Fierce Love
[ this post is a continuation of Love, Unnaturally, from yesterday]
The tears of years break surface when we least expect them.
We were all packed in, beginning our cross-country trip back home, the home they’d now known for months. Out of the blue the one most steady in our grip burst the silence of six sets of eyes absorbing the great-wide highway’s unfamiliarity with her cries.
“Why did she leave me?” she sobbed.
I absorbed the shock. This was a first for her. What triggered this?
“Why did my birth mommy leave me?” she bellowed, her tears turning to wails.
And while I was formulating my response the one behind her joined in, wet-cheeked already, himself. Sympathy or empathy, I wasn’t ..read more
Love, Unnaturally
It happened.
I knew it would.
I’d been here before.
The most beautiful part of waiting is receiving His response after your heart chose expectation instead of fear. I’ve been in both shoes, frequently, and choosing the former always makes the bitter taste sweet.
She was in the middle of her contribution to our dinnertime banter, tentatively trying her hand at directing what she had, once, only just observed. Her “how about, Daddy, we …” wasn’t our typical fare but we jumped on board with her suggestion. She scootched herself against the back of her chair and sat up, tall. She wore ownership.
And as the quickened chatter (which happens when life just produced a day with oh-so-much to recount) continued, time ..read more
Emptiness Serves a Purpose
He is their strength in the time of trouble. Psalm 37:39**
When I am not, You are.
Where I fail, You perfect.
I teeter and You stand, bold, strong.
I fold, crumple and weep when poked and prodded by life’s mishaps — and You scoop me up and sing over me.
Father, You are all that I’m not and the end of me is where You begin. This is beauty. You breathe promise into my void.
I worship You, oh God of strength, whose strength could not be fully activated in me without my weakness. You replace me with You — at the moment my flesh might deem least likely — and I have all that I need and, even, want.
One Ember
“For our God is a consuming fire” Hebrews 12:29. It quietly tugged at me from where I’d scribbled it in my moleskine journal as I re-directed her vegetable-peeling strokes in the direction away from my Bible, already stained cucumber green.
This moment was humorous to me.
I pray in secret before the sun comes up to have a primal life-devotion which moves the heart of God — for His fire to consume all of me and for my life to spread His glory … and I spend my daylight hours separating laundry, cleaning toilets, training hands to peel cucumbers and teaching mouths to say “will you forgive me” and “thank you.”
The quick snapshot reveals anything but glamour in ..read more
Receiving
She shared my kitchen space with her monogrammed apron which, already, was too small for the body she’d grown up and out of months ago.
This moment reflected her heart.
She cut lettuce and stirred sauce and mimicked what she’d seen me do. She’d learned so much in 9 short months. But hours earlier, He’d pulled back the curtain on her mystery, to me. Her heart was too small for her body. Lanky limbs reflecting her age disguised a heart much younger in years. We poured out from the wells He was pouring in, but her heart could receive only droplets.
She couldn’t comprehend love. She wasn’t yet growing in love because she had never learned the art ..read more
You Said Her Name In That Way
She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him,“Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher). – excerpt from John 20:11-18**
You conquered the world’s limitation, and You called her by name.
She stumbled, unknowingly, to the rock which held resurrection’s imprint. She hadn’t received Your words of promise. She lived her years beside You, but didn’t understand You. She wept for a loss that was, instead, great gain.
Mary’s easter Sunday was still the dark, black night.
This is the flesh You came to save.
You didn’t chastise her lack of expectation ..read more
Marvelous Silence
Now Jesus stood before the governor. And the governor asked Him, saying, “Are You the King of the Jews?” Jesus said to him, “It is as you say.” And while He was being accused by the chief priests and elders, He answered nothing. Then Pilate said to Him, “Do You not hear how many things they testify against You?” But He answered him not one word, so that the governor marveled greatly. . . Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole garrison around Him. And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand. And they ..read more
A Death-Life Exchange, Even Before Your Death
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. -excerpt from John 13:1-17**
You knew Your authority, yet You knelt down. Your calloused fingers brushed their calloused feet and meekness breathed holiness through human touch. They would soon know the Father through Your emptying, but the cross wasn’t Your first kind of death.
You left all that was Him — holy, safe, secluded — ..read more
Holy Week’s First Outpouring
And when Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him having an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil, and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table. But when His disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For this fragrant oil might have been sold for much and given to the poor.” But when Jesus was aware of it, He said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for Me. For you have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always. For in pouring this fragrant oil on My body, she did it for My burial. Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached ..read more
God, Translated
My flesh, loud against the gentleness of the Father, is not the final word.
Wouldn’t you know it, the very thing set to derail me, is His opportunity to shine … in me. My weakness is His perfection. And a taste of Him, like this, in me makes me want to throw off the old and jump, bold, into His new.
And this perspective is what sparks my adoration.
If you haven’t yet, read my precursor to this Monday’s adoration**. This sweet God is using life’s most unlikely circumstances to scoot my chair right up next to His and give me a taste of His nearness.
While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came ..read more
