Eye Delight

My struggle's not how hard the way

Another's walked it for me

my struggle's not how much the price

Another's for me paid

My struggle's with my flesh, desire

What keeps me from Him

Those things so light and moment'ry

That seem so real, yet dim

My struggle's with eye's lust, delight

The pride that seethes within

Let me ne'er forget Love's words

"Come unto me, find rest"

Let me overcome the fleeting

good for what is Best

Help me gladly bear the weight

of Glory placed within

Oh may I be His eye's delight

When journey comes to end

And Yet

A dear journey friend I met on the internet wrote these words,

"Love comes in the surrender, the falling."

I don't like to fall. It's the falling I fear most as I grow older, the loss of independence that comes with fractures. I wonder if I'm also fearful of soul fracture. I don't want to be broken.

And yet, I am.

I was born broken. In many pieces. I've tried so hard to glue them all together with rules, with behavior modification, with "being good."   But it's useless. The glue is broken too.  I'm useless.

And yet, I'm not.

I am perfect in Him, the Him "who loved me and gave Himself for me."

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  Galatians 2:20 NIV

He loves me--broken, angry, rebellious, whining, distracted, selfish.

He loves me.  He pursues my broken heart and offers to make it whole.

For eternity.


"Relinquishment takes us into rugged terrain.  The climb is steep, the rocks are sharp, and the trail passes by precarious ridges.  From every human viewpoint at times it looks like we have fallen over the precipice into our death.  But we know better. We know that we are only falling into the arms of Jesus, fully at rest."  Richard Foster

May we all fall today...into the arms of  Jesus.

Waiting

"Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:
But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." Galatians 4:3-5 (KJV)

In our secret yearnings

we wait for your coming,

and in our grinding despair

we doubt that you will.

And in this privileged place

we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we

and by those who despair more deeply than do we.

Look upon your church and its pastors

in this season of hope

which runs so quickly to fatigue

and in this season of yearning

which becomes so easily quarrelsome.

Give us the grace and the impatience

to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,

to the edges of our fingertips.

We do not want our several worlds to end.

Come in your power

and come in your weakness

in any case

and make all things new.

Amen.

Walter Brueggeman

Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann

Lord, in this holiest of seasons, make me yearn and despair more as I wait.