With love, you can do anything. You can face any storm, run head on into the darkness. Because love casts out fear. Its roots permeate deeper than the woes of this earth, planting you firmly when all hell breaks loose.
With love there is always hope. It lifts you up when you think you cannot go on anymore, invigorates your bones to press on through the disaster. Love believes. When doubting arrows strike at your heart, when fear and gloom pull you to their mire, love holds you with bright eyes.
It is relentless, pursuing, defiant of time and rust and fire and water and angels and demons and heaven and earth. No weapon can conquer, no ocean dare quench. It will go miles for one glimpse of the beloved, slay monster after monster ‘til dawn breaks and the ground is safe.
Love demands all, not a part, but the whole thing. Love wants to see all, to know all, to behold all of the beloved. Not standing for constructions, or fabrications or substitutions of the original, but longing for that which shines with such beauty and fervor, hidden behind so many layers of hurt, of lies, of self-rejection, of hatred, of abandonment. And though it sting, and shakes the house, love will dig through all the mess to find the treasure inside. Softly saying, you belong with me, where the streets are lined with gold.
"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
- Albert Camus • Ask Me Anything
Where no thief comes near, and no moth destroys.
When it seems that He delays
And does not come in time to save
He must know there is something dead
He needs to resurrect instead
“
But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.’ And he lay down and slept under a broom tree.
And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Arise and eat.’ And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again.
And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, ‘Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.’ And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.
”— 1 Kings 9:4-8 (This is beautiful in so many ways)
Love this. There is always enough in Him
(Source: shannonicole)
from Lindsay’s facebook notes. here is her wordpress: http://www.lindsayellyson.wordpress.com
——
Tonight I saw a vision.
16-year-old me saying, “Yes.”
I’d sell 30 years for one adventure in a heartbeat.
I’d skip away without a single second thought.
Hesitation was a fairy tale for ancients.
The letters “N” and “O” never mingled in my brainspace.
Nothing to lose, a story to gain. And my, these blank pages were desperate for filling.
Fear was a mere wisp of a word.
Money was scrap paper to doodle on.
But dreams! Now dreams were bread and butter.
23. Not so old.
And yet.
Seven years told me many things.
It told me that love can be won. And lost.
That loneliness is more real than the shoes on my feet.
That joy is precious, but pricey. And deep joy pricier still.
Fear is palpable now. Dreams are a luxury.
And money - well it is as worthless as it ever was.
23 has second thoughts. And third thoughts. And fourth.
Seven years earned me much to lose.
Seven years taught me to firstly question what might be gained.
Risk has meaning, and quite often makes its presence known in my chest.
Tonight I saw a vision.
The 16-year-old pranced.
Feet so light and free, barely grazing the earth.
So fast the young one moved.
Hardly a soul even knew she was there.
And then I saw feet that bore the weight of 60 years.
Two pair.
A man and a woman saying, “Yes.”
They strode forward determinedly.
Each step was calculated.
Each step was heavy, so heavy.
And the earth shook.
The city those feet left shook.
The nation they left shook.
And many nations shook.
And everyone knew for a long, long time where those feet had been and where they were going.
Seven more years could tell me many things.
I cannot imagine what 37 years would have to say.
I can imagine that fourth thoughts are a given. And that seventeenth and perhaps even forty-second thoughts are likely.
I can imagine that 37 years might tell me that God is good.
That fear wields knives, that pain is vengeful.
That disappointment must be swallowed as often as morning oatmeal.
That love takes work, and work takes time, and time is lost every second.
If 7 years have earned me so much to lose, how much more so 37 years?
And truly, what did “Yes” even mean when I had never seen the option “No?”
But that 60 -year-old Yes.
Oh the weight of that Yes!
The nations - they shook.
*This poem was inspired from a vision the Lord gave me during a prayer time for Thad & Mary May, a married couple much older than me who are selling everything and moving to a village in Zambia in a few weeks. Their obedience to Jesus is stunning.
