Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Breathe

This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence living in me

This is my daily bread
This is my daily bread
Your very word spoken to me

And I, I'm desperate for you
And I, I'm I'm lost without you

The very air I breathe. The food that I eat. These are things that describe God, but do they describe God in you? Do they describe God in me? I wonder that sometimes. Is God really the air that I breathe? Do I really feel I need him that much? I say feel not because of an emotion, but because the reality is that I do. Anything else is foolishness.

Swimming, deep underwater. You've taken a giant gulp of breathe and begun to dive down, as deep as you possibly go. It doesn't take long for your ears to start ringing, and your lungs to start hurting. But there is a strange peace under the water, as all the noise from the world is muffled, and it's you and the water. Peace to think, peace to listen. But you can't stay forever. Your body starts to hunger for pure oxygen, and your blood begins to run thin. You kick to propel yourself up, but it's so far away. Panic starts to set in as your mind dims, and your limbs slow. Desperation sweeps over you as the possiblity of not reaching the surface becomes very real. You NEED air.

And in that instant, there is nothing else on your mind. Not the pain in your limbs, or the peacefulness of the water. Not the other people in the pool, or what is going on later in the day. There is one thing on your mind: "I must breathe."

Your head breaks the surface of the water, and you gasp for breathe, taking in every ounce of life that you can draw. You have never appreciated something you always had so much. It permeates your entire body, as energy returns, revitalizing you.

Do you need God that much? Have you ever had that moment where you're not sure you're going to reach the surface? Where the thought of God overwhelms all your other senses as you yearn for His life giving presence?

That's the norm. He is the air we breathe. Without Him, we are dead, in every sense of the world.

What are you waiting for? Your head is above the surface, breathe.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Remember

How much we forget through our lives. It begs the question how different our lives would be if we had perfect memories. Would you remember your first steps? The times you needed to be carried to get anywhere? The first time you tasted sugar? The first time you were on a swing? The first time you got hit? The first friend you made? Your first day of school? The day you first met Jesus?

We forget so much. Some of it is worth forgetting, and some we need to remember. Like that first rush of realizing how inadequate we are in front of God. The complete and total brokenness we experience when we enter His presence. That longing and absolute need for Him in our lives. That time that we forget so quickly as the colour fades from our life.

But not all is lost. Even as we watch the memories glide almost peacefully away from us, we retain some faint residue of those experiences. If nothing more than a thin film of mildew on some remote part of our memories, everyone remembers in some form what those longings were like. And how quickly we are to try to scrub ourselves of it. If we remember it, we are bound to it.

I am. I did. I wish I could say I didn't. But too often I find myself scrubbing furiously, trying to remove any trace so that I can claim ignorance. But I'm not ignorant. I know full well what I have left in my path, and I long to be back there. In that naive chasing after a full God. I want to be a child again. I want to, without abandon chase after a Father who loves me, cares for me, and who I have no reason to doubt. Someone who I feel like I can talk to one on one, without my own sin or my own doubts getting in the way.

I want to stop scrubbing the soap, and start scrubbing the dirt.

My life is inversed. I have forgotten. I want to remember what it means to run playfully through the fields of light once more. I want to leave this dark, damp, musty cellar and burst through the doors into the radiant sunshine once more. But I'm afraid of what I'll look like, what I'll be.

And then I remember. I was never enough. I don't deserve this wonderful gift. But it is offered freely to me. Someone has already taken all of this dirt, and cleansed me from it. Though I have done nothing to deserve it, I am clean. And I come once more, crawling on me knees, towards an almighty God who can strike me down at any moment, black like death, but white like the sun.

In that moment, I look down, expecting to see a pale, frail, naked body covered in soot, only to discover a healthy, clean, robed in white body. I am clean. And in that moment, that fraction of a second, I am clean.

I remember.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Grace

I'll be honest with you, grace has always been a foreign concept to me. Grace is something that does not come naturally to me, and thus fundamentally differs from my core. Not my core beliefs, but of who I am, a schism between two parts of me, if you will.

Yet I have grace striking in recent weeks. While at work, I have plenty of time to listen to music, and I was listening through the entirety of Jennifer Knapp's collection. Have you ever had the music just slow for a moment, as the words jump out at you in a way you've never heard before. You've listened to the song a thousand times, and can repeat every word, but this one time, they smack you upside the head? I had one of those moments.

I've exhausted every possible solution,
I've tried every last game there is to play.
In this search for the Christ like perfection
I'm convinced I've only left my God ashamed
I cry I wonder can He hear my despair.
Afraid to lift my hands afraid he doesn't care.

And if He answers and I fall again
Can I still be His daughter can I still depend on Him.
When I'm down search every mistake, looking for new regrets.
Sometimes I forget, I forget that His grace is sufficient for me.
That it's deeper and wider than I can conceive.

His Grace is sufficient for me.
My convictions seem to fade with desperation,
My hope declines with each and every tear.
My sin an anchor and this grace just an illusion.

The gavels heavy and justice is near.
Up comes the light and finds the stains on my hands.
Up comes my pride, I hide, I know he won't understand.
Cause it's deeper than deep and it's wider then wide.
Why did I ever doubt now I'm dying inside. (chorus).

Wow. That just blew me away. I forget how wide it really is. Scratch that, I forget what grace is somedays. I forget how much I really need it. I forget that I need it at all.

That's a scary place to be in. It's a lot like forgetting to swim in the middle of the ocean. Like forgetting to breathe. Forgetting to eat. I need grace. I need God. Because as much as I like to think I'm autonomous, without the need for anyone or anything's input, I am not enough. I am insufficient to meet the benchmark. And that means the only way I'm passing is grace.

God's grace is sufficient for me. When was the last time you ask yourself whether you're trusting that grace? I have to ask myself daily. And when I answer it, I need to ask for more grace. None of us are perfect, and that is the entire point of it all.

But how often do we forget that? Think we need to be all that. Think we need to meet everyone's expectations? Think that we need to meet God's expectations. Reality check, there ARE no expectations on us. Thus grace. We are given something freely. Something undeserved. Something that we could never, ever accomplish.

That rocks my world.