The woman who runs through her day
on her own strength, short on patience and full of resentment;
The woman who plans, so carefully,
what she will eat and not eat, and then at the end of the day still finds herself
a slave to her stomach;
The mother who is weary, and allows
weariness to turn to anger, and allows anger to spew from her lips and wound
those she loves;
She is blind.
She is blind, and she is a little child who has run away from her father on a busy street. She is trying to dodge and
weave through the temptations, to love and serve from her own empty heart. She exerts all of her effort trying to make
life work, trying to keep herself safe and happy, even though she cannot see
nor avoid the dangers that surround her. She has run away from safety.
"Spiritually speaking, we are blind. We
walk through life on an unseen journey, since we live by faith here on earth.
There is an unseen world all around us that we can sense but can never see, a
world of radiant splendor and of abysmal darkness, a world that surrounds us
like a fifth dimension and more. That world is not an imaginary world. In
fact, it is much more real that the
world we know from our senses. Our
access to that world comes to us via our ears rather than our eyes, ears that
are attentive to the Word and Spirit of God." (Grace Upon Grace, p42)
Can you imagine what you would see
if you could see the spiritual things that happen all around us every day? Can you imagine seeing every angel’s rescue
of your child, every prayer answered and comfort sent to you in your
sorrow? Can you imagine seeing your own
wounds, the ones from other people’s sins? Can you imagine seeing the carnage
left on your baby’s heart after that last tongue-lashing? Can you imagine uncovering the secret where
you keep your “little” pet sins and discovering it is infested with maggots?
Thinking about this makes my knees
shake.
The truth is, we are often more
comfortable in our blindness. We don’t want to see our own sin, and we like to
imagine that most of it is not only unseen, but unseeable. We don’t want to see the wounds and the holes
in the people around us. We would be terrified if we could see the cosmic
battle of good vs. evil happening right now in our community, in our homes, in
our own hearts.
We would be terrified.
We might even be so scared that we
would remember to pray;
To cling to Jesus;
To hear His Word, and to learn to
see by listening;
To abide in Him, to hold his hand tightly,
like a blind little child on a busy street.
Praise be to God, who restores sight to the blind.
Praise God who chases after his daughter, who sacrifices Himself to save her.
Father, restore us and carry us again. Teach my hand to grip your finger and hold tightly.
Teach me the sound of Your voice through Your Word.
Abide me in you.
Amen.
"Your word is a
lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Psalm 119
See also John 15
Some days abiding IN Him is so challenging. I am the mother that gets so side tracked by life I neglect to abide and react in the flesh...and then nothing gets done "right". Loudly encouraging {yelling}, emphasizing strongly {banging a book on the table}, straying from my food plan {scarfing a doughnut}...sometimes I try to make it look all pretty. Like what I am doing is reasonable because, well, ANYONE given *my* frustration dujour would do the same. Right?
ReplyDeleteSigh.....still He gives more grace in my day and while I see a progression from when I had 4 kids at home ages 7 and under, there are definitely days when the battle around me rages on and the enemy finds that chink in my armor and BAM! Off I go....not abiding in Him!
Thanks for this post. It really spoke to me!