the holiness of pavement

A man jeered from the cadaveric road where he and two others cut into pipes.

"Hey! You finished praying, yet?"

Laughter steamed up from the road's wound.

I listened for a split-open second and my voice faltered. We'd only just begun praying, this dear woman and I, her two boys with her- one wildly wrangling an iron-rod retaining wall beside the sidewalk and the other staring placid and chubby-cheeked from a stroller.

We kept on and paid the comment no mind. But it prodded at my heart. Did this man not see that the Almighty was leaning in to tell this mama- this beauty, Brooke- that she wasn't what she believed herself to be? That she was a victor alongside Christ because of His death-defeating Resurrection? That right in front of him stood a shining daughter of the Most High just waiting to be unveiled from lies in His Light? 

That right in him, in the middle of a cut road, was coming up a holy moment, gushing around all things? 

We finished and started walking together towards the end of the block.  I nodded smiling to the man; he turned his hard hat and eyes down and away, stared at the severed pipes instead. His words hadn't landed, but something else had and it hung over his head. The same condemning words Brooke spoke before we prayed seemed to be the same sentence he wore now. 

And what she said was that she was a loser. That's all she'd ever been, would be, could be.

I'd asked in return if she knew Jesus and His love for her. Her specifically, right here out of the billions.

She'd said yes, but that it was still just so hard to believe Him. That her mother told her not to believe things that looked too good to be true. That being anything other than a loser was too good to be true. 

But sometimes well-meaning mothers don't tell us what we very, very well need to hear- and that's that the Gospel is too Good not to be True, and Truer than any other news ever tossed on our greying earthly stoop. I know because the one Who is all Good and all True delivered it Himself by becoming the News, embedding Himself in our wounds, gushing around all things with Salvation blood and water, birthing us into New creations. 

I know because I've seen the way it changes everything. Even on the days everything in me wrestles hard to see past the cut-open asphalt of needy, grieving  souls,  I still know.

I know because I see Him seeking and saving the lost all the time.

I know because I've seen Him restore dear ones from sin-binding addiction and warped thinking.

I know because I've seen Him revive and repair marriages, friendships, families.

I know because I've seen Him make sickness flee.

I know because I've seen Him make sick ones incomparably joyful even when they're not healed.

I know because His being-here constantly overwhelms my heart when I least expect it.

I know. 

(Yet all too often I forget that I do and I say with downcast eyes, "It's just too good to be true.") 

 Like this past week when every social forum and news site felt like an aneurism of outrage and I burned indignant in the thick of it, furious at fear, angry at viewpoints that dichotomized the Godhead and diminished the Gospel in being the power to save. Period.

Grief  followed the heat. The sobbing, heaving, hard to hold back kind.

Because people I loved and brothers and sisters couldn't see that His mind and His Hope for the Nations IS radical and IS the trumping card, that it isn't a rose-colored tint, but it IS too good to be true. It IS worth laying our lives down that others may find physical refuge and eternal refuge in Christ.

 That Christ Himself was cast outside the gates, an outcast refugee of many sorts, that we'd be drawn inside His Kingdom (Heb. 13:12,13).

 

So I pleaded for reminders of the Good News. What He gave took me aback. A memory from a little over a year ago swirled over and over, one from when He had us go to the UK and Ireland for twenty one days as a band. On our first day, having arrived in London, we set out to beat jetlag, visiting free museums and keeping ourselves moving at whatever cost. At some point in later afternoon we stopped for necessary caffeine and brought our things to a space with tables, sandwiched by two, cobbled streets. Things stayed calm, people came and went in the normal flux.

But when late afternoon turned to early evening and work ended for much of the city, people streamed. They seemed to come all at once and on both sides, both directions. A tall man towered above the collective sea. An older gentleman deftly swished his bike in and through the movement. University students lumbered with thirty extra pounds on their backs. Young women strode with stylish confidence. Colors, skin tones, voices, plans, ambitions - they all melded at once in this massive blur of movement flooding the street and yet leaving us dry in the middle. 

I remember there in the midst, the Lord speaking over my jetlag and into the moment.

"This, daughter, is the most beautiful thing you'll see this trip. This is my crowning jewel. This is my heart." 

The Maker of the Universe, Author Who Is the Word, the Alpha and Omega, the Everlasting King-

*this* is the pumping of His veins, the beating of His holy Passion: You. Your neighbors. Me. My neighbors. Known and those yet unknown to us. He sat enthroned at the Flood (Ps. 29:10), and He sits as King forever over the floods , now, each flooded street an exposed vein of His flooding heart.

 

I marvel and remember.

This is how asphalt turns holy. This is how we begin to hope in the headlines of the Good News.

We look to His heart and see it split open and wildly alive in Salvation sacrifice.

 

---"God, Who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being...Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man Whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead" (Acts 17:24-28,30,31).

 

---"In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 Jn. 4:9-11).

 

 

 

 

the only reason to run in jeans

Who knows where I had to be or why there were only fifteen minutes to squeeze a bit of outside inside the day. What I remember was the pressing need to take a walk.

So I booked it.

With both arms swinging mall-walker style, I tore out of the house to catch the last warmth of a bewilderingly temperate January day. If I hadn't been wearing jeans, I might've bolted into a run. Because you know what Dodge and Nike and all those other franchises advise. Carpe Diem. Grab Life by the horns. Just do it. Run in your jeans...

Or, yeah...something like all that.

And, yeah, it's true that those words genuinely generate kinetic energy though their strategic motivational bravado might annoy


But to be compelled continually? It requires more than swooshes on your shoes and a Dodge truck trampling Texas dust to spur a person on.
We need more than even the highest, most inspirational words to do that.
       We need One Word which outweighs the rest.We need more than just the ideal setting of sidewalks and a clear day to exercise our hearts.
       We need our hearts to be reset by the exercise of Beauty.


This day, in itself, did shine truly beautiful. But left in isolation it was simply a lovely day. Had it been the anticipated January norm, it would've even settled into a pile of monthly synonyms, days marked less than notable because of their sameness.


You don't nearly sprint in blue jeans for the joy of another monotonously beautiful day.


No, I near about split the door hinges because this untainted blue sky followed the heels of deep gloom and cold. Just the sight of sunlight burned relief. Because the dark sometimes crowds out memory of what is

True,

Noble,

Just,

Pure,

Lovely,

Of good report,

Praiseworthy… (Phil. 4:8)


...but though it crowds it can never lessen nor negate.


One particular Old Testament prophet teaches me this as the Lord keeps reintroducing me to his grieving figure whom no one really knows. This Habakkuk, a man heavy with the context of his world,
      compelled to cry out and yet to hope
      all in the same vision.

In fact, in the NKJV, the book opens like this:
      "The burden which the prophet Habakkuk saw…"

The word for "oracle" (from the Latin "orare", to speak) can be interpreted also as "burden". Speaking is a weighty thing whether I act accordingly or not, and even past that obvious conclusion is the heavier: when the Lord compels us, He will press.

He will never press us into a state of confusion or despair or abject misery. Though the hurt shouts, "O Lord, how long shall I cry, and You will not hear?", and the calendar reads like a square compilation of shootings and typhoons,


He will weep alongside,

  and press through our anguish with a Word. With the heaviest Word that is at once       perfectly Light.


"And the Word was with God and the Word WAS GOD" (Jn. 1:1)…

Yes! He is the Word which He gives us!
Jesus Christ Himself presses through every violence and burdens us
with glorious news of His reconciliation.

Habakkuk knew it even in the middle of tempest tears:
       "YET I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is  my strength; He will make my feet like deer's feet, and He will make me walk on my high hills" (3:18-19).



That "yet" is the incalculable treasure of Christ in us, beautiful friends. His "yet" is a burden light and a vision easy. It is Him Who causes us to run without stumbling, Who compels us by His love.


He IS the vision.


Whoever reads It will run straight out the door and into a Hope that cannot lie, into
an eternal calendar of days numbered entirely in the ink of His blood.


Let's leave the door swinging on our way out. Even if we're running in our jeans.


"Then the Lord answered me and said:

'Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry' (2:2-3)".

hope has holes

It really was quite the ugly cliché.

But I meant it with everything I had.

A friend had asked the procedural question, asked how I was. And when the cliché eked into my response, he eyed me with a skepticism that shot holes into every syllable. I, of course, knew how unsatisfactory the words were. Because if there's anything that makes me curdle inside, it's the misappropriation of a phrase. Words otherwise dated correctly can spoil as soon as they leave your mouth.

But I truly meant all of it.

I had no earthly idea how I was doing, but had every certain idea in heaven and earth

 that my Precious Jesus is good.

So I said it.

 

Words hollowed from excessive use sometimes prove themselves hallowed spaces to cradle inside. And Christ comes into the emptiness of things we may not yet understand, birthing a holy cry in the middle of our holes.

Let me be the first to open up that second box of clichés a little more. Because coming into Christmas this year, I felt saturated with holes, leaking long before Advent lit its first candle.  I joked with my Mama on Christmas Eve that surely I was a miserly sore thumb amidst our overwhelmingly generous family, bringing nothing but open hands.

It's not even that Christmas "snuck" up this year like Santa tiptoeing his way through every jaunty holiday rhyme. Practically speaking, tornadoes preceded the celebration week, so I'd call that a less than subtle entry. Personally speaking, I'd anticipated the arrival with preparations that excited with full joy.

All the same, I wondered if you might've felt it, too.

 How heaviness might have labored your journey to the manger a little more this year? How full joy actually just leaked from every pore in your vessel because you were more porous than you realized? That you were actually completely hollowed out save for the Treasure inside?

My own holes widened when new friends I'd met came laboring up cold train tracks from their nylon home, carrying weeks worth of laundry. I'd just told my friend that "Jesus is good" and here I am taking my friends to what home, now? Leaving them in what kind of weather?

 The holes furthered when, the next day, my car met its limit on the highway, and in five cars confused together, the Lord lavished grace and Life. No one beside me in the passenger seat. No one riding in the back. Nothing completely broken except for a split jar of a heart with spilt words of praise.

Then, two days later, the view of a man composing a song for his father, a saint taken suddenly. A memorial offered up just days before Christ's birth is commemorated. This son, he brought sacrifice to His King simply by standing. But then he went so far as to play before Him.

This familiar Scripture stretched across the screen toward the end of the memorial. The song had been offered. Hallowed Hope offered, anew, here:

"Then Jesus, again groaning in Himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, 'Take away the stone.' Martha, the  sister of him who was dead, said to Him, 'Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.' Jesus said to her, 'Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?'" (Jn. 11:38-40)

 

Were the ending not enough- a man dead four days brought fully to life, again- the beginning is even more.

Jesus CAME to the tomb.

He walked straight to the greatest representation of emptiness on earth just as He had curled Himself as the Word made flesh within a mother's womb.

 

His very Incarnation terrorized Death, even before its looming defeat by way of the Resurrection. Death shuddered  because He dared plunge straight into the emptiness. Walked right to our tombs.

 

Your body might not feel Life headed towards you in your funeral clothes when you're sealed up like a sarcophagus shell, but oh, when that stone comes away...the pupils of your dead heart dilate wide in astonished belief and you truly see His Glory.

Because you see Him in His goodness, Him aching that you'd live.

 

All of a sudden, a former cave, the dreariest of empty crevices, fills up with substantial GLORY.

You become a vessel "filled with all the fullness of God" when you are direly empty (Eph. 4:19).

 

Even with your holes spewing grief and hurt and longing and tiredness

Only three holes He sees and

Hope has no holes save for those

that have saved you.

 

 

 

So, I'll say it again: This Jesus...this beautiful One inside our aching, once-empty cavities...

He is. So. Good.

 

And you know something really lovely? On Christmas Eve this year, the moon from this corner of the world was a defiant, clear half of itself. It shone like the cupped palm of a cradle.

Empty save for the Sun.

 

 

 

 

 

seeing things

I didn't realize the tapping noise was meant to get my attention.

      En route to hiking trails, I'd paused to take a picture on one of the roads passing beside a section of condominiums in our neighborhood. Today had swung in with every full ounce of Fall, and I wanted to document each photographable  inch.  After all, sieve-like minds need countless ebeneezers. The more frequent and visible along the path, the better. So if you've recently seen me swinging around my iphone camera like a hobbyist photographer gone wild...you'll know why.

 

      Still, the tapping bounced somewhere to my left, so I turned on a surprised heel towards the condos.

A little face smiled through a third story window; a little hand waved widely.This precious one had been beating the pane so that she could simply wave at me, make some kind of eye contact.

 

She saw me. And she wanted me to know that.

      Isn't that the thing my soul- her soul, yours, anyone's- craves most deeply? That when we look through the panes separating us we see into the pain of another and see Imago Dei? That someone would just lay down their life for even a moment and see us?

How about Someone laying aside the Eternal throne to look an adulteress in the eyes?

And what if I mean me when I say adulteress?

 

We follow Christ's eyes when we look at someone closely.

I've found it all the more true, because, time and time again, He's the only one looking back at me when the stones piled around aren't piled ebeneezers, but encircling reminders dropped from self-inflicted shame.

When I'm the woman caught red-handed in my fear

or my jealousy,

or my wandering unbelief,

He stays in the midst of the dissipated circle and kicks my rocks to the side:

"When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, 'Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?' (Jn. 8:10)"

 Christ raised Himself up from the dust another time, too. When He did, He met a woman crying, yet again.

He recognized her asphyxiating grief and looked at her:

 

"Jesus said to her, 'Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?'

She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, 'Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.'

Jesus said to her, 'Mary!'

She turned and said to Him, 'Rabboni!' (Jn. 20: 15-16)"

 

Because Mary turned around, her weeping eyes met the Giver of Life, and she could actually see.

She saw the One Who condemned shame brought on by sin, and then trampled Death by way of death.

She saw closely because she'd been seen through to her worst doubt- that the Beloved Teacher she'd gratefully followed couldn't conquer what He promised He would as the Son of God.

 

Jesus proved her doubts and her grieving wrong

by the power of a tender tapping on the 

pane of her heart.

 

The glory of seeing lies in the light of day where our eyes receive color by way of absorbing every hue but for the one we're actually seeing.

Somehow, Jesus sees every color of ours all at once, still finding the true hues that we harbor beneath weak surfaces.

 

You are seen.

No, even more than that-

In Christ, the Father sees you hidden in His Son's Life, wrapped in daylight, and standing outside of the tomb.

 

O, my soul, turn around. Even in the good things, the worthy undertakings, don't forget the greatest ebeneezer is the stone rolled away.

 

Remember that the tapping is actually a call to life from the True Gardener, the Only Conqueror,

The One Who gives you sight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

day by day

"It's almost like it's hard to breathe."

This beautiful friend, a sister who's been pressed wiser by oppression itself, she says it in the heavy dusk. The atmosphere sags so low that her sentence could probably prop it up and form an all-encompassing tent above our own, so pinprick small. And for a suspended moment, her words even pierced through cloud and the realization weighed more than the humidity:

 

The unseen always outweighs the tangible.

Because the unseen is actually more real.

We sit straight beneath Glory, right within His Holiness, and somehow it takes condensation-saturated air to wake us up to the fact that our lungs might as well collapse from the Almighty's proximity. But, instead, His Spirit moves as wind through the weight and fills us up with breath. All that air-space above you? The miles that a person can legally own by real estate standards?

He's holding it up with a mighty right hand.

 

If you think about it, your head starts spinning with a sort of altitude sickness.

The external pressure that could cause our watery bodies to implode, He matches with an equal internal pressure.

So, not only does He hold everything together as the One who knits our fibers tight (Col. 1:17),

He holds us together when every opposing force should altogether crush us.

 

Sometimes pressure seems the only thing this world is capable of manufacturing. You can wake up sensing the barometric rise in your own chest like a waiting for the weighing to lift. It's so tangible you swear the thing is an anvil and you might just cave in upon yourself, after all.

But you- dear friend-you and I were never subjected to futile collapse and introspective, devolving implosion.

We are subjected in the hope of redemption, "because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21).

Can I repeat that for my own sake? My head is spinning again.  My stomach is doing flips.

We're delivered into a glorious liberty when we allow the pressure to deliver the hope He always intended.

Every warring evil that pushes gravity like bricks-- Jesus builds into the delivery room for Hope.

Jesus freed us from darkness by way of salvation through repentance. And then He continually births in us new Hope, because Hope is the stake with which He chooses to hold things up.

 Out from under the canopy, you can breathe. You can take heart, and a new one at that.

 Another dear friend who's been well worn-in with pressure, she told me that, recently. She who feels nearly as if her internal pressure might fall out of equilibrium because of blinding pain.

 She told me to take heart.

Now, I want to tell you.

Christ's yoke rests light on your shoulders if you ask Him to take the iron one made by this world.

When you're bound to Him, you don't fear stratospheric miles burdening you,

Sickness hounding you,

Debts threatening you,

Heartache squelching you,

Pride trapping you.

You only become dizzyingly aware that it's infinitely easier to breathe, being bound to Him. That, here, you are gloriously free in the Reality of the Unseen.

 

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen...For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared for us this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee" (2 Cor. 4:16-18; 5:4-5).

 

Burning like everything

  "My heart is overflowing with a good theme; I recite my composition concerning the King; my tongue is the pen of a ready writer…."

-Psalm 45:1    

     From the midway of June bleeding into recent July, the Lord has spoken this Scripture to my heart three times, in three ways. One time gently, in preparation. Two times audibly, through a father that I dearly esteem.

The first time made me laugh hard.

     As a band, we've just come off the running heels of releasing a CD-- one so awe-striking in its gunshot start and its cross-country course that the work has left us all stunned. Come time for the concert, we each questioned reality a good bit. Beforehand, we joked in backstage fervor that it felt like birthing a baby in front of 100 of your closest friends. That picture? Very apt, as it turns out.

     And, afterwards, after sharing in song with saints, engaging the Father's own heart, boldly approaching His throne of grace... His beautiful awe struck me even harder. It buckled my knees and emptied my chest clean of useable air.

    So that next morning, when knees and lungs couldn't move from bed, I laughed when He traced the verse clear in front of my eyes. Laughed like Sarah before she met her son Isaac. Before she knew that faith has to run wide-eyed, hunting for the next immeasurable victory He'll win, expecting that it will be holy in its foolishness. That the way Christ leads in triumph stumps even our most learned wisdom because He uses the weak things to flat out confuse.

 

    Like Sarah, I laughed because I was confused. I was confused because my tongue hadn't been full of compositions, but of grieving questions. Because my hand had stayed plastered Job-style across my mouth for a-year-and-then-some.

Because My Author again had articulated a truth that my postpartum, joy-wearied soul could not.

After so long struggling for words, here He was telling me softly,

"My overflow will be your theme. It's time to pry the scared hand off and doff the fear at the door. At My Door where only I AM the Way in and no fear can enter in My Living Gate , because I've already banished it far. I will inhabit the praises of My people and My overflow will be your theme."

 

     Laughing turned to crying when I realized that He was not only putting words in my dry mouth, but He was asking that I continue to speak them. That I extend my hand with a ready pen, and that it reach across distance of fear and divulge deep unto deep and grasp

   your hand.

     My friend, whoever you are and however well we know each other...it doesn't matter but for the fact that we share in what Christ is teaching our ever-brightening eyes. We share in His death as in His life (Rom. 6:5)! Oh yes, there are revelations needing to be kept between our souls and the Father's unending heart. It would be desecration to air every intimacy. Please don't mistake that.

But when He laid it heavy on my mind, that I was holding back words from fear, I knew confession was needed. Confession to you. In this new format.

      You see, as much as I delight in singing His words to people, there's deep joy in writing them out, too. Intertwined stories read as infinitely more interesting plots, and the way He made us intends a particular wrapping to happen. When we bind together as that unyielding cord not easily broken, we hurt and rejoice and triumph in a more glorifying array of Love. Our unity as the Bride brings deep delight to the Bridegroom's heart.

The part where I need to confess?

I've been terrified of entering into the world that He so loves, through words, and through the tangible.

I've been hiding. I've been wondering how in the world to stop hiding when it appears (in the safety of darkness) the only reasonable reaction to throbbing questions.

Because as beautiful as the past year-and-then-some has shown itself to be, it's also been chock full of ache.

Ache came last May when a classmate of mine ran ahead of us, pounded dirt into Glory after a brutal fight with leukemia.

She shone like Moses descending the Mount whenever she came to school for classes. Her determination shook your bones and made you want to run miles like she did on the cross-country team.

Her mama asked if a friend and I would sing "Healer" and "Yet Rejoice" at the memorial service.

And in the wail that threatened to erupt from grief, there instead grew this rugged Hope of Christ's Healing. Right in the eyes of friends bearing their hearts and a solid wooden box.

Right in the middle of a hole staring open.

 

Ache came in last June when a dear family friend lost ability to remember altogether, and graciously He relieved her from body.

Again, song was asked for. And again, the question hung like a "how"? How to play songs for the hurt? How to declare that this is always True: Jesus is ALIVE.

Especially when your heart starts doubting…?

Then my grandma's sister leaves us and the last song she asked for? Amazing Grace.

A woman trapped by her shaking body and inability to control it asked for the only thing that heals.

 

And in this most recent, whirling April when the mama of four gorgeous girls ran Home, too…

It burned like too much fire.

The feet that scaled the mountain seemed like two feet too many... and with a family behind her?

She'd been diagnosed with a second bout of breast cancer when my Mama got the same news.

 

She'd shone so bright and so hot that fire lit up everything around her when she lifted those beautiful hands heavenward and sang.

She lifted herself as living offering that desired to be quenched by nothing but a burning, holy Flame.

Even when inside her burned like everything.

 

The songs she leaves ablaze in our midst still grow hot, and all these memorials

All these cherished souls left behind,

All these words to proclaim,

They pull the hiding heart out.

 

 

Because, friends, hiding in grief is simply no option when you hear the good news the blessed feet bring (Is. 52:7). Tears, yes. Questioning, yes.

Hiding, no.

I'm sorry that I have.

When the lives of these healed saints declare that

The Gospel breathes LIFE into dust people, you know it more true than anything. Jesus took the place of His people's sin, broken so that we can actually LIVE fully, reunited with Him Who gives LIFE.

I don't know about you, but that turns my tears into laughing, again. That looses the stifled sadness into a full out sprint that tells the world, "He is alive! Oh, have you heard?!"

He's alive and I've heard it from His own mouth.

It makes me want to sing it to you. Share His goodness with you in the face of what strikes us hard across the soul.

Yes, it makes my heart overflow with a good theme. And if you agree, something glorious will come of our sharing.

His Name will burn on our lips.

And we will burn like everything.