kingdom math

God and I have been at work in those heartspaces I mentioned in my previous post. he is good to me: gentle and precise, just like the Master Surgeon He is.

as i've braved the journey into my heart's inner recesses, to those dark and hidden places, i've called them out as precisely as i'm able: here is the lie i've held onto so tightly, that has held on to me. offer me your truth. rip out the lie by the roots without removing chunks of my heart if You can, allow your truth to take root in that place. bind up the wound.

to be sure, it is a gasping, choking, sobbing business and there is more work ahead of me. but He has met and continues to meet me in those places. he meets me with tender grace, and i can already see evidences of His truth taking root there.

i was talking to christianne tonight, trying to tell her about these things. trying to put words around the movements of God in my heart. i was telling her how it seemed to me that the heights of joy seem higher, the freedom of our hearts more unbounded when we are willing to go into the darkness and the depths of ourselves, letting God meet us in those places. when we do this, we come out on the other side and see that it is good and new and better than anything we've had before. the heights are higher, the joy more joyful, the freedom even freer.

i mentioned once how i dance at church now. how i can't help it. how those are the most unselfconscious moments of my week. my dancing, my arms raised and extended, my singing at the top of my lungs, are the most natural and uncontained outpourings my heart has to offer. how i dance because my heart does. how i dance because my shackles are gone.

and so when i went to church today, it was much the same: having known God was meeting me in my dark and hurting places this week, i danced wildly for joy when the music started. i really couldn't contain it. i sang, i raise my hands, i moved in union with the music. and He met me there too: in this dancing, joyful place.

with the music was over and the sermon about to start, we were invited to turn around and shake hands with people. turning around, i noticed a man behind me. he was sobbing, his hair shaggy and unkempt. he cried into his hands uncontrollably; i could not see his face. a woman in the row behind him kept her hand on his shoulder, comforting him.

we all sat into our seats and i could hear one of the ushers speaking to the man behind me. he said yes, i'm okay. it's been so many years since i've been in church. many years. the usher handed him a box of tissue, asked if he wanted to speak to someone. the man replied, i will talk to you after the service, i just need to sit here and be here now.

when the sermon was over, we sang a closing song, one that had lyrics about heart singing to God, a heart that cannot help but sing. i thought about how appropriate and fitting the lyrics were, how well it expressed where my heart was at not only that day, but where it was at over the last few months as well. i thought of the man behind me and wondered at his story: why he had left church and why he was back today, what it was that moved him to such deep tears. what had him so broken and hurting so deeply.

when i turned around, the man was looking up. he wasn't sobbing anymore, but obviously transfixed and moved. eyes and cheeks still wet. he stayed in his seat as everyone else cleared the aisles.

compelled, i turned to him and reached for his hand, grabbing his with both of my own, meeting his gaze intently. bless you for being here, i said. bless you.

he began to choke again, and the tears began to flow. you're so beautiful, he told me [said in a way that i knew it had nothing to do with my appearance]. your worship ... the way you worshipped ... so, so beautiful. and he began to weep freely again.

i have been set free of so many things, i replied.

i tightened my grip around his hands and let him be in that space, still and transfixed and in awe of the God who met him there: exactly as he was, in whatever brokenness he carried in his heart.

i wondered of all the places a hurting man could have seated himself that day in that great big church building, the most likely place would be in the corner at the back. but today he sat in a row toward the front and at the center, right behind where i was sitting. and part of how God met him and moved in him that day had something to do with the crazy dancing arm-waving girl in front of him, singing at the top of her lungs [and probably off-key half the time].

i thought back to the sermon i heard. how it struck me about what our pastor said about giving: giving back to God in an act of trust a portion of what He's given us. how God multiplies what we offer him, however small, oftentimes in ways we never see: loaves and fishes, and all that.

i thought of the worship i offered up this day, how i really didn't understand what had transpired in the heart of the man in the row behind me. but how i knew that God took what i gave him this morning and multiplied it. somehow it was offered as food to a soul hungry and starving.

kingdom math at work, multiplication that doesn't make sense on any human scale.

how blessed i was to see God meet him there. and it hit me: the worship he witnessed would not have been possible unless God had walked with me through the darkness of many prior months, met me in the thick of mystery, carried me through the fire, and met me on the other side in a place that was boundless, joyful, and completely free. how it would not have happened at all unless i invited Him, unless i let myself learn to trust Him in the dark.

it struck me that as blessed as i am to know the joy of being set free, none of it is for me. none of it. which i've always known, but the knowledge today came in the way of a human soul, real and raw in his need, tears and sobs and wet crumpled tissues.

beyond our journeys and our pain and our trials and the times where darkness presses in around us is God's intent that those things will serve a greater purpose. our lives are meant to bear testimony to the truth of God's faithfulness, of His crazy deep reckless raging love for us, of how that love can heal a broken soul, set a prisoner free, and give us unimaginable, uncontained joy.

i told christianne that having so fresh a memory of God meeting me in the darkness has given me the faith that He would do the same here, meet me in the dark and mysterious place that i walk through now. and today was added inspiration, fuel to invite Him to continue the work He's about in me, knowing that if my pain remains my own, if i don't allow God to redeem it, it is pointless.

but when i ask Him to come along, when i allow Him to meet me there, God will show up. brilliantly and unexpectedly. in the dark in hurting places within me and in the row behind me, in the dark and hurting places of another.