happy christmas eve

Love of my life, make my heart one that adores you more. Take me into the word, written for me. Take me into your heart, broken for me. Take me into your life, lived for me. Stay very, very close. As close as Mary was to her son. I want that raw human closeness with you too God. Come again, Jesus. Come soon please. We miss you. Were waiting for you. We love you. Thank you for breezes and dinners and little sisters. Thank you for words and language. Thank you for touch and color and music. I want you so much today lord. I want to be pleasing to you. I know that you see me run and you beg me to come closer. To be like Moses, who spoke with you. I know there is holy ground and that I must stop long enough to take my shoes off and listen when I am in your presence and be watchful for the ways that you come to us today. I’m thankful that I am alive. That I am chosen. Chosen to be a part of your family . Lord I want to be all yours, everything in me to reflect you and to have no minute of my day that I hold on to. You know God, how deep my brokenness is. You know lord, the secret whisperings behind the praise that wonder if you are trustworthy, as I cannot escape the image of my first parents who also doubted your trustworthiness. Who thought that perhaps you were not really for them. You did not really love them. You didn’t know what was best for them. Some days are spent on the lake of Galilee, where you cooked some fish for your guys, where we can let the waves of joy and peace of knowing that you have done all there ever was to do wash over us and sit with you and eat with you. But if we share all with you, we share Gethsemane as well. I want no part in Gethsemane, as you know. I have no interest in sweating blood. In friends sleeping when I need them most. In pleading. In saying, not my will but yours. I love to say that when our wills are the same, but I am starting to see that there will be moments where our wills are different. And there is nothing in me and my ability to reason or think, no emotion, that leads me to think that your will is right. And it is then that I must remember your own words, “Will I do wrong Krystal? I will never do wrong.” And I must realize that I will do wrong. And I must say with my Savior, not my will but yours. No matter what it is.

Thy will be done.

I have to trust that your will was to harden the heart of pharaoh. I have to trust that your will was to harden the heart of Judas. I have to trust that your will was to offer your son, and if you would give him, there is no one, no person in my life, that I cannot give to you. You gave first. And we give back because we know that you are good. And that you love us.

That is all we know. There are things that are not promised in the word. There is no promise we can keep our family. There is no promise we will reap the fruit of the harvest. There is no promise that we will overcome our addictions. But there are things that are promised.

And your promises

Never

End.

We get to see these promises spoken by you.

I am the LORD and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and I will deliverer you from slavery to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people and I will be your God and you shall know that I am the LORD your God who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Issac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.

And how did the people respond to such a deep and weighty promise? “They did not listen because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”

The promises of the Lord come in the moments where we are sure if you, God, exist, you do not love us. They are audacious promises. Because you promise what our hearts are aching for, and we say how dare you speak of something so dear to us and promise us it when we see it slipping out of our grasp. How dare you even address those longings. I didn’t want you to see that longing, God. I didn’t want you to know it. Because I don’t think you can do it.

You go to mothers who are barren and old and promise them children.

You go to men who are ineloquent and uneducated and make them leaders.

You go to cities that are broken beyond repair and redeem them on the same ground where sin has been thriving and reigning for years and years.

You go to countries where your name has never been uttered and to people who have no desire to know you or your son or what he did and you make disciples and people give their lives to you and countries change.

You do what cannot be done so that we know that you are God. And that when the bonds of slavery are broken we know it is you that broke the shackles, not your people. I brought you out from the burdens you were under you told the Israelites while the burdens were still weighing them to the ground.