in the night

3-16-11


My eyes are brightening as the music is pounding it's way from my ears to my head.....to my soul. And it's changing me from the inside out; soon enough a smile sneaks out- and here I am, sitting here smiling. I have some confessions to make:
Sometimes I've let my hope get beaten up, black and blue, very hesitant to crawl back out into the sunlight for fear I would find it all darkness. So often that hope has proved to let me down, but that's because it was misplaced in my own selfish expectations, and I held it close and tight to my heart. Sometimes my hope was cast to the ground because it just didn't look far enough, or climb deep enough in.
I'm waking up, and words are echoing in my head, "none who place their hope in me will be disappointed"

I'm waking up and looking around me and wondering how I never saw all this with these eyes before.
I'm waking up and I'm a child again- looking into a pair of eyes and knowing that I can hope.

I'm waking up and it's spring. Everything is waking up. I'm looking through everything, all of the years built up into a translucent haze, and all I see through it is a face. In that gaze hangs the balance of all my hopes. And I know I won't be disappointed. I know I can't be disappointed- not when I see that face.
Not when I see that face.
Somehow all this connects to redemption. I've been thinking about things being reclaimed, but, redemption is our HOPE.

And so often it looks as though things are going badly, as though all our expectations and desires are crumbling around us.
Actually, it looks as though the entire world is crumbling around us.... and in fact it is. But remember, resurrection came after death. And our hope does not disappoint us. Redemption is happening all around us in this death, destruction, pain and brokenness. Jesus is putting on flesh and getting on a cross and dying and beating the hell out of death, and reclaiming.
He has given us hope that looks past the night and knows with a resolution that can't be shaken that dawn is coming, it's only hours away even though it may seem an eternity in this suffocating black.


Now when I look up at the stars at night I think of Abraham, of a promise, of a new name, of a story with many twists and turns, where it looks as though all is lost....but then the dawn rises and there is the best ending, the only ending.