What if there was a language God called us to speak; one that truly liberated others to be themselves. The creation God knows and loves regardless of the flaws, in spite of the differences; even because of those very differences. My heart grows heavy as I sit across from the precious gift of life that flows through their veins and recognize how little of that life they are aware of...How wounded and blind they have become...how wounded and blind I have become. How my emotions have misled me and my heart is calloused. How I deny the very life that surges throughout my body because I cannot make sense of it. How my mind will rob me of hours of His presence. How my heart will quiver within His very hands, and yet I will think it lies there alone; unattended to, beaten up and broken never to be restored or redeemed. Lost in the story that we have convinced ourselves is reality; and oblivious to the Truth. How precious a creation we are and yet how painfully unaware of that we can become. How disillusioned we can be when faced with our fears, our shame, our doubt and our ignorance. Who but God can rescue us? We are scared of ourselves beyond comprehension. Some of us run, others rebel, some just go in circles refusing to leave that path; all of us afraid of vulnerability, afraid of our true selves, afraid to Love and to be Loved. We would let ourselves drown in the sea of lies before we would reach for the life vest that's keeping our vulnerability afloat and safely away from risk.
C.S. Lewis wrote these words,
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in a casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket~ safe, dark, motionless, airless~ it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
Giving and receiving Love seems to be so hard on us all. Why is this? What are we afraid of? Perhaps we simply find ourselves unworthy to receive and untrustworthy to offer such a thing. But isn’t that the point; we are unworthy, we are untrustworthy. But He is not. He guides and drives us into situation after situation to find it, to find Love, to find Him...the One True Essence of man; and then to offer it freely to others....But here we stand scared and seemingly alone. Unwilling to be vulnerable to the absolute obvious Source of Life; LOVE. And so we trip and we fall and we decide we were right after all! There we go carrying our own hearts in our own feeble hands and trusting no one; Not even the One! Often when we glimpse this mystery, this Love, we will deny its power. We will negate its presence. What fools are we? His hands must be heart shaped because we need to be held at every point along the way of learning to Love. Held without a gap, without space to wriggle ourselves free. We cannot Love, not truly Love, on our own. We will not Love, on our own. The word itself prevents a solitary act. Love is not done by one of us, for one of us. It is done by Him for all of us. It is done through us by Him, for us...And sadly, we can neither receive the Love that searches us out and seeks our affections, if even our simply acknowledgement. We are so sure it will let us down that we never really allow it in. May the walls come crashing down around us, that we may see. That we may know..Oh How He loves us! May the cracks in our hearts welcome the Light of His love and in doing so find the healing that only He can give. Then stand back as our hearts burst from our chests to reach out into the lives of others...just simply to offer the same glimpse He has been offering to us day in and day out since creation began; A glimpse of Himself, enduring Love! May each of us pick up a new language, the language of LOVE....speak it often and freely....we all need to hear what it has to say!
