But it's just a turn-Laura-Hackett-on-and-write-it-all-out kind of night...
When all the melancholy of the world and all the things you can't control and don't know about your future come creeping round and hug you tight--and you--sort of enjoy the feeling but wish you were past this point and that the "something more" had happened and you could move into that fairy tale part of your life where all the pieces fit together and you love your husband and know exactly where you'll be for the next twenty years and are perfectly happy and then realize that that's an illusion too.
That even when you're married...
And live in that nation where you have been dreaming you'll be placed...
And doing the "life's work" that you know will be yours...
...it still won't be enough.
You have to recognize your idols for what they are and sacrifice them before the only One worthy of the praise, worship and adoration that you tend to put toward all your ordinary dreams. You have to recognize this tendency to "idolize" the future and learn to live in your present, right now...
Right now...
Because Right Now is the place where you get to meet Jesus...
Remember His love...
And survive "all of this" by living in the complete dependence on Him that He deserves and created you for.
It's...interesting...that Laura Hackett is the one I put on today. She is not Jesus (of course) but she brings Jesus close, you know? And the day I looked up the Haiti footage, all of the wreckage and chaos after the 2010 earthquake, hers is the music that was playing in my ears. So as I read about piles of dead bodies and no real medical help and grief and trauma I heard her letting Jesus sing, "Let's survive this together" and "I'm living in the light of your smile...taking in the newness of life, the abundance...I have a living hope...".
I have a living hope.
What does that statement mean to you? Do you realize the enormity of that declaration! While I stared death in the face, I had life playing in my ears.
I hope my whole life will be summarized in that one statement--staring death in the face while life plays behind my eyes.
Because that is all we do in the world--declare life when none is to be seen...bring hope to the destitute...proclaim freedom to captives...bind up the brokenhearted...
Bind up the brokenhearted...
Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, it's just all becoming clear to me. There is one chapter in the Bible which is indelibly, unutterably massaged into my soul. It has been pronounced and prayed, read and sang, cried out and proclaimed over my life more times than I can count. My ears perk up every time that they begin reading, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the Lord has annointed me..."
And I know its presumptous, becuase this was Jesus' Scripture when He came into His ministry--but I know it's also my own.
There comes a point when you hear a word spoken over your life--from many silly, crazy and reliable sources--enough that you finally get it. It's been on repeat so much that it is FINALLY the song of your soul. It's the life playing when death is all around--that is what Isaiah 61 has become to me.
When I think about my life, pondering calling and loneliness and isolation and hope and joy and pain and the other million fragments that make up a life--I remember that my life is hidden with Christ in God and that there are good works that the Lord had prepared way before I took my first breath--and even if not one person had ever spoken hope into my dream to see Haiti whole...
The Lord has given me Isaiah 61.
And asked me to join Him.
And if that was all--if I didn't have journals filled with prayers and prophecies and experiences about and in and in the midst of loving them--which has become my life...I would still go, just because I keep hearing Isaiah 61.
And I will never stop hearing Isaiah 61.
And I will never stop bringing Isaiah 61.
And I will never stop living out Isaiah 61, wherever He deems fit to put me.
Just knowing that you're here with me now
It changes everything
Just knowing that you're here with me now
It changes everything, Lord
Cause I thought that I had to make it on my own
But you stopped that and claimed me as your own
Cause I thought that I had to make it on my own
But you stopped that
And called me Yours
And called me Yours
Just don't give up on me now cause I'm scared
and I need you strong when I'm weak
Hold on and believe in me
When my heart just can't figure out what it wants
please give me a reason to trust
You'll still fight for me
from Laura Hackett's song, "Here With Me Now"
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