Words In My Head (... Like misfits after midnight begging for a light)

Words are funny little things. The can draw blood and they can cure in ways that doctors can't. They can bring down empires and erect new ones. They can reveal the hidden, or they can hide the truth. They can paint more vividly than a brush and A carefully phrased sentence can insinuate and evade at the same time. It can serve to both appease our own need to reveal without actually doing so. And if we claim true ownership of our words, if they were born out of tears, experience and grace, then they are more than scribbles on a page or blips on a screen. They are more than academic and hypothetical ideas to be considered, critiqued and dissected. They can be the very portions of our hearts upon which those lessons were branded.

Dole them out with caution, lest you give something you never intended to.

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

Are we ever "where we need to be?" On one hand, isn't it possible to be in G-d's will, and isn't that then "where we need to be?" But on the other hand, isn't the nature of sanctification the reality that we aren't where we need to be, and thus we are getting to that place we're supposed to be? The former allows us to live in shalom with what G-d has given (or not given) us. It facilitates the process of living in the present. However, the reality of the latter is like a thorn in the mind, heart and spirit. The realization that our thoughts and motives count just as heavily as our actions (Sermon on the mount), yet we are to act in accordance with what is right even when our motives and thoughts are rebellious remains, to me, a difficult anomaly.

This is ever the tension of our lives... acknowledging the legitimacy of our feelings without necessarily living by them. Struggling to live right even when our motives are questionable. Through all of these paradoxes runs a thread of attempted faithfulness, often faltering... a faithfulness that I pray is honored even when I cannot straighten or sweep out the depths of my intentions.

The Spirit prays for us when we do not have the words... but I think He also prays for us when our motives are muddled.