Knowing in the Unknowing

I have died a thousand deaths to become who you have made me to be.

The pain, the loss, the rest... repeat, how many times in retreat?

Call me to give up what I least know best to just be in a lesser way.

Every loss you redeem, I live to re-see with my eyes what my heart cannot believe.

How deep does this go, this dirty white snow as you bleed me back to life.

The grapes of your vine, the slop from the swine a far cry from this lost Childs relief.

And there I see you running to me - your clean robe, its robbing my skin.

The could have, have been's as you're running again

and again, and again, and again.

Without Christ I am nothing

 Without Christ I am nothing.

Without Christ my parents wouldn’t have trusted the still small voice inviting them to try again even when the dr.’s were telling them not to. My parents first child had died after three days, and everyone told them it would happen again – Through anguish and wandering accusations their sorrow was met with the hands that shape all things into life – all things into new life. Johanna Eva means God gracious gift of life – an early fingerprint left by the creator.

Without Christ my grandmother wouldn’t have invited me to accept Jesus into my heart – and four year old me without Jesus would still be totally and utterly alone, and in desperate need of love.

Without Christ, my young mind could not have endured the sleepless nights of a brother seizuring in the bunk bed below  – wandering stares, mocking voices with judgment accusing us of sin deserving of such a mess - but Jesus would whisper with reminders that messes were hidden as miracles in His kingdom – Messes to miracles, and that miracles are his absolute delight.

Without Christ my teenage body would have wasted away through starvation, self punishment and mutilation – Without Jesus I would have punished every part of my body until my soul had no place to find its rest - desperate for the forgiveness only found in a perfect sacrifice; Jesus – purity so blinding, so intrusive, so warm and inviting. Jesus –

Without Christ I would not have feared going to hell everyday I pursued an abusive man who attempted to steal, kill and destroy any marks of the creator in me.

I was so afraid that without Jesus there was no way to be welcomed back, no second or third chances – and in my fear, I found that there had not been one moment that Jesus had left me.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

(Psalm 139:7-12)

There was not one moment I was without him.

In the goodness that is Christ, he gifted me with a partner – I was damaged, bitter and near spiritual death – In Jesus Shaun tolerated my angry heart, my mouth of unclean hatred that had tasted and seen far too much of the world in three years.

With Jesus I am healing – 14 year later, I am healing, and in Christ I am healed while I am still healing.

A year and a half ago, I suffered a great loss – one that just about took my life – In Christ I am now sure that loss is a horribly delightful reminder that all that I am must be in Christ for – because without him I am nothing, and would not be here to tell His story.

In my loss, the words He spoke over and through me will forever be burning in my heart. Words of wholeness, words of assurance, pictures of remembrance – and as I walk closer to Him I fear his laser like conviction and invitation to do the hard work of healing more than I every feared the darkness – because in this world its hard work to stay close, and pursue his true wholeness.

But Jesus reminds me that his yoke is easy, and his burden light. And as I walk in His light I find rest for my soul.

I say without Christ I am nothing.

What does it look like to be in Christ? Some days, its obedience through the fog – easing, not forcing forward through the pain – Other days it’s walking with joy and gratitude in knowing this gift that tips my head up to gaze in the eyes of a Father who wakes the earth with painted skies of blinding colour, and directs waters too vast to measure the depths of His love for us.

Being in Christ is resisting the temptation to ignore a strangers cry – and asking God for the emotional capacity to endure another’s sorrow and carry them to the one that gives new life.

Being in Christ is feeding the hungry, clothing the poor and reminding one another of common vision, dreams and values that bind us together as brothers and sisters in the family of God –

Being in Christ is seeing him in community, recognising his wonderous works as he moves in and through us as community – Without Christ in community, we are nothing. Without Christ in our community we are nothing.

It was Christ in community that carried me to God when I was too afraid to move. It was Christ in community that listened and reminded me of the depth of his love, and wondered with me through movements and slow healing I was experiencing in Him – because I was too close to recognise the fingerprints he was leaving behind. It was Christ in community that said no when my moral compass was off – and poured hope into me when my cup was completely dry.

Christ in community was everything to me. Without Christ in community, I am nothing. Without Christ in our community we are nothing.

What does it look like for us to be in Christ as community?

⁹ “As the Father has loved Jesus, so has Jesus loved us. Now let us remain in His love. ¹⁰ If we keep his commands, we will remain in his love, just as Jesus has kept the Father’s commands and remains in his love. ¹¹ Jesus has told us this so that his joy may be in us and our joy may be complete. ¹² Jesus’ command is this: Love each other as He has loved us. Love each other as He have loved us ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down our lives for our friends. ¹⁴ We are Jesus’ friends if we do what he commands. ¹⁵ He no longer calls us servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, Jesus has called us friends, for everything that He learned from the Father He have made known to us. ¹⁶ We did not choose Him, but He chose Us and appointed us so that we might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever we ask in Jesus’ name the Father will give us. ¹⁷ This is his command: Love each other.

I share my story – but without Christ it isn’t much of a story at all, and without each one of you in Christ our intercepting and knit together story’s mean nothing. In Christ we live and move and have our being – not individually, but together.          

Without Christ we are nothing. Father, make us one – in Jesus name.

Prayer for my child

My heart bare before the one that knows and sees it all,

I approach the throne 

your heart, your hurt, your healing 

all in the same place without restriction

without reservation.

The prayer of the righteous held

my discouraged heart - there is none righteous but one.

So I laid you lifeless in the arms of Life itself.

Life – so effortlessly singing the new into being –

winked with the reminder of being lifeless in him too

with new breath in my lungs, His life in my soul.

I left you there because He loves you more,

and is everything I cannot be for you, 

I am not being for you,

He is.

I left you there to live, 

for Life to breath into you once again.

It is lonely here without you –

longing for Life in you

Longing for breath

For breath

For Life.

This Life is Jesus - for in the beginning HE IS Life, and forever will be effortlessly singing the new into being. I pray Jesus, into this generation so they can truly taste and see the way it will be, and is in the kingdom of the living. The kingdom of Life. 

Oh, the prayers others have prayed over me - One could not count.

Of Intentions on a Snow Shaded Night

 

Our purest of intentions is enough. Is it enough to be enough? Or is enough a word we settle on when “thrive” is foresight and “strive” the landing pad. Where do “thrive” and “stive” intersect – intercede – interact… or are they at odds as our hearts bend and twist beneath the tension of intention; bend and twist in the discomfort that we could not exist in a place that pure intentions are something to be enough in.

Could it be that pure intentions is what pours incense over the alter of desire? Desire to be whole, complete, to be incense itself, poured out – and in the pouring exist as mist, here today, and gone tomorrow. Could it be our self importance holding back the desire to be poured out and given, taken, fallen, and lifted up again in place of another.

Poured out for another, giving the purest of intentions; and so the cycle of enough completed, and lives on again, and again – in the heart of our Saviour.

A Second Spans Eternity

 A second spans eternity.

It began to form as I looked at a wreath this Christmas; jagged edges each twig digging deep within his brow. Sparsity of air, silence on his breath, we hung our wreath as a welcome on our front door, His eyes piercing our home.

Time lifted, as he was born, he lived, he died; as he had died he was alive – and everything between like a movie scene gifted me with eyes to see, and seeing, I see again.

I saw his face, and then hers – the one who entombed the word within. Too much unseen; galaxies being formed, hearts being changed, this heart full of shame, rearranging, rearranged.

Did tiny fingers draw streams for the dessert to sea into oceans to the skies as we were born and reborn in his reign? Tiny hands carving law into stone into nations into hearts bringing freedom, holding love, flesh as ransom for this heart of stone. Does his presence like a dove descend to tents in the desert, into cities into continents, and call one space his Holy home? This tent his Holy home?

Did she ponder in his birth, his last breath brought her back; final cries as He finished what he had said, in the arms of the Father turning, twisting and singing this place into bread, into life, the bread of life. In her arms, the arms of the Father.

Eternity spans a second.

The journey, the great return, and everything in between.

 The fear was never that they were doing what they did. The fear was that doing what they did would lead to other unthinkable things – like a gateway drug to addiction; the beginning of a journey with no way back.

Maybe there is no way back – but in moving forward, we can loop around to where the journey began, and choose a new way. And in that mistake, choose another. Maybe the journey is through fear with the outcome never quite being what it should be – but this being a symptom of something much deeper.

Maybe the symptom of never quite arriving points us to something not present to the eye, touch, smell or heard. Maybe it points to an underlying world in what could be and should be but will never be until the great return. Maybe the longing for the great return is what keeps us going, the chase of the could be and will be. A single line with the worst and best outcomes above and below, just a fall or jump away – a push or lift away. Or is the line right where we have been lifted or pushed, and we are right where we should be?

The parodical son had a way back – did he return from his journey in the way that he came? The woman at the well had a new start, was her new point of reference the well or her home? The stone dropped with a mass exit of religion in freedom to go do what is good, true, right and loved – because of love.

Isn’t that the way fear works – irreversible consequences – no way back to the beginning – like a choice turned, or a word lingering too long to settle; the regret of a line walked, a life lived, a journey travelled.

The journey, the great return, and everything in between.

Thoughts of Redemption

 

We have not been popular in days past of different. We have not done well with question askers and truth tellers even when they are part of the family. 

Is it control? Is it fear? Is it lack of understanding or desire to understand? Do we fear walking outside of the lines, or finding at the end of our questions we were all wrong? Do we fear being wrong? Are we too stuck in our own way of thinking to walk with another in theirs? 

Is it important to always be right? Is it ok to fall back on grace and apologize or ask for help in the wrong? Is there a right and a wrong; or it is all being redeemed - One question at a time? Is it our place to judge redemption in process? Because all redemption is in process, and arrival if you live in or outside of time. Nothing is stagnant, all is in movement and redemption is a perpetual beam of light in one direction both going and coming from God. 

God does not step outside of our redemption, or away from us when we can’t see. He is both the beginning and the end of it - the chasing in between. 

Stuck in our way of thinking they are outside of the redeemed. Stuck thinking that there is a them and us - like days of old when the law made sense until redemption made a visit and brought redemption in reduction, and freedom in failure.

Let us be popular in days ahead. Popular with the way we discern and listen; the way we treat every person at their table, and those we have not yet invited.

Let us surrender. Let us be fully in the light. Let us put aside our need to be right and enter into unfathomed grace and love. Let us walk with the one who made us, our maker and find that we had it all wrong. Let us laugh at pride and the way we once thought. Let us learn, together – taught by the one that made our minds.

I can’t do this anymore. I can’t unsee what is now seen. A cost will come, a cost already paid, its ok when few understand.

The days ahead are bright and light and walking in and outside the line of redemption you will find us. The question askers, the truth tellers – laughing at the way it was when we only walked the line.