Lampstands

I was crying desperate tears to grasp the lampstand. Its opulence shone gold but that was not the reason I held it. Neither was it the reason the formless perversion of light made insipid yet persisting attempts at its absorption.

I was running through the Iraqi foothills. A night had fallen, but it was only an allusion that had set. My feet were bare but for the Gospel of peace that carried them. I bore a candle as I ran… its luminance tore through the darkness… no longer night but bright as the day.  

I have been weeping tears of the Spirit for the babes of the Levant. The Father’s heart longs to hold them in his arms no longer orphans battered by the brokenness of a dying world but beloved children of the light. He is the hope of the nations, the rising sun. In him is life, and the life is the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

Below is a link to blog with opportunities to respond God's comission and #lightacandle

Operation: Light a Candle

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport

Garnet

We were running, running, running.  My lungs expired, my legs convulsed, and all my wants were through.

The siren air sang garnet around me.The billows of my white dress capered as I bathed in the passage. It seemed as if I was teeming into a thousand pirouettes, but I was still. I was still. And the wind was not.

Before Time Eternal

I’m in a thinking, reckoning place. The Trinity turns nothing into something. We were nothing; now, we are Something.

Anyways, I was about to get all “blog-tone-y,” but why? Here it is. Straight.

I have laid in the lowest cleft of the rock with nothing but a single, tiny thread attaching me to this physical world. There was nothing more under the sun to merit my staying alive. There still is not.

I have also danced atop the veriest precipice upon which the mire of this world appears unfathomable and I unreachable. Here, the prevailing wind galvanized me infinite.

And I have wept on the slopes of the in-between, hearing whispers of eternity.

I submit that these swings on the pendulum of time are just manifestations of the Fall that, however tangible, are specifically irrelevant, because what actually matters is the rock discussed in the aforementioned illustrations.

During an odd 3 day bout in which I barely slept, ate, drank, or interacted with other humans,-what those in the psychiatric field might call “neurosis,” but was really just the Holy Spirit-I saw many birds. One, out of a few that struck me in particular, sat, during a storm, unshakable upon this giant cross-interwoven-with-some-sort-of-heavenly-host-statue behind a church.. (I think God has to be a little cliché in order to make his point abundantly clear, sometimes).

Am Yisrael Chai.. a Hebrew phrase denoting the unconquerable spirit of the nation of Israel, God’s people.. if you believe in Christ as your savior, that’s you and me, too.

I know it feels like there are waves crashing over you…as soon as you stand from the thrashing of one, another befalls you. I know. But, understand my earnesty in saying: it is okay. It has been okay. It will be okay. It is okay. Don't give up, dear heart.

I pray, tonight, today, tomorrow, forever, that you would never break the softest gaze that ever befell you. Before time eternal, the eyes of the rock have been set on your heart. 

I can breathe

As I witness my own iniquity, I fall on my knees. ‘Impossible.’ I wonder how Magnanimity could even choose me to be his bride. The notion itself, conceived in utter mercy, says nothing about the quality of my being and everything about the essence of his. He is I AM, and he chose me. I rise and stagger backwards, then lie on my back, my lungs desperately gasping this new air. I was suffocated, extinguished before ever being alight, by the mire of my soul. “I can breathe; I can breathe! Rejoice, I say, I can breathe.” Scandalous, ravishing, I raise my hands to the risen King.

“Splendor and majesty are before him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.” His sanctuary will cover all the earth. Every knee shall bow and tongue confess. Abba, Abba, Lord and King.

Out of the Wicker Basket

Two angels carried me. I couldn’t help but leave the child’s pose in which I hid to peek out of the wicker basket in which I was being carried. When we arrived at the edge of the country into which I was being transferred, all I could comprehend was pure, white light. I knew nothing about what would surround me when I finally stood, except that it was good.