Light flashes from the dark evening sky. My husband and I see it from the glass, two-story deck, off our bedroom, blanketed with down comforters and a fireplace that promises warm.
It’s as if the summers end is announced by loud banging, clanging symbols from heaven, reminding us…
A new season is about to begin.
The summer’s been uncharacteristically muggy, and this night is no different. Yet, clear skies shout of His grandiousness, and my human frame feels so small, underneath the large widows and full, lit-up sky.
Yet, the theme that I find on most social media has been daunting to say the least. Faces become grand and Jesus almost shrinks, as we exhault our own praises and lift our own “brand”, opinion or image.
I had forgotten what’s it’s like to be small, dependent.
I have fought for so long, wanted to stay up with the Joneses…not in possessions, but in name and affluence amongst the average Christian community…
That I hadn’t remembered, it was Mary (a humbe virgin unnnoticed) who was chosen to carry the most Holy, Jesus inside her.
And if I want to be a carrier too…..why did I think the strong and the mighty, the seen or wildly wonderful were the only ones chosen or influential?
When did I too get captivated by overly edited images and think, “That’s real life”? When stinky Shepherd’s in a field also knew illuminated skies, and had a star that lit the way to true freedom?
I have forgotten, my art, my heart, my call in this world where it seems, everyone is tempting us to be everything to every person. We are asked to be supermen, superwomen……
When God calls the humble, the hard-working, the focused fishermen who stayed up all night, just in hopes to catch something of worth.
We are not all things to all people. Yet, as women, we can try to wear a thousand hats, bowing failingly to other people’s expectations.
We fail to gather cheerleaders and encouragers, and instead sit satified in our clump of self-pity, groveling at the have and have-nots, wanna be’s on social media…
Those who we think we should rise and affectively be like….
When Jesus became small.
Have we lost him among the sea of images thrown at us all day long?
When did His face lose our focus? His eyes fail to grasp us? His vision become one of almost a million different voices swirling inside our heads.
Our large house shakes like jello as thunder bangs through the nights sky. My husband and I sit silent, because what can be said when the world stops, and the rainless skies remind us….
There is a God is heaven that sees…..A Father who knows our names, and made us in His image.
I want to be solely fixed on His purposes. But the noise is so loud, the crowd is so angry, the people who we want to impress become less impressed and so we strive harder, losing our identities in those who will never be satisfied.
Only in Him might we find our sole satisfaction; live, move, and have our being.
Another light crashed loud. The dark flashes in bright. Our night room shines big and striking, bold 
and unfearful to those who have a holy respect for God.
And then it comes. The rain.
Because the earth has been hungry. The land has felt barren. The soil of our hearts have been in need of, Latter Day Rain.
Yet, how many are thirsty, but don’t even know it? They ache and they thirst, but yet think the world will satisfy. Haven’t we known in our heart of hearts, all is tares and dross?
And why do I forget, the God who formed me in my Mother’s womb? The one who calls us each by name? The God who longs to reach out with loving arms of grace and embraces us by unwavering love….in a world of fakes?
And, if we only ever knew, how deep and wide and high His amazing love reaches…..maybe we would never run to things that touch our eyes, but leaves hearts aching for more of what we really just don’t need.
Thirsts growing, but never satisfied with anything this world brings. Only the rain from heaven can leave us; never aching, never needing….anything but Him.
A baby born. Unseen. A Holy God, crucified because of His great love.
Oh, that we might learn to give up our lives for the cost of love, learn to lay down what we think we know and own the sacrificial cost of what it really means to live for Him. To die is gain.
My husband reaches across the fluffy blankets, holding my hand in silence as the sky keeps lighting, the house keeps shaking, and a Holy God makes himself known in a world of psuedo-hope, plastic people trying to so hard to be something.
And I don’t want to be big, anymore. I want to be small. Humbled by His great name, so He alone can get all praise. Because…
Without His grace, where would I be?
Let’s live in a world of big personas and not be afraid to be small, living in the hand of a Big God who sees us.
His heart is satisfaction…
His love is all we need.
