Our Helper
There it
is. Strong and clear. A beam of light; a tone of pure beauty. I see it. I hear it. It calls
to me. It pierces that deep and darkened place. It strikes like lightning
on my soul. It fuels and ignites. Impassions and inspires, infusing its
electricity into my spirit.
I could soar. I could fly.
It is
music. It is light. It is air and water. It is life.
Intoxicated
by its vibrancy, my attachment grows, the longing intensifies. The empty
place long covered is revealed, the straw raked back, the debris blown away…
hope of its filling floods the air; sundrenched, warm, and brilliant. Life
breaks into the dark, shattering its bleak surface into shards of obsidian dust
filtering out on the wind.
I know this. I remember. I’ve been here before and I am so thankful to return, but I had forgotten. Forgotten? How could
it be? How can life be forgotten? How
could it be that the darkness reconstituted itself as if put back together piece by piece hiding the light from my soul?
How could my heart allow itself to be blanketed once again by the dank and heavy? It’s
as if memory itself were stolen and I were left dumb, blind, and mute.
We were
given scripture to help us remember. We were told the stories so that we would
not forget. Our Father knows us. He knows we forget. If I am true to
the things I have learned then I will see even the forgetfulness of my heart as
part of His beautiful story. I will not berate myself for my forgetfulness for that leads only to greater sorrow, but
rejoice in His mercy to bring me to a place of remembering once again. Thank you, Father!
We forget.
We fail. We sin. We lose. We undo. We stop when we should go. We don’t when we
ought. There is so much that shows us that we aren’t and haven’t yet. Do we then look at our lives and say we are failures, that we must be unloved
and unlovable? Do we judge the lack in our lives and declare a verdict and a sentence?
The more I walk this life with the Father by my side, the more I see His grace
and love in, over, and through my entire story. When my soil is cracked, dry, and
barren, He sends His healing rains to restore me. When I am full of the fruit
of having walked closely with Him, a nourishing water flows. He is always
sending me what I need, no matter what my condition.
And those things: the
cracked soil and the bounty of fruit, are all part of me. They make up the
pieces of my story around which my Father interacts with me. My imperfections and uniqueness evoke responses from Him that I alone in creation will experience in this way. They show the varied characteristics of His love, how nimble, far-reaching, and all encompassing it is for me and for all. And He does not turn from us when we have forgotten who we are. He follows us into our amnesia and works to restore our memory.
His love for us is like a deep, soft blanket of snow
that falls silently in the night covering everything. In the morning the sun shines on the fresh fallen snow making it glitter and sparkle. The snow sparkles so that our eyes would see again and our memory return, that we might remember who we are and who He is. Beauty has the power to awaken the soul. Beauty is not simply one of the powerful tools of the Father, it is a defining aspect of Him. It always points to Him.
He will not leave us in our forgetfulness, and we are not to wallow in shame because of it. If anything, we can be glad of our imperfect memory for it will always be met with His faithfulness. Are we to keep on sinning so that his grace may abound? May it never be. We do not sin so that we might wield the power to invoke His grace and call His beauty to our rescue. We sin because we forget. We walk in ignorance having lost sight of who He really is and who we are. But fret not, for the Father will not leave us in our ignorance. He is faithful even when we are unfaithful.
Thank you, Father, for sending the Helper to remind our hearts that You are life!
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