Father, it took me so long to learn to call me beautiful. Not because I am not messed up and scarred and sinful when it comes to the looking - without the blood. Without you.
But then, with you... the wonder of it is, with you, I am beautiful. These children are beautiful. These ugly, painful stumps of people are beautiful. These arguments and dissensions - they dissolve into your holiness. I wish I would remember to see everything in the light of you. Everything. Because you are so beautiful - that it hurts to gaze on you. And yet not looking upon you, not having the wonder of you before me - God, that hurts far too much for me to let it be that way.
I hate that I forget this. Hate that I can, for the space of one breathing moment, forget the immensity of your love in my life. How can I forget you? When with every day, every sunrise and storm, reminds me of the glory and the majesty and the wonder that is you? When every cry, and every broken plate, shards of glass on the wayside, lonely people remind me of the brokenness of you? That you took it all?
And yet, we turn away. How?
How? Why? When with every breath that we take, we are reminded of God in the stillness. The same raging, consuming, passionate God in the storm. With every breath, I breathe and I know that I began because of your Spirit. And I live because of your love.
Donne: Batter me, three-person'd God.
Yes, ravish, take entirely, consume me. And forgive my forgetting. And bless my remembering. Here we come, broken, needy, struggling to be proud. And waiting on we don't know what. And suddenly in the stillness, in the singing and the clapping, and the hoping that something will happen - You. You happen. And all I can say is a broken 'God, you're beautiful.'
Sunday 9 May 2010
Ecce now
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I was thinking about something like this earlier, how it is to easy to become spiritually lazy. How we sometimes get trapped into thinking it's easier to be lazy and not run full speed toward God, giving him everything we have. But when you really stop to think about it, it's SO much harder and exhausting to be away from him.
Paul definitely had it right when he said we are running a race. Gotta keep the pace.
Same here.
Written simply and tastefully. It’s pleasant to read. Thank u.
Hi Abbie, Essays and Jess Neves!
I write here now http://eccedominus.wordpress.com/
Thanks for the reminder, Abbie. And the 'Amen', Jess. Thank you for the encouragement, Essays.
Yes - I completely agree and it is a trap I find all too easy to succumb to. And yes, the relief from returning is like breathing again!
Post a Comment