Hope

I am overwhelmed by you God. So overwhelmed. You are my king and my redeemer. You are too good to me. Really God, I don’t deserve you, and you give me your whole self. And when I surrender my need to be used by you, you use me in ways that are better than I ever would have dreamed of. I don’t know how you love me the way you do, but right now, in this moment I am sure of your love the way am sure of the sun. Lord, I know that I have come to you and you have covered me with your garment. I don’t have any words for you God. I know that the spirit intercedes for me right now, as I am only able to sit and say thank you. Thank you for making me your own. I strive to make you my own, to know Christ and him crucified. There is nothing else for me, God. I know that you are worthy of every ounce and every second of my life.

Thank you for opening my eyes to who I am. A sinner. An idolater. A rebel that rejected you. Thank you for showing me that I have been bought by the blood of your son. That no other price would do. That there is nothing left for me to pay. That my goodness, my ministry doesn’t cut it. You do. You pay the price.

I trust you God. Because you are better than I can ask or imagine. And as I let myself be stripped of all but you, I fall for you again. Again, I want to be the beloved. Not just be named the beloved, labeled the beloved, intellectually beloved. But live Belovedness. Live being a daughter of God. Live the preparation for my wedding day. How can I be the bride of Christ? How can that really be true? It is too good God. Far too good. And not just me. The church. All the people I know who are yours one bride. All the people I know hurting. All those I know in despair. Some of the girls I lead in young life. These urban kids who have never known love, the girls who have never been called beautiful-some of them will be with me. We will be the bride together. The daughters of yours who I have been with this weekend, struggling together. Talking about the sin that enslaves us. We will be perfect, your bride together. The one I am thinking of, who has been in more pain than I know, who I have not served and entered into the brokenness as I have meant to-she will be made perfect with me. She is your beloved. When I say in my heart there is no hope, you say to me 

Look at my Son on the cross and don’t say that there is no hope. There is the blazing center of all the hope that has been ever been-hope was lost and hope was found and hope is all wrapped in the One who paid for your sin and paid for the sin you see and paid for the sin that in slaves. Hope abounds. Hope abounds in the tent city that has a piece of your heart. Hope abounds in the little one you have not forgotten that God has called you to since you met her on a too hot, too good to be real day in Port au Prince. Hope abounds for that little class of Gods children struggling to read and struggling to learn in that school that God loves so much in Raleigh. Hope abounds despite the materialism you are afraid will choke the ones you love. Hope is Christ. That is all it has ever been and all it will ever be.

I have put hope in myself and what I can do for people. I have put hope in people and what they can do for me. But without the Savior there is no hope in either of those-I will crush and be crushed because I am sinner and so is every one else. But in Christ, in hope in Him, there is hope in the body, there is hope people because we no longer live-he lives in us. In him we live and move and have our being. So we become instruments of hope because we become Christ. That is the mystery of the gospel and this mystery is profound.