How do I comfort with the trite and the condescending when all my heart wants to do is break? How do I tell friends about stately sovereignty when all they feel is the lack of their darling child? How do I speak of abundance when I watch years roll by within a few short days?
I don't know. I do not speak well in the first place. I stumble over the pronouncing of my vast ideas. I write my love out of the fear of being unloved. Yet oftener, words must be spoken to be heard and I can't hide behind the covers of my journal forever. Loving must be verbal even if I do not know what to say.
II Corinthians 1 speaks of a God who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we might be able to comfort those in any affliction with the comfort with which He Himself also comforts us. As we share abundantly in Christ's suffering, so we share abundantly in His comfort. Abundantly.
The word haunts me. Always abundance. We share this abundance of suffering, of comfort, of Christ. Our cup overflows. Goodness and mercy follow us all of our lives, not as passive onlookers but as interested habits clinging to our paths with the diligence of God-sent dignitaries. Grace is not disinterested.
I know these things. I write them out to myself. I hang them on my walls. Chesterton and Donne speak to me out of illustrated passages, hung where I am reminded of their truths. And yet I cannot speak them. My mind sails upon thought and swirls new ideas into its current but the words will not be right and I am afraid to speak lest I hurt where I most wished to heal.
Oh for the grace to speak what must be said, and to show the love that I feel.
Blessings are given, blessings are taken, blessings are withheld, and it is all Grace.
And forever and forever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;
The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.
~Longfellow, from The Bridge
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