My heart has been heavy lately. I have felt weighed down and thought many times to just give up. That maybe this community thing was just me getting caught up in the psych of it all. That I wasn't cut out to pursue God, or at least not as deeply as I desire. That maybe I can just go back to my old life without conviction, without watching and seeing pain all around me, that maybe I can just dance through life without having to carry any burdens. It has affected my attitude towards my community, towards my family, towards myself and towards God....and then He stepped in.
And now I can't stop crying this morning. I felt the glory of God, I felt His awesomeness, his power, his redemption. It was as if a veal was torn and I can see God all around me. I cant think of anything else, and I have so much to do, but I cant think of anything but Him. One of my family members just got back from a mission trip to Nicaragua the other day, a mission trip he wasn't supposed to go on, one that was a coincidence. Even then, he was just supposed to go and help build houses. He has never wanted to go to church, he has never wanted God...but we prayed.
I asked him how his trip went this morning and I saw God. I saw the light, I saw Jesus in His face. I saw the excitement of a new believer, with all the questions of a new believer. The hows and the whats and the whys. I heard him talk about the feelings and the tinglings, the overwhelming that comes with just being in the presence of the Spirit, the rush of the spirits waves crashing on our soul. I saw redemption and it shed away the rust that had encompassed my heart. I was reminded how mighty my God is, how much love my God has, and how my God never stops trying. I saw Christ save, I see Him saving still, and I can't stop crying. God has shown himself to both of us...to him through the poor and the good, and to me through him. Glory to God...He is mighty to save!!!
This morning, as you posted this I was reading this...
ReplyDeleteSo the question must be broached - what does one realize when one removes even the final guardrail, the barrier of despair, that protects one from fully experiencing ones own nothingness? I realize only what I have known all along but was never ready to confess until the worst hemorrhage in my heart revealed it - that this nothingness which has haunted me at the most unexpected moments, which pressed in on me so forcefully in moments of crisis, this nothingness which I have done my best to keep hidden and separate in the hope that I might break its hold on me- this nothingness is I myself. I have always wanted to treat it as a trespasser sneaking up on me unfairly, or to look down on it from a position superior to it. I have never wanted to see in it the mirror image of my own poverty and destitution. But, in and of myself, I have never been anything but this simple nothingness, this naught which lacks all worth and importance. And into this nothingness that I have always been and am now and will always be, into this abyss which is my original and permanent condition, has been poured the gift of existing which I, in my nothingness, did nothing to deserve. And do you see what must happen as soon as one realizes this? This very nothingness which I have spent my life avoiding becomes then the most priceless of gems, the most precious of all secrets, because finally embracing it I discover for the first time that I am, in my heart of hearts, precisely this nothingness that has been given the unspeakable grace of being.
-Jerome A. Miller
Amazing!! All of those great feelings, after speaking to him when he got back from that mission trip, came rushing back after reading this. I really needed that encouragement again! I'm so happy to know and love you.
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