I want to share something tonight.
Not because I think it's particularly witty or smart or wise, but because last night was one of those times where I heard this whisper to write and I did and couldn't stop.
I've been somewhere different than usual, a place where most roles and relationships and dynamics are months instead of years old, where I sometimes feel lost and out of place, where loneliness and my old struggle to find roots seem to sit heavy---but it is in this place that I think I'm learning to listen in a new way.
So here's the background: I'm the elementary intern at Northview this summer, and on Thursday nights, there's this Bible study for college students that I've gone to (somewhat sporadically) during my time here. We did a study on Ephesians 2;1-10, and we had about twenty minutes to observe the passage and prepare ourselves for discussion. And, honestly, usually I really struggle with this. I get distracted by the person next to me, how intent they look, how much they're writing in their journal as I stare at my Bible and read the passage over and over, the slow process of my thoughts drifting towards whatever was important about that day and being pulled back. And that was the case for a while--I'm not even sure what brought on the writing storm, but at one point, I thought How would God say this passage to me--how would He speak this truth into me? and I had this urge to rewrite what I read. Not because I think I can say it better. Not because I was particularly studious or religious or took Hebrew in college--at some points, maybe it's not even theologically sound--but only because I've never done this before, and paraphrasing brings perspective and maybe it would wake to a passage I've read countless times and a truth I desperately need to understand. Here it is--slightly edited and only half understood.
My love, there is a darkness in you that goes deeper than you can ever fully understand. You shy from it now, but it is a darkness I know well, the muck I waded through in order to find you. You had gotten so far into it and been there for so long that you had begun to believe that you were on your own. Even as I came toward you calling your name, sending you signs and messages and people, you wandered from me, following the voices leading you deeper and deeper into a danger that you will never fully understand.
This problem is not unique with you--no one is innocent of this, this wandering, and yet every wandering hurts me as if yours were the only one. Think about when your dog would run away, how when you lose something, anything--a person, a pet, even a simple object---it overtakes every single part of you, and you think of nothing beside what you lost---the worry and fear and compelling need to have what was yours back where it belongs. That's only the smallest corner of what I felt for you--my heartache, my longing for you, and it's the very core of who I am. In that place, the darkness that was your home for so long, my heartbeat for you was always that fierce need to find you, to make you alive, to bring you back home where you belonged.
And, my child, hear this--my love was the ONLY thing that saved you, that raised you from that place and woke you to the Love that had always been yours. So often you fall into that outright lie that my love for you is because of you, that it has to do with anything other than the fact that I have claimed you as mine. I love you where you are--lost or found, in the right or in the wrong, flourishing or floundering, whether you know all the words of the song or you only pretend to, whether you look to Me or yourself or others to find your own belovedness. What brought you out into my love, into this new status and my beloved in whom I am well pleased---it has nothing to do with how loveable you are or how well you love, your own sense of direction or even your own potential (though, even then, I did see what you would become when rooted in my love)...
And now you are found, my love, but sometimes you forget that---.when you fall, you call it failing, enough to disqualify yourself from ever being used by Me and turn towards where I once found you.
You label yourself as a mess impossible to clean, a glaring failure, someone who is irreparably, permanently lost--but this is the truth that will set you free, so hold onto it. In me, there is nothing, no one who is lost for good. There is no mistake,however glaring, however many people get hurt, that has the power to destroy. Hear this--no kiss of death can ever withstand the irreversible promise of life. You are no longer lost or broken or forever irredeemable, because I have stopped at absolutely nothing to find you, to heal you and save you and claim you as Mine. All you had to do was call My name and stop running. .
Ephesians 2:1-10
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved,through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Not because I think it's particularly witty or smart or wise, but because last night was one of those times where I heard this whisper to write and I did and couldn't stop.
I've been somewhere different than usual, a place where most roles and relationships and dynamics are months instead of years old, where I sometimes feel lost and out of place, where loneliness and my old struggle to find roots seem to sit heavy---but it is in this place that I think I'm learning to listen in a new way.
So here's the background: I'm the elementary intern at Northview this summer, and on Thursday nights, there's this Bible study for college students that I've gone to (somewhat sporadically) during my time here. We did a study on Ephesians 2;1-10, and we had about twenty minutes to observe the passage and prepare ourselves for discussion. And, honestly, usually I really struggle with this. I get distracted by the person next to me, how intent they look, how much they're writing in their journal as I stare at my Bible and read the passage over and over, the slow process of my thoughts drifting towards whatever was important about that day and being pulled back. And that was the case for a while--I'm not even sure what brought on the writing storm, but at one point, I thought How would God say this passage to me--how would He speak this truth into me? and I had this urge to rewrite what I read. Not because I think I can say it better. Not because I was particularly studious or religious or took Hebrew in college--at some points, maybe it's not even theologically sound--but only because I've never done this before, and paraphrasing brings perspective and maybe it would wake to a passage I've read countless times and a truth I desperately need to understand. Here it is--slightly edited and only half understood.
My love, there is a darkness in you that goes deeper than you can ever fully understand. You shy from it now, but it is a darkness I know well, the muck I waded through in order to find you. You had gotten so far into it and been there for so long that you had begun to believe that you were on your own. Even as I came toward you calling your name, sending you signs and messages and people, you wandered from me, following the voices leading you deeper and deeper into a danger that you will never fully understand.
This problem is not unique with you--no one is innocent of this, this wandering, and yet every wandering hurts me as if yours were the only one. Think about when your dog would run away, how when you lose something, anything--a person, a pet, even a simple object---it overtakes every single part of you, and you think of nothing beside what you lost---the worry and fear and compelling need to have what was yours back where it belongs. That's only the smallest corner of what I felt for you--my heartache, my longing for you, and it's the very core of who I am. In that place, the darkness that was your home for so long, my heartbeat for you was always that fierce need to find you, to make you alive, to bring you back home where you belonged.
And, my child, hear this--my love was the ONLY thing that saved you, that raised you from that place and woke you to the Love that had always been yours. So often you fall into that outright lie that my love for you is because of you, that it has to do with anything other than the fact that I have claimed you as mine. I love you where you are--lost or found, in the right or in the wrong, flourishing or floundering, whether you know all the words of the song or you only pretend to, whether you look to Me or yourself or others to find your own belovedness. What brought you out into my love, into this new status and my beloved in whom I am well pleased---it has nothing to do with how loveable you are or how well you love, your own sense of direction or even your own potential (though, even then, I did see what you would become when rooted in my love)...
And now you are found, my love, but sometimes you forget that---.when you fall, you call it failing, enough to disqualify yourself from ever being used by Me and turn towards where I once found you.
You label yourself as a mess impossible to clean, a glaring failure, someone who is irreparably, permanently lost--but this is the truth that will set you free, so hold onto it. In me, there is nothing, no one who is lost for good. There is no mistake,however glaring, however many people get hurt, that has the power to destroy. Hear this--no kiss of death can ever withstand the irreversible promise of life. You are no longer lost or broken or forever irredeemable, because I have stopped at absolutely nothing to find you, to heal you and save you and claim you as Mine. All you had to do was call My name and stop running. .
Ephesians 2:1-10
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved,through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
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