The Miracle That Isn't

Seeing that we were created in the image of the Highest, it makes sense that sympathy with Divinity, identification with the heart of God, would be life at it’s best. 

I daily aspire. 

But is that aspiration alone enough to water the ground where this miracle grows?

Or wait... Is it really a miracle?

I remember slipping between the sheets after a string of days full of giving, and asking if I might be made more sensitive, more sympathetic, more caring about the things on God’s own heart…

--only for my soul to hear this whisper: 

For that, you need no miracle. Just time. I can’t do your part and Mine.

It is not easy to find sufficient time for communion when on the trot. I’m not going to lie. 

It is only barely easier to find time for communion when at home. 

But of this I have become convinced: 

Activity is no substitute for communion. 

"O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself:
it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” Jeremiah 10:23

One Life To Give

I’m sitting in my own room, long before sunrise, on my own bed, lost in my own thoughts. You know a summer has been extraordinary when your own space feels extraordinary. When you’ve used your pillow just 11 nights of the past 84.

I’ve made a lot of new friends in the past 12 weeks. Flown a lot of miles. Preached a lot of sermons. Prayed a lot. Trembled a lot. Looked back towards the light. A lot. Loved a lot of broken lives. Witnessed a lot of salty tears.

But sitting here, I have a refrain much like Jeremiah’s running through my head.

"Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.”  [Jeremiah 9:1]

Oh that I could do more, be more, weep more.
The sheer magnitude of fear in the world is enough to make the bravest man pause at times. The sheer magnitude of pain. The constant white (black?) noise of performance without transformation.

I’m not afraid though. I just wish there were more hours in the day. I wish there were more beats of my heart. I wish I had more lives at my command to spend spreading light, and clawing away at pain. I wish my heart were large enough to hold a piece of the sorrow of every person I love without imploding. Or wait… It is. But barely.

Once again, this stunning limitation settles into my consciousness.
I have only one life to live. Only one chance to love the hurting world.

Oh, let every breath count.

While It Is Still Summer...

[Jeremiah 8]

These mournful words grip me tight, leave me with none of my own— 

"Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?

Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” 

Maybe they've never gone to see Him? Maybe never applied the balm?

Now instead, they stand there and watch the saved world go by, and look at each other and sigh:

"The harvest is past. 

The summer is ended. 

And we are not saved.”

Horror unspeakable.

My God, let us not neglect so free, and so great a salvation.