What's on my heart, Saturday night

Father,

I Love you so so much. But there are so many times I forget how just how much I love you! Maybe I am stupid – in fact, I am pretty foolish. God and your wisdom is so abundant that it rescues from my stupidity.

Sometimes I am almost afraid to admit my mistakes – to sit down and face you and face my inadequacies and my sin. Is this because I am afraid of the potter’s wheel? Of being slung onto the wheel and beaten into a shape that is beautiful? Lord, you don’t do the beating but when it happens, you simply love me and maybe you allow it. And in my life, it has not been terrible – you have always walked by me. Every footprint, Lord, every footprint has had another by it. Right beside it. I’m standing here in tears and as I raise my hand to wipe them away, I’m not feeling my face. I realise it’s someone else’s hand. It’s yours – you’ve been holding me all along. And my heart breaks with how much you love me.

Do I know how to respond to love? To being pursued? I am afraid that I don’t. How, Lord? How do I respond to someone who always thinks I’m beautiful? How do I know that you are the One who means it? The One who sees? El Roi. And that for you, it’s never phatic communion. It’s not everyone’s eyes that are beautiful – it’s mine. It’s my heart you desire. My love. My eyes you’re looking into when your body is broken. Me. Part of the church. Me. Broken, undesirable and yet so passionately, single-mindedly desired, because nothing is impossible for God. Me. Every single broken member of your bride. And it’s you that is beautiful, you that is glorious – and yet, I am the pursued. Father, I want to seek you and to be found by you and to know you and the power of your resurrection and the fellowship of your sufferings. This is my meagre response. Ecce, Dominus.