red painted leaves
I got it all wrong, believing that somehow I could glorify God. Like somehow I forgot all my insufficiency and instead of trusting God despite my impotence... I decided to deny my impotence.
That's when it gets hard, forcing your way and making your own bravery. Making something of yourself. This is the road Fear loves to roam. Fear's coziest home, where she still lives with her mother. Pride.
It's amazing how time goes forward and it's a year later and you wonder if every eye-opening moment ever made a dent in the broken person you are. I'm thinking maybe Grace wraps itself 'round these revelations and sinks us into them, like knowledge we live in. Truths we've forgotten -- the Spirit calls us and draws us and wrings us out and sinks us into Wisdom himself.
How I wish I could say how far I've come, only it seems any distance I've covered is backwards, and downwards. This wide path seems so narrow. So dry, devoid of Grace -- I miss all its markers Home.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to give up the illusion of my own kingdom.
Cynicism and I have gotten too close.
I'm hostage to Expectation and refuse to let Appreciation free me. Even if she holds a key. It takes a certain amount of humility and I'm not sure that my knees can take the fall.
It's a constant slow break, where tears prick and fall. They don't blink away. Denying impotence is refusing God and who do I try to kid? I can't turn from idols to the living God. I've a heart of stone myself and I'll be worshiping stone, unless God in mercy makes flesh on my hardened soul.
I'll follow along with Romans 4, this passage I once clung to in Hope.
We're a glory world. Our God is a Glorious God and aren't we His image? We seek after our Maker's glory. Don't tell me I'm the only one. Do I care five cents about making my God look good? I seek after my Maker's glory to make myself look good. That's how I know it's never been about me glorifying God. That it was only my desperate solution to a meaningless life.
I count this as mercy. It's been a long time since the breaking has allowed Holy to break in. With tears, I count it mercy.
My impotence is great. My existing impotence fazes me, hence my attempt to bury it.
Burying impotence, suppressing sadness, strengthening weakness -- this doesn't glorify God. It's a futile attempt to earn my own praise.
I hear the apostle Paul's cries quietening.
Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
The truth is, God is glorifying Himself in all things. Maybe the only way to deny myself is to hate my own glory and enter into the work of the God who permeates all things with Oneness, oneness that makes all things His glory -- by believing that He will fulfill His promises.
I'm still tripping over my own pride. I'll keep sinking deeper.
But the cross is like a tree in autumn, all bared,
these red painted leaves all over the ground.
That's when it gets hard, forcing your way and making your own bravery. Making something of yourself. This is the road Fear loves to roam. Fear's coziest home, where she still lives with her mother. Pride.
It's amazing how time goes forward and it's a year later and you wonder if every eye-opening moment ever made a dent in the broken person you are. I'm thinking maybe Grace wraps itself 'round these revelations and sinks us into them, like knowledge we live in. Truths we've forgotten -- the Spirit calls us and draws us and wrings us out and sinks us into Wisdom himself.
How I wish I could say how far I've come, only it seems any distance I've covered is backwards, and downwards. This wide path seems so narrow. So dry, devoid of Grace -- I miss all its markers Home.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to give up the illusion of my own kingdom.
Cynicism and I have gotten too close.
I'm hostage to Expectation and refuse to let Appreciation free me. Even if she holds a key. It takes a certain amount of humility and I'm not sure that my knees can take the fall.
It's a constant slow break, where tears prick and fall. They don't blink away. Denying impotence is refusing God and who do I try to kid? I can't turn from idols to the living God. I've a heart of stone myself and I'll be worshiping stone, unless God in mercy makes flesh on my hardened soul.
I'll follow along with Romans 4, this passage I once clung to in Hope.
We're a glory world. Our God is a Glorious God and aren't we His image? We seek after our Maker's glory. Don't tell me I'm the only one. Do I care five cents about making my God look good? I seek after my Maker's glory to make myself look good. That's how I know it's never been about me glorifying God. That it was only my desperate solution to a meaningless life.
I count this as mercy. It's been a long time since the breaking has allowed Holy to break in. With tears, I count it mercy.
My impotence is great. My existing impotence fazes me, hence my attempt to bury it.
Burying impotence, suppressing sadness, strengthening weakness -- this doesn't glorify God. It's a futile attempt to earn my own praise.
I hear the apostle Paul's cries quietening.
Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
The truth is, God is glorifying Himself in all things. Maybe the only way to deny myself is to hate my own glory and enter into the work of the God who permeates all things with Oneness, oneness that makes all things His glory -- by believing that He will fulfill His promises.
I'm still tripping over my own pride. I'll keep sinking deeper.
But the cross is like a tree in autumn, all bared,
these red painted leaves all over the ground.
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