i’m in love with you.
in love with your invisible face,
in love with how you are in love with me.
it says in your word that you are the One who seeks. the one who treasures the lost. you are the One who runs, every extremity aching, sweat dripping from your brow as you tear toward me, the child who has wandered back home from the self-imposed wilderness. you’re smiling as you run toward me. and you slow down as you near me, your arms spread wide in an embrace that holds eternity -- and that can hold me.
to imagine you as a lion, i can see the beauty and the majesty. the grace and the mercy -- all at once, altogether lovely.
there is freedom in you. there is mystery and awakening and unveiling. no longer am i called a Slave of the World, of my own desires. i am reborn. you call me Your’s. you call me chosen. as i look into your wild eyes, there is kindness. there is Home.
woody glens, hidden green valleys, on the edges of the cliffs looming over the roaring waters. you are in all these places. you reside within my very soul, you resound the calling of my innermost being, and Nature shouts your name.
humanity can do nothing but bow before a God so potent in love and judgment in one.
and yet you stoop your mighty face to wipe my tears from my cheeks, as i lay upon the dirt, forgetting in my sin, your lovingkindness. your loyal love. your hesed. how gently you raise me from the dust i find my origins in, how graciously and lovingly you whisper peaceable words of comfort and purpose. you can raise me like no other, you lift my weary head when i cannot.
Father, how often i forget [shamefully] that you giveth and giveth, and giveth again. but i turn my head to gaze behind me at the pillar of salt. i close my eyes and shut my ears, and yell aloud my insults and ask “WHERE ARE YOU, GOD?” i beg you to answer me as i sob out my raw anger and deep wounds. i shout so loudly that you are so quiet, that i drown out your response, your whisper that you see me. in my finite humanity, i fail to remember the multitudinous Being you are, the vast wealth of Everlasting you embody. i get caught up in the present moment in the timeline that i exist on, the physical plain from which i view reality. and yet there is no time binding you, oh Jesus. you live relative to the will and mind of the Father, and time bows before the throne you sit upon. there is nothing outside of your grasp, not even death itself holds sway.
no mind can interpret, no heart could fully experience the magnitude of your mere Presence. perhaps stained glass, towering cathedrals, sacred icons, and the work of the martyrs serve to show off your transcendence and the humility of man. yet even so, how can the ant understand the human mind? how can creation apperceive the greatness of a spotless Deity? how can one who is so wrought with sin see with eyes unveiled the glory of the Almighty?
“Look, he is coming with the clouds,”
and “every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him”;
and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.”
So shall it be! Amen.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”