"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls."
--Matthew 11

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."
--Philippians 4

"Real self-conquest is the conquest of ourselves not by ourselves by by the Holy Spirit. Self-conquest is really self-surrender.
Yet before we can surrender ourselves we much become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.
More precisely-- we have to have enough mastery of ourselves to renounce our own will into the hands of Christ-- so that he may conquer what we cannot reach by our own efforts."
-- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"

"And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he apprears, we may be confident and unashamed before Him at his coming."
-- 1 John 2

"Risk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of. Play it safe and end up holding the bag."
-- Luke 19 (the message)

"It is not good for man to be alone."
--Genesis 2

Risk. Vulnerability. Trust. Unconditional love. A call to a sort of life that is beyond our wildest dreams and a word spoken to our hearts that shatters all of our closely-held illusions about who we are, who God is and what sort of air we breathe in the context of those two images. These words are the prose and poetries recited to me over the last few months, revolving, rattling around in my sleep, written down upon waking. Once again, I find myself in a space unlike any season that has come before this one. It is nearly March now, which means I've lived two months or more on the wild sea of life away from a land defined by the demands of school. It feels like the first two months of life "on my own," yet that very reality has brought me face to face with the reality that such a thing as "on my own," isn't much of a reality at all.

I find myself faced daily with the questions of what sort of life I will choose while simultaneously taking a long hard look at the choices that have brought me to the life I am living in this very moment, here at 12:30 a.m., sitting at my desk with dry hands. I am overcome with a sense of exposure previously held off by the business of deadlines, papers, and what little income I could manage between moments of sleep. For the past eighteen years, hiding behind books and commitments to acedemia served as socially-acceptable forms to relational avoidance. Although tired and longing for more, I've felt safe surrounded by so much to do, so much to learn and accomplish, so many expectations to fulfill. And now I find myself tottering at the top of a leafless tree, surrounded by nothing but the cool breezes of winter.

A few words from Bradley Hathaway's poem, "Another One of those Nights," have been running through my head recently-- he says, "Grace grows in winter/ I'm told/ (But that's not what I want to hear right now/ truth be known.)" I can't stop thinking about this, that in those moments when we are called out into the wilderness, when we find ourselves thrown about on the open sea, when everything looks dead on the outside, there is still so much green and warmth inside the branches of the trees. It is in these seasons full of questions that the Lord has space to speak. And speaking, he has been.

Over the last five or six years, I see in my life prick and briars that the Lord has been continually using to bring me closer and closer to his chest. In the midst of deaths and struggles, hurts and frustrations, I have come to know the Lord as a Father who comforts. I have come to learn that my maker knows and loves me with an intmacy closer than any created being. Last night, during conversation, someone said simply, "It is so good to be known by the Lord"-- a statement so true that it seems to bring sense to a great deal of my own heart.

But in the course of this particular season, I have felt a shift. "Behold," the Lord tells John in Revelation,"I am making all things new." As I found myself on this new road, entering this wholly new season, these words brought, and continue to bring, a great deal of comfort and terror. He is making all things new. As I find myself living a life a great deal more empty of commitment, I am overcome with the need and desire to be with the Lord, to hear his voice and become deeply in tune with what he would do in my heart now.

Over and over as I seek direction and regeneration I see the Lord changing my understanding of his love for me. He has taken this personal intimacy, this constant comfort I have come to lean on and turned it inside out. No longer does he call me to trust him, no longer do I feel him drawing me in. Rather, I feel his hands on my shoulders, turning me around. He is calling me out upon the water. He has scolded me for hiding the talent under the porch. "You know me," he says, "you have come to know my voice and it is now time for you to speak it. Stop hiding in the dark, stop your pursuit of safety and seclusion and risk."

Risk. Vulerability. Community. Seeking to know and be known. I think in our American, Christian culture, it has become very widely accepted and taught that to seek a pious, individualized, "personal relationship with Jesus" is the appropriate and honorable thing to do. We honor the inner life in the inner chamber because we've domesticated the wild and messy world of relationship. We've paved it. And I've become convicted of my impulse to lean on the crutch of a relationship with God that doesn't call me to risk the graceless and conditional love of my human brothers and sisters. If I believe that God being enough defines leaning on others as a "lack of faith," then I don't need to expose myself before others. If I can find all of the answers to my questions about life in a book, I am not asked to reveal the wrestling and struggle going on in my heart. It is a bit too inconvenient to ask another to enter the confusion of my heart-- God forbid that it take more than the allotted hour and a half to sort it out. And I become steeped in the fear that my own inarticulate rambling may produce more enemies than friends.

However--- as I seek out the heart of God in this season of little to hide behind, I feel the exhilarating abrasion that comes of being called to risk everything. A conversation with a friend a week or so ago provided me with this peice of advice: "Continue to offer your heart." Many times in the last twelve days since those words entered me I've wrestled with the meaning of that advice. It seems more often than not, we are warned to guard our hearts and I've interpreted that as a call not to do anything too stupid, to be timid and skeptical towards situations that demand too much. Don't get yourself into a situation that you can't get out of.

But day by day I am getting to know a God that is actually calling us to a life that is quite far beyond ourselves. I am beginning to imagine a life lived with a God who longs to lavish upon us the fullness of all of his creation. I am learning to know a Father whose love is trustworthy-- trustworthy enough to turn me around to face the edge of a cliff and ask me to hold my heart out above the abyss. He demands everything of us, yet he only demands this because he wants to give us something far better. He asks us to risk the poingant excruciation of death so that our hearts will be sensitive enough to feel the depths of his love poured out upon our wounds. He is continually calling us to a deeper place of knowing and giving love.

There have been far too many nights when I've returned home after conversations feeling hot and exposed and wondering what people will do with what they've learned about the failures and weaknesses of my frail heart. I wonder if I've said too much, been too silly, made anyone feel loved or filled the space with anything worth keeping. I wonder if I should stay home more, say less. I am tempted to give in to despair and fear and avoid sending resumes or standing in front of a class. I sometimes want to settle for a source of income that just gets me by and allows me to stay in a back room somewhere and keeps me from becoming an imposition. I want to spare others the danger that my humanity inevitably is.

But I believe in a God who is enough even for even my brokenness. I believe in a God who is enough to heal the wounds I incur by holding out my heart too far and who is also big enough to heal the hurts that I inflict on others in my own selfish foolishness. And I am learning of the love of a Father who is not so selfish that he would not give us his image in a hundred thousand others who are as broken as we are.

So today I am holding out my heart. Risking as much as my arms can hold, learning daily how to hear his voice when I've gone too far and accepting the grace of his call to hold it out further when I begin to settle.