Papa, bring me back to you. This teasing, unsatisfying taste of the rain, the few warm drops that threaten to break the heat and yet don’t quite deliver – remind me that I long for you. I wait for you as the dry ground waits, cracking in the hot sun, for a cloudburst to heal it’s fissures. I sit on the deck in anticipation, watching iron-blue storm clouds hold back their gift, hoping for a shower.
This heavy air that muffles sound waves to a dull thud mirrors my heart today. I have grown so used to playing in the fresh cool air of your revealed presence that this day, straining to hear your muffled voice with my muted ears, seems a famine. Yet, I am vaguely aware that this meager sustenance is merely a reminder of how far you have graciously brought me, a memento of days gone by. This used to be my normal, and I did not know I starved. Thank you for this recollection.
I remember a prayer, spoken a few years ago, in which I was beginning to know that I lived a solid, safe, enclosed, anemic life. I had my heart locked away in an airless room. I prided myself in self-control, planned ahead, eschewed extravagant food and living. I was dependable, I was prepared, I was unemotional, I was boring.
Yet I had an inkling that Papa was not so dull. His creation was endlessly creative, surprising & delightful. I began to wonder if maybe I was impertinent in my lack of appreciation for his good gifts and at a loss for how to change, I breathed a small prayer: teach me to appreciate your goodness, creativity, and generosity. Let me live less anemically.
It started with little, intentional steps: eating chocolate, being up for a little adventure here and there. But then, it seemed, this took on a life of it’s own: Food tasted better, somehow. I had always gone barefoot, but now my feet felt the grass and gravel & warm blacktop. It was as if my nerve endings came alive. I basked in the warmth of the sun & studied with pleasure the birds that seemed to come close more often.
Then you captured my heart with a glimpse of your Spirit, a taste of the unexpected yet knowable, irresistible, uncontainable. I see you in the wind, I drown in your grace, I am enthralled.
Make me your enraptured troubadour. Move me to write poetry to your beauty. Let me declare your splendor with my very breath and life in such a way that others are captured by you, seek to know if you are as beautiful and indulgent as I declare. Open my eyes and ears to you.
