The pressure to be something, to be anything at all and everything you only hope to be, is both a hunger and a disease within our hearts. It affects our relationship with God. Father. In infects our hearts and deludes our effort to be anything at all. I am always trying to be clean by my own effort and striving. Being clean has nothing to do with activity or my past. Nothing.
Is there a limit to God's grace? I should hope not, but I always fear that there may be. Should I test it? I dare not, but it seems I do. At least in my heart I do. In every mistake or chosen wrong step, I wonder. In every failure and every lying word spoken, I fear. In every passing moment, lurking in the corner of my heart, I am undone just enough to feel alone and insecure. And so I speak a certain way and hate myself. I act a certain way and do not recognize who I am. The tension exists all because of the pressure, the hunger, the disease, to matter and to be more than what I am; to be someone else achieving success marked by someone else. All the while, I am not even myself. At least not fully. For in those moments I waste trying and striving to be something I deem important, noticeable and worthwhile, I float away from myself and lose that moment of being me...the person crafted and architected in a particular fashion, to certain measurements and stature, to a peculiar setting unique and valued by God alone. All the kicking and striving and acting and reaching is wasted time and circling paths leading no where in particular.
We are the unholy redeemed,
the backstabbing son,
the wayward drifter
floating between our own hearts and him,
often grasping so desperately to ourselves
like a wounded animal or a scarred kid.
We are weak idiots
who boast of something more
but stoop beneath it with near predictable punctuality,
making much of ourselves because, after all, the hunger is in each of us.
And yet, this...this is the point where strength and wisdom begins. It is here, where grace meets dirty feet and hands stained with wrong, where the hunger is satisfied and quieted and the disease is cured leaving behind no trace that it ever once existed within us at all.
I need these words more than any others. As someone often dwarfed by circumstance and fear and swallowed by the swelling tide of life, these words echo resolutely within the chambers of my heart the softest and strongest message: you belong to me. In those words, I regularly find the strength to be me again. As a father to three young daughters who are like blank canvases, these words enable me to be the capable artist painting the panoramic scene of love in their lives. These words of grace rescue me from me trying to save myself and make something out of my life. They remind me that God is present and aware...and willing.
Comments (0)
Post a Comment