From my journal:

A Saturday. I awake extra early, 4:20, and give up trying to go back to sleep at 4:40. At this point I need a comforting cup of tea and my Jesus more than sleep.

Always in these early hours, there is the urge to take advantage of the full quiet to further the writing on book and blog. But I’m weary from this week, from back-to-back heartbreak at the hands of people I love. And in the midst of that, frustrated over my own self as well. All three of us let me down and brought sadness. 

The details don’t matter now. Jesus brought me back to grace quickly, so that love and giving of self resumed. But I am so hungry and thirsty for some of your wonderful nourishing love. My soul feels ragged. So instead of picking up the computer and going to work, I respond to your bidding me to sit with you in the quiet.

Sitting with my tea in the living room, lit only by the Christmas lights draped over an ornamental tree in the corner. I have no fireplace, so this is my glowy intimate substitute. The quiet music of a Jesus-lover streams out of my iPad, a piano prayer of worship.

Then, in the twinkling of a passing thought, I know I am sitting on the hillside with you, overlooking the city of humanity in the pre-dawn darkness. You and me. I am leaning against you. I am loving you all over again, for your steadfast love and goodness.

When people I love have wounded me, have ceased for some short or long period to offer goodness and kindness and graciousness, the treasure of your unchanging nature and goodness to me shine ever brighter. I lean into you. I am resting between your shoulders, loving you and letting you nourish me with your love.

As I sip my tea, I smile, thinking you never had tea on your hillside times with the Father, praying. Did you? “No,” you say, “but I did kindle comforting fires to warm myself at times.”

I gaze out at the world before us. I imagine it as you saw it, outlines of a city you know by heart even though it’s too dark to see, full of sleeping humanity, salted with early fires being kindled by women making bread and preparing hearth for their loved ones. You can’t see the people, but you know they are there. Perhaps a shepherd’s song floats up from a paddock somewhere.

You love them all. Your heart beats with the Father’s love for them. If they knew what I know, they would wake up and run to your good heart.

In a flash I know how you feel, gazing upon your beloved people, watching them choose ways of being that rob them of the life you’re holding out. The phrase, “weapons of mass destruction,” a leftover from political upheaval years ago, takes on new meaning as I sit with you there.

You give me understanding suddenly that the true weapons of mass destruction are those of our society’s making, our pleasure toys, the heaps of food we eat that kill us slowly, the devices we give our eyes/heart/time to that are not life, not relationship, not nourishing. The drugs to dull the pain, waiting to kill. The toxic relationships. The sheer freedom of choices made apart from the guidance of a wise and loving creator Lord, choices that destroy us slowly, from the inside out — these are the true weapons of mass destruction.

This is a week of grief, where a young broken tormented, unloved, mentally ill, gun-violence addicted man went into another school — in Parkland, Florida — and gunned down seventeen innocent students and some adults. 

All this is backdrop as I sit with you in the quiet  — their grief, the horror of the world we’ve made, the personal pain I’ve felt from close ones. I want to heal it all. I want the whole world, my world, my relatives, to know you, know your love and healing and wisdom and your ways of living and loving that bring life, not destroy it.

How I long for the power to heal them all. Or even to heal the ones I know, and the few around me who languish  —  unloved, insecure, broken and lonely, wondering where you are while you stand right next to them, in the shadow of their doubts.

In another flash of understanding, I realize you gazed many days out upon the people you loved and grieved over them, unable to give them life because they would not receive you or believe you. Your hand is open, your life has been given, you have all they need. You have all power, but you have given man free choice that you will not take away. It is their gift, and you will not grab it back. You must watch as they use that gift to destroy themselves one choice at a time.

I marvel anew that you came to me at the end of my darkest, most sinful season, and you kept coming. Patient, longing for me to turn and notice you. And one day, when my darkness was dark enough, I saw the little hearth fire you kindled for me to come warm myself by. Like a tiny match light glowing in a sea of vast darkness, I suddenly knew where to find you. 

And even after I lit my fire from your flame, I went on to sin again, now worse for the fact that I belonged to you. And even when not sinning I made choices in my freedom that would become longstanding challenges to joy in my life. Selfish, unwise, independent choices.

And you took it all, and washed me, and forgave me, and made something beautiful out of my choices. As they visited affliction upon me, and drove me to you again and again, you built something. Like the homemade bricks I saw in Zambia which became homes, you took the dust of my life and made a home with me in my heart that is a faithful sanctuary. Only these bricks won’t melt in the rain.

You are always there, warm fire kindled. You are always there, inviting me to sit with you on your hillside in sweet companionship, and even to grieve together over people we love who keep walking the other direction, away from your love and healing power. 

You have whispered words to me I needed to know. Words of direction for the work, answers to questions nagging at my heart. Rest and peace come. As you have said for two days,

“In rest and repentance is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.”

Yes, you reversed the “repentance and rest” in this verse from Isaiah 30:15. You know me.

Rest and repentance, indeed. I want to run fix everything, to manage opinions, impressions, rehash conversations, make up for mistakes made.

But you have a better way, and it always begins with resting with you. As I quiet my soul and return to the trust you have earned many times over, knowing comes. The right things to do and say, or even not to say at all. You freely share wisdom, which always leads to a better result. You do relationship better than anyone.

I worship you so, my Lord. My friend. My father, my true Comforter. I can never thank you enough for the privilege of life with you.