I cant help but smile as I think of my heart. What pulls me from you lord? Other desires of my heart that I think you can’t fulfill. I get angry because I think I am withheld of something good by being with you. Never true. What have I to say to this owner, this maker, builder, stitcher, artist of my heart? Nothing. You look at me and love me. You have promised your love. I immediately want to move focus when I am with you. Say, lets talk about how I’m supposed to be loving freshman girls and I’m not. Or how urban ministry isn’t going how I expected. And I have my list of all the people I am supposed to be praying for. And Im angry about the music in this coffee shop. And I don’t want to listen to you but I’m mad because I can’t hear you. And slowly, ever so slowly, I see the defrost begin to take place. Why lord do I think people have something to offer me that you cannot? Lord, why so resistant to you? To the word.
I need to feel you today. And if I do not, you are still sovereign. You are still God. I am broken. You are sovereign. I have come to hide in the shadow of your wings.
“You’re not doing life with and loving your neighbors because you’re bent on the success of this world.” Pastor Tyler said this week. I come to you and I’m like, look at me. I am a disaster. I am messy and against you and for you and not sure and a faker and you love me. You love. I run from your word and you stitch it into my soul. I don’t always trust you. I cant think of anything worth saying to you.
Peter says in Acts 2 “This Jesus, God raised up. He has poured out this that you all are seeing and hearing. God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
That face alone I live for. That is the truest thing I know. How do I know? I don’t and I do. I cannot prove it to you, dear reader. I have no reason to know that what he is saying is right. Nothing to base it on. But I cannot let go. There is something in me that is deeper than my rationality and my logic and it is this secret thing hidden in the depths that says that he is true and that he is for us. I don’t know what it is. I’m sorry. I cannot give you more than what I have but I promise that he, this jesus, God raised up. God has made him lord. And he has poured his spirit on me. When I didn’t even want it. I was looking for something else. But in his infinite sweetness he gave me Christ. What I didn’t know how to ask for. Who I didn’t know I was looking for.
This is what peter said in his sermon at Pentecost. And what I say now.
I wonder, as a side note, if I could write about anything other than jesus. Proclaim anything else. I don’t think I can. I guess just because I’ve sat to write hundreds of times and the same words always seem to appear. That say Jesus is Lord. He is my love. That is all my soul wants to proclaim. I come angry, I come unsure, I come without any desire to spend time with him and then I sit and I begin to type or scribble and the same thing comes out. I find that one thing alone is written on the page. Which is this gospel. And I wonder if my life could ever be about anything else. Sometimes I think it could but that always seems to be an illusion when I am given this white screen to fill with letters. Just the fact that I could start to throw words onto this page the way Pollack threw paint onto a canvas and end out with this projection of my soul and the projection always says Jesus. I come wrestling and tired and so angry and distrustful. Again and again. To this page. The same page every time. And I start. And the torrent of words comes. It’s a lack of control when it comes to the page. I let go and let my hands do what my mind and my mouth cannot. There is this beautiful song by Aaron Keyes that says:
“these guilty hands are raised, filthy rags are all I bring but I have come to hide beneath your wings. These holy hands are raised, washed in the fountain of your grace and now I wear your righteousness.
We are broken but we are yours.“
Perhaps that’s why I write: to be redeemed over and over again. To come with guilty hands to you and you turn them into holy hands that proclaim the gospel. They do it regardless of all that I came with. And I think that is why there is so much fear in writing because I am so scared that one day I will be left with some other message. Something other than the gospel. But there is no need to be afraid. Nothing I write determines or shakes God’s goodness. And the fact that it can sing to that untouchable, unchangeable, never ending goodness is His miracle.
And Peter spoke these words. "God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." They heard, they were cut to the heart and said to peter, what shall we do? And peter tells them,
“Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord calls to Himself. “
That’s all peter does. And then they receive his word. It is what God has to say. And people have to receive. And everyone gets to choose whether or not they receive it. Everyone is given a choice. To take or to leave it. Kind of like when a man proposes. He says, I’m offering you all of me forever. What do you think? Could you trust me? Could you give me all of you? You can no longer doubt my desire for you. What I would give for you. How long I want you for. Forever. All of you. I want all of you and I’m offering you all of me.
I think that is what Jesus is. God’s proposal to humanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment