashed walls of the living room. All is real here, and in-your-face. My naked feet feel almost instantly frozen, and the air is biting like a thousand piranha assaulting my body. But I feel, and that is the point, I think. Having just barely awoken minutes before, I am now wide-eyed and aware. It is dangerous to stay long in near-freezing temperatures without protection, but the danger itself tells of something true. Out here, I am plunged into reality. My eyes scan the horizon and then the darkened sky. Closing my eyes, I hold my head up and stretch out my arms in amazement that I am this alive, that I can see and hear and feel and sense and that, in a deeper and more important way, I can love and enjoy and experience and know, intimately.

Stepping back into the warmth, I am struck by the twilight between summer and the colder months, how one has not yet left and the other not yet fully arrived. I am tight-rope walking as they play tug-of-war. And it’s not the only war occurring this night.

I am in twilight as well. There is, of course, the twilight between what I am and what I will one day become, between what I experience now and what I one day will know. That’s an anticipatory twilight, a hopeful one.

But there is also the twilight between the two kingdoms, an interval or a distance that is quickly fading into the advancing day as the armies of both advance upon this battleground. I find myself most days fighting between giving myself over to the Wild One, the Lover God, and being pulled by my own flesh, by the Enemy of my heart, and by this world quickly fading. I am walking a tight-rope in a tug-of-war between the Worlds: that of the kingdom of darkness, and that of the Kingdom of Christ. I have been given over to the Kingdom of Light, no doubt, but how far am I willing to walk as a disciple with Christ? It is as Watchman Nee had it, that a person given partially to God is of no more use to the world, but a person not yet given wholly to God has not yet come fully into His kingdom, and as such is of no help by God.

My knees hit the padded floor and I cry out in repentance. Oh Lord, there is life to be had, there is One my heart was made for and my life is to be lived for. I am yet undone, Lord. You bid me come, and I come. Expose these regions in me that are yet cold and unyielding, that I might be made whole and holy by Your love. Until the day dawns, Christ Jesus, and the morning star rises in my heart.