In A Field

Faithless with the little. Discontentment is a constant companion. Why is my faith so small and my need so great? I'm tired of my pettiness, my own voice grating on my frayed nerves.  Is there any rest for the one who waits on you? I am tired of lying here in my own self pity and frustration. Please come to my rescue.   I'm desperate for still waters. May I have the sense to sit still. To passionately wait for you in this quiet place. Wait passionately for  God , don’t leave the path. He’ll give you your place in the sun      while you watch the wicked lose it. Psalm 37:34

I'm so tired of living this way.  Tired of giving something to you only to take it back up again when my gaze shifts to the trouble in front of me.  I'm painfully stubborn.  There is no way I can keep this up. I hear you whisper to me -  "Won't you just let me love you?" I'm running around in circles, trying to find the purpose and the constant.  I look to my own vices and solutions, one more feeble than the next.  I can barely put one foot in front of the other.  My back is hunched over from the weight of the monotony of trying to work things out down here. And still I hear your whisper- "Won't you just let me love you?" I'm short on patience and long on frustration.  My wants and wishes pile high around me and I complain that things aren't happening quickly enough.  In vain I stomp my feet and hold my breath like a toddler throwing a tantrum.  My emotions are large and I act out of the sudden rushing impulse, determined that I...

All that I am. What I wish I was and wasn't. My missteps and do overs. My pettiness. My habit for sharing too much of myself. For not sharing enough. For putting myself ahead of everyone. The foolish lies I believe about myself.  Hook.  Line.  Sinker. I will not put up the wall of isolation and fear.  I will welcome You.  Like a child fully aware, dependent and confident in a parent's love I fall on Your G reat G lory.  I will allow Your love to be my security . I will allow who You say I am to fill me up to overflowing.  Living loved and freely. You, Who have  no beginning and no end, call to me.  Stop for me.   Notice me.  That You notice me is l ife .  You say the word and it is done.  Called into existence.  Not a far off, fairy tale thing, but a real flesh and blood truth.  I am the now- not an after or a before- a now.  I can lea...

She sings softly confident in worship and her words cut to the quick.  Penetrating bone and marrow, into the deep.  God's very breath calling into the hidden of me, prompting me to step out of this place and into His light. I'm too easily contented.  Happier to be safe and comfortable than teetering on the unknown; heart racing, eyes wide and expectant.  I hear You call.  I sense it in the recesses of my soul that are covered and grown over with thick vine and weeds.  I do long for You to break me free of them and yet there is this stubborn part of me that will not surrender to the rearranging, life-giving, hurt-encompassing, death-releasing grace and love You offer.  I am lulled by my own state, unsure, uncertain, hesitant, blindly believing safety equals happiness. And still You call, gentle and kind.  Not like I've been told, not the god of my childhood, You're so much more than that frightening, demanding, "no-god". You, patient as...

A beautiful thing happens behind the walls of 87 Church Avenue every second Monday. Smiling, giggling girls play with hula hoops, soccer balls fly through the air, adults sit around a table eating popcorn, drinking sugar-laden tea and laughing as another tells us Namaste  is the Nepali word for "Happy Birthday". Communication is not always smooth, stories take longer to tell and strange looks on puzzled faces are the norm. There is always laughter.  Most nights there is homework being done, stories told, games played and English language instruction.  We are from all over the world.  We all come for refuge, finding it with each other in this church building. We are a mishmash of community, a mosaic of different language, skin colour, faith, and tradition.  The things we hold in common create more unity than those things that would separate us. We are family and this building our kitchen table. Recently we have had the chance to see so much more happ...

I wonder if you remember me. I've been present in every instance of your life.  I was with you when you took your first breath; your eyes bright, your life spread out before you. I delight in you.  I love seeing your face, hearing your voice, watching you grow.  I know every little thing about you.  What takes your breath away, what makes you angry, what you're really afraid of and how many times you've given up only to begin again.  There is no mystery in you that I cannot solve. You have a knack for going from one thing to the next, waiting for your life to start.  You want desperately to truly live and you seek so much of who you are in places where you'll never find it. Those places leave you with a dismal contentment that comes and goes with the setting of the sun. I've cried with you in the darkest moments of your life, sat with you when you felt like you couldn't bear to take another step, when you thought you'd come to the end of you...

And he is six and he walks into the kitchen, all tousled hair, sleepy eyes, and sweetness.  And we tell him. His face is so small and dear, so tiny and he doesn't understand the depth of our words.  In that moment I am 11 and instantly have wisdom beyond my years because of that look of innocence and because I know a little more than he. And he is thirteen and he is confused, growing and lonely.  I'm driving us down the road and I'm singing a song of love for a God Who is beginning to fill in my blank and wrecked spaces.  He is dozing beside me, mumbling that I am a good singer, that he likes the song.  Yet I cannot be the arms that hold him because my own grief wells inside of me, by times, that I fear it may consume me.  He is still so small and young and yet he knows too much and has felt too much.  I feel I am his protector and I am not able to fix this.  I cannot be what he needs and there is an ache that I shouldn't know and I do and be...