A table for an enemy....

I have prayed to know, and grieve, the depths of my sin. To deeply feel the way I've turned against my God.
So that I might know salvation, rather than just knowing I'm saved.

I didn't know how that would feel.

It's hard to swallow, accept.
Like a lavish gift from one I've wounded, scorned.
A smile from a face I can't bear to see.

Or an invitation to a feast thrown by the King I've spat upon.

Yes, like that.
Like showing up, covered in filth, expecting...deserving....rejection,death.
...but finding none of those, but a table set with lavish love.

Undeserving, dispicably shame-filled me.
Invited to sit down and eat grace.
It's hard to swallow.
To believe.

Tears will fall when I put food to mouth.
Tasting goodness through lips of shame.

But I know it.
I feel like a slave redeemed, forever in the debt of the Redeemer.
Like a theif forgiven, released uncondemned.
Like a traitor standing alive over the body of the One who took the bullet.


I prayed for that. That I would know.
I do.

The question...the prayer...now.

Can I, will I believe the grace?

Live nourished by the gift-bread of undeserved love?

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God..." Eph 2:8

I don't know how.
I don't know how.

"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, ⁸which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight." Eph 1:7-8

Redemption, forgiveness.....according to His grace.

All I can do is lift the spoon in faith. Taste redeeming love, though my stomach turns with shame.
He invited me in, spread table with love.

I can only eat it and know it takes more grace to swallow this.... it takes grace to believe grace.

It's really dark out there....

....Change it.

"I do believe the world is swinging toward the light,"
So spoke a soul on fire with holy flame.
Amid the dark such faith pierced through the night,
The dreamers wrought, and living fruitage came.
To give of self, and not to count the cost,
To learn, to teach, to labor, and to pray,
To serve like Christ the least, the last, the lost-
These were the beacon fires that lit the way.

Our light grows dim; the air is thick with doom,
And everywhere men's souls are crushed with fears.
Yet high above the carnage and the gloom
The call resounds across the teeming years,
"Lift high Christ's cross! Serve God and trust His might!"
I do believe the world is swinging toward the light!

Georgia Harkness, 1891-1974

Words...but not the right ones.

I can't write when I have too much to say.
This, this is a tight, frustrating, impossibly infuritating epiphany.
Because, a lot of the time, I just have a lot to say about a lot of things. 
And I need words.
I love the way they can pour out the whole internal imprint of a heart.
Make the unknown known, and stagger with beauty.
I love how little they matter alone, how nothing a single word is,  but how they shape up into strong something, weaving thoughts into concrete real when they find just the right places together. 

So, it almost hurts. It kind of aches....When this passion gets so full, painful, how it also gets stuck, dammed up, held back.
Pages stay blank and thoughts stay invisible.

It seems my words can flow, passion pouring....but only when I've already chewed my insides down to almost nothing. When the blazing fiery fades, and just the organized pale has stuck around.

But when it's all in there, up to here, and I'm swimming, gasping in it... longing more to write it out, down, firm and clear...I can only come to pages and stare. Empty.

Passion tides swirl and slam the walls of my head and heart.

But still...the empty white page. No words.

Or, here, today...just words about words.
I don't really want to talk about words.

Really, I came to say...maybe to scream... "HOW COME?"

How come kids are starving and money is flowing, but not in the same places?
How come the ones I love deep don't know Him, don't know deep Love?
How come I feel so much and can change so little?
How come?

I came here hoping to shape these "How comes?" into something real, beautiful... to speak the unraveling mess into clarity.
But I can't. It all screeches to the tip of my tongue, the ends of my fingertips, and halts.

And then it's just so evident again
That I can't write when I have too much to say.

Are we willing to be shocked into action?

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/07/famine-in-east-africa/100115/

Let's do something.