Lately
Father forgive me for ever doubting You. I know with time, in your compassion, You will show me, for Your truth stands forever, and the lies cannot prevail.
Meeting God has been so hard. He is not far, but I have shied away. These days I have not felt like talking to Him. I didn't want to meet God to know He had nothing to say concerning what I felt I needed most deeply. I struggle with the thought that He does not care. I have been somewhat hardened; beneath the veneer of tearlessness, and crabby snappishness, I am trembling with pain. Oh, even now, let me not use defense mechanisms as an excuse! It is a heart afraid of another slicing--and that can happen in many ways--a human frame brutalized and robbed of dignity and its humanity, the cutting apparent callousness of those whom I know love Him, who bat not an eyelid, and feel nothing, because they fear the price of involvement. Has He turned His back on me? Those whom He shares His heart with turn away.
I long for home. Home is a hundred thousand miles away, and only my thoughts serve to carry me to it. Home, the place of safety and love. Where I once was the person I recognized. I feel like a soldier at war on such foreign soil, fighting to protect everything I ever believed in, doing so with honour, because my King is worth all. Stripped of all I have, and at the mercy of the enemy, all I hold to myself in memory are a letter and a photograph. The photograph is that of my Dad's. A poor substitute, and but a shadow of the warmth of His immediacy. All I live for with hope or die for courageously, is to go home to Him. Oh I miss Him so much! His letter to me reminds me why I'm fighting--I'm fighting so that I can go home again. I want to see Him, and to know Him. The yearning for home, so far away, is the heart's crying need for restoration
Saturday and Sunday were steeped for me in a pot of dark ink... One couldn't seem to get the stain off. With all one's strength one chose to worship. One thought if one made a choice it was simply a matter of the heart guided by will. I tried. I failed.
So on Monday one woke up determined not to go there again. (the critic nags self pitying, selfish silly goose!) Going out, laughing hard at a chalet stayover, and tiring myself to death was the order of the day. All that formed the prelude to today. Today one was brought face to face with the question of Him again.
Why does He speak on everything else to me but this pain? He speaks about bible study as I pray, He brings what I'm led to speak/pray quietly in faith for to fulfilment, whatever is asked on behalf of others is given. Everyone He's kind and responsive to... He'll talk about anything but what lies so raw and bleeding at the core of me... The thought of Him wrung from this dry heart bitter tears at Anatolia's over lunch.
Does He really care?
The four days culminated in a movie... to see everything familiarly nightmarish played out, the same philosophical hopelessness and questions, in the eyes of those in that world.
It is after all a melodramatic mirror of reality
The cruel inevitability of it all! One can try to run, but it is inescapable, one is always made to return for another re-enactment, only to ask those questions again. A penknife in waking reality is not scary when one has faced just about everything else in sleeping reality. And when the messages from the sleeping world are relevant to the waking, life then becomes a living nightmare.
No no, I am not tempted to die, I still have whatever He's teaching me to learn. I merely feel dead because coming alive to look at it all, when one has no answers, is excruciating. Is my existence just so that the consequence of sin might be met out? What was all that for? That man's sinful nature might have a canvas to be played out on, so that they come to see their true human condition in all their Christian pride?
This God who loves me stood by and did nothing.
Why?
I don't even mind anymore the breaking of one's heart, utter spirit, and feeble will. Just tell me why.
The mind finds it all too easy to acknowledge one is loved. The heart struggles so deeply.
When I'm finally quiet I ask who I am to question His ways.
What are His plans?
Do I count or figure anywhere at all? There are still others to minister to... right?
I barely have the faith to hold on to who He says I am. I am far from love, because I have quickly drawn away, so afraid to find it true that He's turned His back. That one is left to desolation. Oh how can that be true? It isn't. Sometimes I lose my battles, and the soul huddles, crouched in a corner like a frightened animal, used, broken, wide-eyed and terrified in the wake of it all. Until I recognize the Mender and see His work in this, I cannot live for then one carries no hope. You see, I believe it is all in His hands. But whether He wants to remove the heavy shackles and chains is another matter.
But if He says I am loved then it is so--it shall not depend even on whether I can believe it.
| e.s.t.h.e.r in the arms of Jesus @
8/10/2005 03:37:00 am |
|
|