Reflection

Knowing God is with me then and feeling His very real Presence in a given moment are two very different experiences. One comforts, one overwhelms and literally brings you to your knees. This morning I had the privilege of sitting in His lap, held and healed, basking in His Love beyond measure.

As I read my devotions this morning, from Ann Voskamp, titled Affectionate Grace, I am choking out sobs at the depth and truth of her words. (see below) They are mine. Words I lived. When soul and hell meet, you live this truth, this darkness that only you and God know. Because He's been there too and He's there, at the bottom, dark, dank, bottomless.

He meets me, takes my hand, and knowing I am helpless to even take one step; gathers me to Himself and carries me up into Light. I am half-way to whole and He fills me. Heals me. Time. Grace. Love. Joy. Peace. All Him. All His. Forever, I am. His The Only I AM,



Hosea 2:19~20 And then I'll marry you for good~forever! I'll marry you true and proper, in love and tenderness. Yes, I'll marry you and neither leave you nor let you go. You'll know Me, GOD, for Who I really am.

Affectionate Grace

Ann Voskamp

The bride wears white.

And the day I get married I do, yet most of my life I've worn black.

I know who I've been.

The first memory I ever held was the blood of my sister running, everything alive draining away. I came from here. We breathed grief. 

Black fears formed me.

There were years I cut myself along the thin skin of the wrists, wild for a way out of a darkness that chokes.

On a Sunday morning we sit in our country chapel. Shalom(daughter) slips on the Farmer's lap. I sit waiting, rubbing my wrist. Rubbing the edge of my black cuff. Before us are the bread and juice of the vine. The loaf of bread that will be broken in half.

The bread will be pure white. I can never thank Him enough.

It's still in the chapel sanctuary. The piano notes  begin. One woman's quavering voice begins alone.

"When I survey the wondrous cross.."

The nails right through. The glorious way out of everything that has been. 

Out of all my black...the horror of death, the relentless prison of fear, the way pain pursued, a whole family aching endless with wounds we couldn't heal. 

Him the only Way out.

And when I survey, she's there too, way in the back of my past, Bible teacher Kay Arthur on a long-ago platform, her voice quaking with Calvary's love - it's hell and it's healing, and I'm not yet twenty-one, and when she tells me what love saved me, the spit and the beard plucked cruel, His ribs rising and falling hard, wild gasp for breath, the purest God-Man subjected to vilest humanity -

all my hard exterior cracks right open and runs liquid and what do we know of true love?

"See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down..."

And I'm sitting there before Communion, rubbing my wrist, and all I can think of is that woman in Luke 7, the one in the shadows with her alabaster jar and she's weeping in the black. She knows who she's been.

A dark storm, she cries. She wets Jesus' feet with her tears. She "rains," it reads, in the original Greek brecho.

She rains; she's this brecho that breaks. she's this full rain falling. She's this heart-water let loose. 

Him so pure and His feet so dirty. 

Her so filthy and Him her only purity. 

Will anyone wash His feet with their love?

And that woman, she has no pitcher but she has passion - the kind no Pharisee could ever understand and she has no water but she has her heart.

She pours it out. She pours it out.

And with no towel but tresses, no hand cloth but her hair, she does the unthinkable, the scorned and the disgraced.

When all Jewish women were required to keep their hair done up, lest they be seen as shameful and loose, she lets her locks down.

Rabbis, men of the law, said that if a woman loosed her hair in public, let her hair flow mingled down, it was grounds for divorce.

Grounds to be shamed and sent away.

But there is a love far greater than law.

That Luke woman, she lets her hair loose, lets her love loose and she looks loose and there are always Michals who will scorn David's dancing before the ark - but Jesus lets her kiss Him.

It seems shocking, appalling too intimate, and this kataphileo, these kisses,

this is the same word of the father kissing the prodigal son, a symbolic picture of God embracing, the father falling on the neck of his child and kissing, and doesn't the whole realm of earth need to be seized with a power of a great affection, "for we are member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones" (Ephesians 5:30)

The Pharisee had no water for His feet but she gave her heart-water.

And the Pharisee had not towel but she laid out her loose, silken hair.

And Pharisee had no towel but she couldn't stop kissing His feet,

her grateful love the most expensive perfume - the kind that cost her the respect of men but earned her the pearl of great price, the acceptance of Jesus - "for she loved much" (Luke 7:47)...

"Your faith has saved you; go in peace" (Luke 7:50)

She gave her grateful love as an intimate gift.

And her heart-water and costly love are gifts full received and accepted by Christ.

And our God is the God who whispers, "Call Me Husband."

The God who says, "Yet you were naked and bare. Then I passed by you and saw you, and behold, you were at the time for love; so I spread My skirt over you and covered your nakedness...and entered a covenant with you so that you became Mine" (Ezekiel 16:7-9)

The Savior celebrates communion with His bride, the spiritual oneness He made her for.

Will anyone wash His feet with their love?

"Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small.."

I'm murmuring the notes of the song before Communion and these inner dark clouds split into white, the brecho that breaks, and Elie Wiese had said, "No one is capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night."

In the middle of the hymn, Shalom leans off the Farmer's lap, leans her face into mine that's emerged from the dark, her long hair, curling wisps, framing everything and she reaches out to touch my cheek..

My wet cheek. I can never thank Him enough.

She who's been freed of much, freely loves, and she who knows how she's forgiven, how she gives thanks.

She gives back everything.

It is possible to have a form of religion and be formed by love for Christ. And it's possible to see the law but be blind to love. And love for all, no matter what, is what never fails...

Who feels such gratitude for their salvation in Christ that they live such affection for Christ?

Who can say just this: "Lord,  you know all things; you know that I love you"? Oh please, Lord - let it be said of us.

What is greater proof to the world of the power of the gospel of Christ than the world witnessing the power of profuse love for Christ?

Shalom brushes away what's running down, all my rain, and she barely whispers it.

"Why you cryin', Mama...and smiling?"

I have no words. Just shake my head. Just eyes on the words of the hymn.

Just love falling.

"Because of Jesus, Mama?"

I nod and the sanctuary fills:

Love so amazing, so divine, demands

my soul,

my life,

my all.

Lord, forgive me. It is possible to have a form of religion and not be formed by love for Christ. Lord, forgive me" It is possible to see the law but be blind to love. Lord, forgive me. You know all things and You know all the days I didn't thank You - that I have not expressed my love to You. Today, cause me to feel such gratitude for my salvation in Christ that I live such affection for Christ. Amen