A Gathering

Listening to Tim Keller because a dear friend provided his messages for me on an ipod.  Does she know the full measure of her gift?  Does she know the hours I spend in the car listening instead of growing angry...at all this time of mine seeming to slip away.  Given away.  And does anyone notice or care?  Time.  Again.

Tonight Keller was talking about how Jesus can be our husband, and I thought of mine so far away.  My heart in Istanbul, Turkey. I know the Bible says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and can you imagine such a tall order?  I wonder...if in all their strength they grow weary in doing good?  Are our husbands lonely too?  Do they cling to the cross of Christ and cry out to Him to be their husband too?  Their shoulders?  Their strength?  How can we encourage these great men?  How can we lift their hopes?

And what can I say to the Shoulder's daughters who cry for him and worry their lives would be over if he ever left the earth with out them?  What do I say to his sons, when they need to listen, but they can't hear from their mama anymore like that?  How would a woman know what it takes to become a man anyway?

The house lies, again, in ruins.  The week spent weakly comforting and caring for broken bodies and hurting hearts.  I want to lay my head right down and bawl.  At all this failure.  All this mess.  And how am I going to get it all together before the Shoulders comes home?

Isn't that how we all feel when we really just need to come to God?  In all the tears and snot running down.  In all the ugliness. Wouldn't it be nice to enter in sometime when  we've all been good and holy?  When we've not yelled at our little one and silently shunned the big one?  When we've not played our crumpling cards?  Instead, we just show up and shrug.  Here we are again, Lord, and what are You going to do with the whole lot of us?  Is there enough water in all the world this time?

Tender Father.  Pulls His daughters and sons right up into His lap and takes out a giant white hankie.  Patiently wipes the world off.  Again.  And how is it He never grows tired?   Weary?  Of doing this good to us?  Of loving like this and cleaning us up like this?  How does He get us, these wild children of His, to settle down and rest our heads right there on His eternal heart.   The everlasting arms.

Gathering us all in,

Bernadette