= released =

Have you ever just driven? Have you ever just salted your cheeks and not cared? There are many escapes in this life. Movies. TV. Drugs. Alcohol. Food. Exercise. We can turn anything into an escape. Whether intentional or no, whether good or no. I don’t want escapes anymore. I don’t want some thing that will take me away, that will remove me from where I am. I want to be alive. I desire that these things focus me. That they attune my heart, mind and soul to Him. I want to sit in the sweat of my heart. I want to wallow in the restless murmurs of pain. I want to feel them and know that they are good. No one in this place gets by without pain. Few embrace it and thank Him for it. Understand me here. I don’t like pain. I don’t like agony. I don’t like affliction. However, I do love my God. And so I ask. When do you reach out to Him most? When you make an A+ on your final? When the boy/girl likes you? When you are laughing with your friends? We should, but how often does it happen? My own experience (whether for good or bad) has been that I reach out, cry out, groan to Him, when I hurt. The intensity of the perceived wound magnifies my voice. And sometimes the most emphatic clamor to be made is a whispered wail. A barely audible lament. An internal plea for relief that breath cannot carry. At these junctures of desire and disappointment, my God shines in radiant love and comfort. His tender arms become like robust redwoods encircling a weary and meager heart. His merciful and definitive love raises a worn and trifling countenance from its’ dark dwelling of despair. The brilliance of His being shatters the faded dark of that deep place inside. And so rivers of salted water pour from the mirrors of our soul. Dripping from a chin buried in the wonder of His comfort. He restores what felt like a dead and decaying hope in this place. Because he refocuses that hope on Himself. Hope in Him. The only hope that does not leave a hole. He is filling. He is satisfying. He is too much for our flimsy and deficient minds and hearts to bear. Thank Him for the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit is a guide. When we look, it directs us quietly and unassumingly to the path we have lost or strayed from. He understands and quietly draws us in. And the quiet is a blistering, sonorous song of His glory.