letter to the lord

I just look at you Love, who are you to love me? Who are you to bring me to this beautiful home that I get call my own? To these people that love me? You have given me more than I could ever ask or imagine. I love you so much. For coming so close. Coming all the way to this world, putting on humanness just for us. It never gets old, Jesus. As i sit here with food that I love with a God that I love and am able to rest and hear the birds and listen to the wind be with you, I know that this is where I belong-wtih you. and that nothing else matters, except that I am with you. You have so much to teach me jesus about sufficiency. that you are sufficent for me. Wow, lord. That one sentence-you are sufficient for me-I don't think I need to go any where else today lord. I need to explore this very simple, very deep truth. I don't need any lofty ideals or fancy theology-I need a greater grasp on your sufficiency, through the incarncation, through the cross, through the resurrection. They point to you being all sufficient. Supplying my EVERY need. I know that the very patterns of my thoughts have to be fully redeemed by you God. And I know that your redemption comes through death, and death alone. I know that you are fixing up my thoughts, you are crucifying them, my whole mind, to replace it with your own. Thank you for not letting even a REMNANT remain. Because 

I have let a thought stay for so long-the thought that you are not enough. What a dangerous, destructive thought that is. I see it as I travel through your Old Testement. I look at the men and women and I identify with them, as they each think that there is something to gain apart from you-I do the same thing lord. You know it better than I do. Oh, how I think that I can let small sins and small idols stay in the temple of my body and my mind. I have let them reside for so long. I turn back to them when I think you aren't with me or that I can't depend on you. I let little behaviors go on and on and I know that you have said that its a big deal and I know that it is a trick to think that my spiritual life can remain untainted by my anxiety, my perfectionism, my hoarding, my restricting, my judging, my coveting, my idolatry. What a wretched creature I am! How I need to be led to the cross day after day, reminded of you and your love. How resistant I am to give my All to you! I speak of it all the time, and yet my heart, God, you know the darkness. It is not dark to you, my soul is clear as day to you. No sin of my hidden. None is hidden from you. You see what I eat. You see my thoughts. You see the things that I would be so ashamed if any person ever saw. You have seen me all along. Your hand has been in my life from before I was born. YOU knit me together in my mothers womb. YOu knew all along the gods that would capture my heart. You knew my shackles before I ever was bound to them. And you see the way I still long for those bonds the way the Israelites longed for Egypt. Oh, Lord, what will you do with me?Wrap me up, hide me in the shadow of your wings. Bring me to surrender. Bind me to you, lord. Betroth me to you God, the way that you promised in Hosea. Betroth me to your Son lord so that we are One just as you and He are one just the way I will taste oneness if I am ever to marry, if that is your will for my life-but either way it is just shadow of the marriage of the bride of the church to the Son, the resurrected One. The one who made himself nothing, and was obedient unto death, death on a cross. I look at the world you have made and I know it is barely a taste, barely a drop of your glory and majesty and power. And I think to myself, who is this God? This perfect one, who loves us far more than we know. Who loves me, calls me by name to himself. Who is calling the girls that I think love, the people that I think that I am pouring into. But I am not-you are God. When there is good that is done and I am involved-all the goodness is yours. The fact that you can use me only points back to your surpassing power that you could take one so selfish and so broken, and use her to carry out your perfect will and the advancement of your glorious Kingdom. Its all for you God. Its all about you God. I don't praise you enough! I don't ascribe the glory. As I sit here and type tiny little words that are so inadequate for you, you come into this small act and you change ME, renewing my heart-forever changing my heart of stone into a heart of flesh, forever breathing life into these dry bones. I know what you say, Lord. You say that we are all dead until your spirit gives us life. You give and take away. And you alone are good. How is it that you long for me? I know that its true, because you promise it in your word and I see it the sending of your Son-the testament of your longing for us, but I have no grasp of how YOU could long for ME. You lack nothing, everything is yours already. And yet you long for me. You long for the orphans of Haiti. You long for the nonbelievers of Montenegro. You long for my little brother. You long for my young life girls. And I think that I know longing, and I do not. My longing is not like yours. My longing would never send my son, fully God, to be fully human and to fully die. YOu never cease to amaze me when I stop to think about who you are. You are so, so good, sweet Father as my roommate loves to call you. 

Sweet Father.