Large With Strength

"When I called, you answered me; you made me bold with strength in my soul." -Psalm 138:3, NASB.

I opened the Scriptures this morning to this verse. Immediately I felt drawn -- no, not drawn -- pierced by something in it. What is it, exactly, that has speared me? Something about strength in the soul. Something about God answering and making something in me. I pull out the Message Bible to see if Eugene Peterson's paraphrase might capture it for me. "The moment I called out, you stepped in; you made my life large with strength." Large with strength. You made my life large with strength. Yes, this is it. I hear His voice through the Scripture. This is God's word for me, spoken intimately and from His heart to say, "This is what I am doing in your life, my son, my dear friend." I'm trying to decide which is more incredible for me: this secret that He let me in on or the fact that He is this desirous for my communion with Him. I love both.

This is what God is up to: enlarging our hearts and the rule and domain of Christ within us (where the Kingdom lies), that He might dwell more fully and presently there. In The Sacred Romance, John Eldredge writes, "As our soul grows in the love of God and journeys forth toward him, our heart’s capacities also grow and expand: 'Thou shalt enlarge my heart' (Ps. 119:32 KJV)." And Isaiah cries out: "Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes" (54:2).

That my "tent" (the sanctuary of the Spirit of God) may be enlarged, I pray along with George MacDonald:

O Christ, my life, possess me utterly.
Take me and make a little Christ of me.
If I am anything but thy Father's son,
'Tis something not yet from the darkness won.
Oh, give me light to live with open eyes.
Oh, give me life to hope above all skies.
Give me thy spirit to haunt the Father with my cries.

-from Diary of an Old Soul

Redeemed from Fire by Fire

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The One discharged of sin and error.
The only hope or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre –
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame.
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
-T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

The fire of God’s presence is consuming. Those who wish to know Him will be asked to walk straight into it. Nothing will be expected, but all will be required. Richard Foster describes the intimacy of knowing and walking with God as the incarnational or sacramental life, the “crying need to experience God as truly manifest and notoriously active in daily life.” The mystery of God made manifest in Christ destroys or feeble notions of Him, demolishes our own pursuits of security and safety, and dissolves our illusions that we can have life outside of God.

This is what T.S. Eliot refers to here as Love, the unfamiliar Name, who redeems from fire by fire. Our choice concerning God (which is to say, concerning our very lives) is actually rather clear: we are either destroyed by fire or consumed by Love so intense it can only be described as a fire. The way of rescue for us is through the flames of His presence, His life that is “the light of men” (John 1:4). And it is a constant rescue, a constant Presence with us. Moses was led by a flaming torch by night; we are led by the Flaming Torch within, “even unto the ends of the age.” It is not that we possess life, but that we are possessed by Life.

It is this incarnational life with God that has been often left out of the more evangelical church circles. And how can that be, since this intimate communion with God is the very heartbeat of our souls? Without this consuming and mystical connection, our pulse weakens, our skin grows pale and clammy, our hearts grow faint and cold. Calvin Miller, in his book Into the Depths of God, has this foreboding warning: “When the mystery is gone, so is the church – at least the vitality of the church.”

So what of these words by T.S. Eliot? Was he too mystical? Is the mystery of his poetry too far out there? Should it make us uncomfortable and so we turn the other way? Not at all. It is in this mystery, this mystical longing after God and recognition of His heart for us, that is ultimate reality. We cannot ignore our vitality in God, or try to tame the flames of it, without losing our very lives. Jesus said as much – “whoever wants to save his life will lose it” (Matthew 16:25).

“God waits,” Calvin Miller continues, “for those who will love him and who hunger for things too excellent to be understood.”

So where do we go from here? How do we come back into intimate communion with God, or rekindle the heat? How do we grow in our love for Him, in our desire for him and those “things too excellent to be understood”? I think the answer has something to do with our fainting, with out gut-level recognition that we cannot get there on our own. We begin by praying not, “Lord, I want you,” but rather the more authentic, “Lord, I want to want you.” Maybe that is all we can muster. But it is all that is required. If we are willing, and only if we choose, we can begin moving deeper into the heat of God’s life. In the same breath, Jesus told us, “but… but… whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says that “there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak… the very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether… your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him… look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” Paul knew this. It is why, I think, he told us in Colossians that “your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

So we are to find it. If God seems distant, it is because He is waiting, “waiting to be wanted,” as A. W. Tozer had it. As our desire for God grows (and only as He births in us deeper desire), we can begin seeking after God, wrestling for Him and praying to taste and touch and see the wonder that is God. “And in Him,” Tozer discovered, “we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.”

If we heed the invitation to delve deeper into this Love, even in the smallest degree, we really can “mount up on wings as eagles” and learn to fly. Calvin Miller again put it, “Earth holds a strange power that ties us to dust, so that ponderous souls are bound to her crust. But the wind whispers tales of a force in the sky, and those with the courage to scorn dust can fly.”

The other morning, I heard whispers from the wind of that invitation into the intimate life with God. I took Him up on it – how could I pass? I recorded what happened next:

The breeze was some cool at that hour, so I put on the hoodie I’d been shouldering, and set out walking south down our street to the wooded area just beyond.

I had set off in the cover of darkness. It was a romantic early morning, and I knew the meeting place. But it was also my choice to go, weighed as my heart was with the need to be away to pray. There were some things I wanted to bring up with God, and He with me.

It was more than an hour I had spent there, and much was addressed in our time, too much to make mention of here, and things perhaps too deep to record – old wounds and accusations from my former life as well as new and enticing promises for my new one, this one, the one extending into forever. The work of Jesus for me. The ministry and counsel of the Holy Spirit. His fire, burning flame of love. The invitation of the Father into more authentic sonship. An heir of His, coheir, coheir (!) with Jesus.

He was so amazing it all of it – God, the Trinity. So strong, so tender, so engaged, so holy. So triumphant. So ready. So prepared. So delighted. So intent on my wholeness and holiness. So alive with life that is my light.

Restoring the Broken

My Father… cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit.
–Jesus, John 15:2

The average temperatures this winter in Missouri are 20-25 degrees below the average for this time of year. Not a big deal in itself, and not all that uncommon. We have moderately cold winters here every four or five years, where you wake up and the frozen layer of frost outside betrays the single-digit temperatures that ran throughout the night. Most of us complain about it throughout the months, though, used to having at least several days in a row where the rivers and lakes can thaw. Certainly the birds clambering for food from our feeder in the back yard are wondering now whose idea it was to stop short of Texas on their flight southward.

But this winter has been a mix of really cold and really wet, which, as you can imagine, begs a lot of ice and snow. Three weeks ago we had a three-round bout of ice, sleet, and snow pounding us in alternate blows, and they left their mark. Thousands of homes were without electricity, some even still, the roads were layered for several days with ice like glass, and trees snapped under the weight.

Driving to work this morning I pass through rural areas where it looks almost as if a giant played hop-scotch through the forests, the trees split and their tops dangling or fallen to the ground like crushed toothpicks. Clean up will go on for months, or possibly years.

I realized how much like my heart this winter has been, as if in peering out into the woodlands full of torn and broken branches I’m looking into a kind of reflection, the freezing winds stealing my breath and the heavy veneer of ice suffocating and slowing the beats of my heart into a slow and arctic rhythm.

Which explains why instead of being encouraged (read: given courage) in my walk with God by those who are ahead of my on the journey, those full of the life and character of Jesus, I am discouraged (read: courage stolen). It is because I see their fruit and desire it, but then try to make it on my own. There are holy and passionate men of God in Scripture, for example, that I read of – David and Paul and John the Beloved – and I immediately think, Yes! I want to be that way! But then I lose heart somewhere in the “long obedience in the same direction,” as Eugene Peterson has it, thinking that these men brought about their holy and full-of-life and life-giving character on their own.

I was lost in all of this on the drive when Jesus broke in and cut through (Hebrews 4:12) with ancient words that He spoke to his disciples, speaking them to some deep place in me, “I am the vine; you are the branch. Remain in me, and if you do, then you will bear fruit. Simply abide, that’s all. Come, rest yourself in me dwell here” (from John 15).

The words that Jesus spoke in John 15:2 concerning the Father cutting off every branch that bears no fruit used to scare me, thinking He meant that if I did not work up some good fruit before He came along, I’d be cut down and thrown into the fire. This is not what He says. There are dead branches in us, places within our inner being that have been separate from Him. The Arborist prunes them, cuts them back, destroys the dead branches that we might live and grow up in Him, producing the fruit of right living simply by living with and in Him. He is telling us here that we cannot do this on our own, and as I have tried I have been left with broken and crushed limbs. But He has come, not only to bring us into a place where I can have full life (by just abiding with Him!), but also to remove the dead places (“circumcision of the heart” – Romans 2:29) and prune back living places so that we can have even more life. This is the glory of God (John 15:8).

The winter here isn’t over yet. Many, in fact, believe the worst is yet to come for us. The trees that will survive the season and come into the spring bursting and blooming with life will be those that have been carefully pruned back, those whose dead branches have been removed so as not to add to the weight of ice and threaten to snap the tree in two, those whose roots go deep into firm and good earth. This work is what the Gardener is up to in we who believe.

Disappointment

You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. And now, isn't it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You're more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you've come out of this with purity of heart.
-2 Corinthians 7:9-11, The Message

I have spent some time journaling and have discovered something surprising as a theme to my days recently. Sadness, or, maybe a better word, disappointment. I realized that there are a lot of things going on that make me sad. It's surprising, because there are a great deal more things that are really good, events and relationships and desires that are holy and God-breathed. But my ultimate relationship, my tie with Christ and my life in Him, is suffering. And maybe that's not quite the right word, because I don't mean that it's falling behind. Rather, I mean that I want to take it deeper, and I know there is so much more depth to have and explore and enjoy.

And joy - in joy - where has this gone for me? No wonder I'm worn out. No wonder I'm exhausted these past few days. No wonder all feels heavy and thick and wearisome. Because if His joy is my strength, then the lack of it would mean a lack of strength for me. And so I'm asking for it. Come, Jesus, let me in joy You again. Come, Father, and breathe on me your breath. Come, Holy Spirit, and enter in like a fierce and wild wind.

And, in the end, I think all of the events, weighty with both glory and pain (and sometimes both at the same time), are leading me closer to and further into God. It's as Paul told the Corinthians, that distress led them to become more holy - that is, more God's, and that, in turn, led them to be more alive in all the ways one can be.

William Law, in his work Second Call, says one of the most piercing statements I've ever read. He says this: "If you will look into your own heart in utter honesty, you must admit that there is one and only one reason why you are not, even now, a saint: you do not wholly want to be." It is both an indictment and an invitation. The promise is there: I can be wholly God's, but it will take all of the furious desire and violent passion of my heart. As Peter Kreeft says, "sainthood is simply love: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength."

So, even as I ride the high seas and long for the deeper depths, the tides turn and shift, the storm settles by sound of the One speaking into the night, and my eyes adjust to the grey and misty shadows to see a figure out there walking, arm outstretched, a laugh almost bursting the seams of his smiling lips. This Wild One has invited me further out with Him. And to Him I must go, come hell or high water, waves or high tides.

…But know that another [moment] shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy. When the figure of God's purpose is made complete.
-T.S. Elliot

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.

The Best Invitation

And like a consumer I’ve been thinking
if I could just get a bit more -
more than my 15 minutes of fame
then I’d be secure...
-Caedmon's Call

My wife was just talking about one of the greatest lies of the Evil One that causes our steady walk with Christ to become a schizophrenic and desperate search for life outside of Him. That is the lie that life is somewhere else, somewhere outside of God. It sounds often like, "I would be happy if only I had fill in the blank. More money. More friends. Maybe a little fame. Maybe even just a little peace.

It's not that any of the words that fill in that blank are bad in themselves, its just that that sentences more than any other causes us to divert our eyes, if even just subtly, from God. We begin looking in a thousand places for something we think we need and divert our eyes ultimately from Life himself, forgetting the secret that Pascal discovered, that our hearts will remain largely empty until Christ Himself fills them.

Something from the verse from Hebrews that mentions "setting our eyes on Christ, the Author and Perfector of our faith" speaks volumes regarding this. I was taking a picture of something the other day, and I needed to focus on the object within the viewfinder. We all know what happens next, of course - everything else became blurry. But the photo was a beautiful turn-out. The object in the picture became brighter and easier to see.

Saying "yes" to God's invitation necessarily means we will be saying "no" to everything else. That's how Rich Mullins once put it, succinct and direct as it sounds. But saying yes to Him necessarily means saying yes to life and freedom and the most extraordinary adventure of a lifetime, of intimacy beyond our wildest imaginations of a God that has wooed us from before time began.

I think Peter put it the best when he wrote in 2 Peter 1:3, "Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received!" (from The Message).

Another version has it, "His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness..."

Everthing for life and godliness. To that... what else could we say, but (trembling, with sweaty palms and much anticipation) "Yes, Jesus, yes...."


The fine print:
There is a final element to this that is possibly the most staggering truth of all. Pay careful attention to what Peter says there. "Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been... given to us..." So, if you want to know how to please God and what a life that pleases him look like, check this out, follow along, read further... "by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God." So, our getting to know Jesus is exactly what pleases God. And, to finish off the verse, our getting to know Jesus intimately and personally is "the best invitation we ever received!" Another way to put all of that is that what our hearts most desire (knowing Christ intimately and personally) is the mind-blowing invitation already given to us by God himself, and what He most desires and what most pleases Him is our simple acceptance of that invitation. Our hearts' desire and pleasure and hope fulfilled is God's greatest delight. That is awesome.

Calling

Pete Greig in his book "The Vision and The Vow" tells a story that cuts the oft-discussed issue (or what we make an "issue") of our calling in Christ right to the bone...

I was giving a friend a lift in my car, and we go to talking about life. "I don't know what God's calling me to do," he confessed, and asked me to pray about what it might be.

"Why?" I asked. "I already know what Jesus wnats you to do!"

"You do?" he gasped with excitement. "So, what is it? What's my call?"

I paused, enjoying the suspense. Drums rolled. String quartets tuned up. My friend held his breath...

"Your call," I said slowly, "is to be a worship leader ..."

He looked pleased, really pleased, so I continued: "...but not necessarily with a guitar in your hand."

"Okayyy," he mumured.

"Your call is to befriend that funny little lady at the end of your street..."

He seemed less pleased with this prospect.

"Your call is to feed the hungry and to spend yourself on behalf of the poor..."

By now he was looking distinctly troubled.

"...and to offer hospitality to strangers who just turn up in town needing a place to crash."

Consternation.

"And it's to fast."

He was starting to look furious.

"And it's to pray so long and hard that you run out of words and tears."

There was no going back:

"Your call," I continued, "is to preach the good news of Jesus to every person who will listen and a few who won't. Your call is to go somewhere, anywhere, wherever, whenever, for Jesus, and never stop. Your call is to love people no one else loves and to forgive them when they treat you like dirt--or worse. Do your job to the very best of your ability without grumbling about your boss or whining about your colleagues. Your call is to pray for the sick, and when they are healed, to dance all night. And when they aren't, to weep with them and love them even more."

I glanced at him and was relieved to see that his expression was beginning to mellow.

"Your call is to honor your parents, pray for your leaders, study the Scriptures, and attend plenty of parties. Be a peacemaker in every situation: when the fight breaks out on the bus home late at night and when the gossip starts to circulate at church. Your call is to pick up litter in the street when no one else is looking, to wipe the toilet seat, to pull the gum off from under the desk. It's to get to meetings early to put out the chairs."

By now he was smiling.

"Your call is to make disciples and to teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded. And don't forget to minister grace to them when they sin. Which they will. Your mission is to baptize and to cast out evil spirits. Your call is to bind up broken hearts wherever you find them, and you will find them wherever you look. It's to visit prisons. And hospitals. And to..."

"Yeah, yeah," he interrupted good naturedly, trying to shut me up, but I was on a roll--and I knew he couldn't leave, because I was driving the car.

"Your call," I continued resolutely," is to listen more than you talk and to listen with your eyes as well as your ears."

He was shaking his head in mock despair. I carried on: "It's to do the chores again and again without grumbling. It's to buy ethical coffee and to recycle your bottles. And while you're at it, don't forget to leave anonymous gifts on people's doorsteps."

By now we were both laughing, and I was finally running out of steam: "And when you've done all that," I grinned, jabbing him in the ribs at each syllable, "come back and see me, and we can spend a little time praying about Phase Two!"

In other words, the call of God is to come alive, more and more alive, and keep coming alive each day, to walk deeper and further in the truth of who we are, who God is, and the reality of the Kingdom Jesus came to reveal to us and bring us into and is even now waking us up to live in.

It's an invitation to watch and be confounded by the way Jesus loves, and then be broken by our call to love the same, knowing that to walk where Jesus walks is to inhabit a far more dangerous and far more glorious (and sometimes far less noticeable) role in this world than we ever dared fear or hope for.

I missed it last night. I totally missed it. My wife and I have neighbors that are pretty rough-around-the-edges. Their story goes way back, a tragically common saga or brokenness, abuse, and abandonment. A single mother is trying to raise two boys, the youngest just barely a teenager. He's lost, this young man. His world is all anger and fear and hatred, so much so that he loses it with his mom and older brother and then can't even remember why. He was alone when we got home from work, wondering the streets alone. He came up to us to talk. I told him we were going to start making dinner, and his face lit up. "Can I help?" he asked, excited and hopeful.

Great, I remember thinking. I'm tired. I want to just chill out alone with my wife right now. I don't want to be bothered. I made up some lame excuse. No, it was worse than that. I could have taken the opportunity to love him and invited him to have dinner with my wife and I. Instead, I tore him down with one of the stupidest things I could have possibly said: "It would be too crowded with you in here." What a knife to the heart. In other words, "You're just in the way, kid." A sentence he's no doubt heard in a myriad of ways from too many people in his life.

I ended up loaning him some game to play. It wasn't out of generosity, I'm sad to say, but more out of hopes that he'd smile big and say, "Gee, thanks!" and run off and play happily so that I'd be relieved of my guilt. Instead, he sauntered home, shoved out of the way of adults once again.

I tried to think of a way to redeem the whole situation, but the moment was gone. Soon his mom was home and we were packing up our leftovers. The damage was done. I know there's grace for me, and so must be grace for him. But I missed it. I could have found Jesus in the face of a hurt young man who would've given anything to share a meal with my wife and I. I could have loved extravagantly like I see my Savior loving me, sharing with me a home I could never have earned in a million years.

Annie Dillard got it right when she wrote, "On the whole I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anybody have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may draw us out to where we can never return" (Teaching A Stone to Talk).

Indeed, the "sleeping god" has drawn me to where I can never return.

What I couldn't redeem last night, Jesus did tonight. I got a chance to talk with the younger brother, tell him about the love of God and the Father he's got. Who was it that said "your actions speak so loud I can't hear your words"? I hope mine don't. I hope to grow into Jesus, to abandon myself to that love that "expects nothing, but demands everything," in Brennan Manning's words, and to pour it out on behalf of this broken and hurting world, starting with my next door neighbor and not ending until I come to the end of the road. That's the only way to live in this Kingdom. "What you do unto the least of these, my bretheren..."

Keeping it Safe

Yesterday afternoon I was coming home from the Y, alone, and it hit me that I keep myself from relationships a lot. I keep myself safe from people in different ways. From my wife, from my friends, from my God. There's a lot of mystery in relationships, and I've been hurt so many times before. It feels crazy to open myself up to others. And so, I often hide in cynicism or judgment, becoming one of those critics standing outside the fire instead of the man in the arena, his face marred with blood and sweat and dust, striving valiantly.

I've been living life far too safely. I'm sick of that. I want to feel again, and live. I want to know the deep pain of having loved the hell out of people. I want to feel the hard rock beneath my boots and the soft dirt in my hands. I want to remember what it's like to lay my head down at night exhausted, ready for a full night's sleep after hours of having lived an adventurous, sunburned day. I want to shed all the plastic, K-Mart versions of life out there, those mirages in a desert of desire, and instead set out again toward the sea, that scandalous scent of salt air guiding me and hope burning in my heart like a raging fire in the night and the joy of the Great Reunion ever before me. I want to know Christ, really know Him, as the intimate friend He calls me, overwhelmed by the love He lavishes and awed by the way He lives and loves and pierced by the Invitation to do the same alongside this Lover so true. And to be known by Him - ah, to come totally out of hiding and into the Light. To really fall into that jaw-dropping truth that He knows my heart and He knows my soul, knows my coming and going, that He knows it all, and He desires me still more than anyone ever could.

Staying Alive

I watched some of The Last of the Mohicans over lunch today. The tape was already poised at the waterfall scene. Seeing Nathaniel's intensity as he squared Cora in the eyes and commanded her to "stay alive" hit something solid in me, and I broke down weeping. I am in two places at once: I am Cora, watching as my Rescuer leaves but with the promise for my ransom and return to take me back. And I'm also Nathaniel - or, at least, want to be: a man with steetly determination, courage, vigor, life, here to rescue the beloved wherever she may be held captive, "no matter how long it takes, no matter how far." To come after her, to find her, to win her back.

And that's what makes me come alive. I've never felt more alive than when I am living from my heart for the hearts of others, pouring out my heart and soul that others may go free. Why do the important things fade so quickly? Why does Reality seem to darken, as if I were losing precious blood from some hidden wound or gasping for air after being slammed in the chest, and so my days are defined lately by struggling just to breath and raging, as the poem puts so well, "against the dying of the light"?

It's been almost non-stop since January, this battle. And the Enemy - the Thief... it's like that game I played when I was a boy where I put something in my hand, clenched tight my fist, and then held it out to someone smaller, like my little cousin, and dared him to try to break open my fist and retrieve the prize. And sometimes I would feel that he was winning, and my fist is opening up and I can't do anything to stop it, except maybe grab it with my other hand or just try running away from the offender (surprised, all the while, that he had the strength to do that afterall). Something precious is being stolen... I can feel it. And I'm desperate that it not be.

Holy Spirit, give me the gut-level courage to abide in You this day, to stand in You, to submit to You, to learn of You, to watch You, to be loved by You, and to resist Your enemy and mine.