I close my eyes and He brings the words... He shows me pictures throughout the day and woos me towards understanding... and He draws me into His affections so that I can walk ... but then comes the moments where He sits and looks at me... with that look... and I know that I have reached a place that He desires me to go deeper... to not just linger where language and expression mingle and dance and create pictures but to that place of story.. where He takes my hand and looks me in the eyes and asks of me to not just share stories but to dwell there ... to linger... to go deeper...
To close my eyes and go beyond the words.. into the emotions...
I so truly love the way that 1 Peter 2:10 captures the essence of a life of a people .. the people... the people of God... the new living translation puts it forth this way.... It is the picture of my life....
"Once you had no identity as a people, now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy but now you have received God's mercy."
I have touched that place... touched it in ways I wish that I hadn't ever had to.... touched what it meant to not be a person...
To lack mercy... is to be faced with cruelty... it is to live with no compassion... it is to be at the hands of indifference...meanness.. tyranny..... where those that see you do not see you as human.. but see an object... a thing... they are careless with a most precious treasure...
Lacking mercy is not a welcomed place... lacking mercy is a void so deep and dark and horrible that it penetrates the soul leaving one so very wanting..... so very wanting... the effects of which tear at the fabric of what makes one human...
We are now a people.. not just any people but a people belonging to God... we do now have mercy... where we hadn't had such we now do....
So the voice of Father came forward as I came to this place and He spoke... " If I have granted you mercy and called you my own.. may you never call yourself anything less..." With amazing love and incredible affection did those words wash over my being...
He is so very full of mercy and yet I have not always imparted that same mercy to myself... exacting myself to be more and to be further along at times instead of just resting in the knowledge and care of His amazing love....
I used to sit for hours dazed ... away... lacking the will to focus into life because I couldn't .. I couldn't stand the sorrow of the moments I walked... I would embrace a place of smoky non existence and move about my days and times but not know what it meant to engage in life... beyond the language of shut down I could barely breath and hated that I didn't stop ... plagued by life but not living... life was a punishment... a curse...
The disconnect doesn't have to be that extreme... what points of ones heart does one allow to lay dormant ... what aspects of joy does one not allow to come forward... I know the prison of a heart so sick with lack of hope that to arrive at each moment feels like the greatest of tasks...
The gift .. the immense gift we receive in Jesus is beyond anything I know how to convey... I have written about desiring other comforts and allowing others to rule over me... I was left wanting by the comfort and destroyed by the reign ..... not so with Christ... His reign and rule and comfort into my life only continues to bring forth more... that is the hope
Isaiah spoke so richly of it when it was written of Him.... There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace.. on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore... and then I love how it is written in the living translation.... The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven's armies will make this happen...
No greater joy.. no finer kindness... oh my I was so not a person.. I so very much lacked mercy and He heard my cry and He made me His own and He granted unto me a mercy so rich.. so full... so amazing... a mercy that carries upon it a beauty so very real and so very strong... and He continues daily to bring it all about... He continues to increase His rule and reign in my life... He continues to bring forth peace... and it is His passion.. His passionate commitment that makes it happen .... all day.. every day.. not dependent upon me or my efforts but upon His passionate commitment to ever increase in my life I can rest....
Whether it is remembering days of old when mercy was not even a concept I would have comprehended or dared to even fathom its existence to living moments now in life that stretch and test and refine me, I stand... knowing that having received so much from Him I have been made His... and in being His daughter it is His passionate commitment that will carry me home...
There is nothing more grand ... it brings a joy to the day that nothing can touch no matter what the world seems to say... a whisper of truth turned into a roar of courage that proclaims liberty to the captive and binds up the brokenhearted... opening up a prison to them that are bound... to this end I walk my days more and more... it is all about His passionate commitment to bring an increase of His ways and His peace to the earth.... to you.. to me.... For His spirit is upon us to do this... to proclaim that mercy is very much the reality and we are His people .. His sons and His daughters...
No greater joy.. no finer kindness
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