6:08pm (6 notes)
A rare look inside my journal:
8.7.12 Wednesday
King Jesus,
I was reminded today of something that I had thought about as our plane was landing in Bangkok 7 weeks ago. I was looking out the window as we were descending, and I saw so many colorful houses and tiny rivers, and I thought of the Postal Service song “Such Great Heights,” where he says “everything looks perfect from far away.”
….
Then today I thought of this again, only personally, and regarding my relationships and approach towards people. From far away, I am easygoing, I do the very good things, and I seem to know what I am doing. I have many close relationships and a confidence in You. At least, I have been told I am perceived this way. But up close, You know my aches, my desires, my fears and disappointments and my great joys. Up close, You know I fight really hard for more of You in stubborn me, only to hear You gently say “grace” to me. Up close, You know that I sometimes don’t like myself very much, or that I love You and others so much but don’t know what to do with it so I just sit or sing or cry or run or pray. Up close, only You and I know how You speak to me, love me, heal me, and correct me. Only we know the grace You’ve shown me, and I fail to comprehend it. You know me as I amin all my ugliness and sin, but also who I am in light of You. You know who You made me to be.You know me in all my ugliness and all of my beauty because You chose not to stay far away but to come close where things were not by any means perfect.
I think also of the Samaritan woman at the well. From a distance, she is a normal Samaritan woman, seemingly married, performing her daily tasks as expected, but You chose to get close and see her junk, her shame, and surely her fears and secrets and insecurities, and to offer ‘living water,’ a new life and hope, out of that. You chose to see both the ungood and the good.
It makes me think: it’s really easy to be around people while maintaining a distance, easy to think we are loving them even, or that we know them. But if we get close, we see their junk. Their personalities clash with ours, they get annoying sometimes, they fail to understand us and we fail to understand them. We see that they may struggle with the same thing for a really long time, and our patience may run low. We see their broken pieces and we see a mirror held up to ourselves, showing us our healed parts and our unmended wounds.
The choice is this: will I get close though it will be frustrating, uncomfortable, an inefficient use of time, or cost a lot of me? All of me, even? Though it could tarnish my reputation? Jesus, I have seen You do this time and time again, unapologetically hitting our ugliest and most vulnerable places only to swoop in with Your grace and love. I want to choose to love the same.
John 13:34-35: “34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
amen
gotta share all that junk in our trunk, you and i
