When Nothing Is Enough

This page lay empty, staring at me as if saying, “say something”. But words are few when the noise of storms come ripping and roaring, when shoes are left scattered, like treasures without reimbursement all across the floor…

And the silence of nothingness, echos pain through the holes in hearts; this world, ill-equipped to fill.

And in a day where eloquence pays, where positive thinking, and life-giving powerful speeches invade the internet…

 I feel silent. Speechless. Nothing to inspire.  Nothing to give.

And yet, this empty child realizes, we can’t keep wrestling with emptiness; filling the vacuum, feeding depravity, multiplying nothingness….When He whispers to our holes, “Oh child, give more”.

Still, the bait of this life says play, “good Christian”; line up at church, smile at the neighbor, laugh with plastic lives plastered….like a magician pulling rabbits out of hats painstakingly empty.

And oh, true authenticity. 

Wearing battle scars bravely, using testimonies not to intimidate the fearing….but as a witness; a witness confronting lives, striking sin in the face….

Sharing what can change us. Truth stated bravely, “Sin always leads to death. Jesus always leads to life, and power, and eternity”.

And yet, my father sits now in surgery. Our nearly two-year-old fights to get away from her bio parents histories.  People all around flailing; barely breathing at the weight of it all.

A friends upper scale neighborhood, girls are being picked off of streets, pulled into vans and raped.  Across the world, wars rage where the innocent meet faces filled with death, in the name of religious hate and tyranny.

And when did wars ever bring peace? When did children become the victims of our selfishness?

Still, even as I write this, I want to leave…run away to Africa.  Sit in tents with the poor; praying, preaching, feeding the needy.  Because if you asked me…if Jesus was still in the flesh and breathing… that’s where we’d likely see Him.

But what if He wants of me more?  What if his call requires loving right where we are first?

She tells us to “Rise”.  I see Beth Moore and hear her challenge God’s church to fill the pews with grace, and love, and power from on High.

And yet, the wounded seem to cry out louder than the victors sometimes.  The maimed chant fear, not realizing they can be detouring, hindering, and weakening the legs of those trying to get their footing.

And friends, could it be….Sometimes white paper doesn’t need filling. Sometimes the territory we live in must be reached and preached, and squatted upon, before we’ll ever reach the nations.

Sometimes foster children simply need noses wiped, shoes swiped up….

The hollowness in us called to rise with His true love.  And only then can we reach the world, like He intended.

So God, teach us.  Remind us that you muddied your sandals on the road to Calvary, before ever being resurrected.  You lived with betrayers, you loved the rejected, you found the most lost, instead of ruminating on the fact that you came to die a grueling death.

And why is it, we want the resurrection without the crucifixion? Or the crucifixion void of His resurrection power?

Teach us that love was never about  “good feelings”, power and might never came from anything less than willingly surrendered lives.

Lord, reach us in our messes, in our small little lives while trying to feed children, care for spouses, reach for hope in a time that the lottery seems like it has more chances than our present situations.

Because God…We need you. 

We need you because we realize we have nothing to give you.  We offer you broken-ness and emptiness, our lives and our every second of every day.

Like clay; broken, barren, unsightly to the human eye.

And yet, you promise to use us.  Despite ourselves. 

Despite our word-lessness, our empty faith, our helplessness and depravity in a day where people long only celebrate celebrity-like fame and power…

And it is in these shadows of your wing…

We quietly nestle in your goodness.  That place up by the corner of your chest where we hear your very heart-beat, where we sense we are complete because you grip us tightly, never letting go…

Let us live wildly in love with The One who is our only hope…

Knowing, there is no need to grow faint and weary because you are coming, there is more, and we are trusting…This isn’t the end of our story.

We love you Lord.  We love you when we  are weak, but most of all when we are strong and filled with faith, feeling self-sufficient.  Because self-sufficiency can be the enemy of our souls….the test of true faith.

Anyone can praise you in the valley…But oh, how much more difficult to bow low after we have been lifted up by someone else’s praise?

And we worship you, because you are the God who redeems our souls.  You are a Father who keeps waiting for all of your children to stand up from the slop and come running home, filling us with a feast that truly satisfies…

Offering us a home, a place, a purpose in this life that has no slot for the hopelessly romantic ones who dream dreams that only by grace could come true…

Thank you Lord.  Thank you for your provision, your presence, your love reigning down on us, especially when we don’t feel it.  It is only by you we live, it is in you we reside, trusting your moving through us when the wind dies down and the leaves lay low.

Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us for trying to offer you something…When all along, you love, cherish, adore, and embrace our nothingness….

And though we fail to recognize it…..

Our nothingness has always been enough…for you.