Moving Toward Purity of Heart

This week I reflect on purity of heart.

Seeing with Eyes of Love

A video post, of a devotional I gave this week.

Choices

A poem/reflection on Matthew 4:1-2

The wilderness is a place of starving,

of stripping. A place where

what seemed important,

now seems either

necessity or nothing.

Senses become clearer by sparseness

or consumed by what is now gone.

When you are starving you have

a choice: to focus on what

you no longer have

or

to be filled and nourished by

your emptiness.

God Who Understands

Psalm 56

When life abruptly changes

   God have mercy on me.

When friends become betrayers

   God have mercy on me.

When I have been wrongly accused

   God have mercy on me.

When the next step is utterly dark

   God have mercy on me.

When I feel alone in the wilderness

   God have mercy on me.

When I struggle to trust you

   God have mercy on me.

Remind me of your faithful love,

   God of mercy.

Be my companion, my savior,

   God of gentleness.

All my hope is in you,

   God who overcomes.

You have traveled the path of suffering yourself

   and you travel it with me.

Thanks be to you, O God.

Threshold

Genesis 32:6-12

Sometimes the threat seems bigger than we can address.

We feel small and alone even surrounded by people who love us.

Sometimes way forward is impossible to see, and we feel trapped—

unable to go back and afraid to take a step into an unknown future.

That is when memory gifts us (if we let it)

with experiences from earlier times when we were in a similar place

and lived through it by God’s faithfulness.

Jacob came full circle, beginning with a desert promise,

recalled as he stood at another desert threshold.

Life gives us many such places—thresholds,

points of uncertainty, tension and challenge—places of coming

full circle, of familiar unfamiliarity, where we know

we may be afraid, but we won’t be alone.

Junaluska

Job 9:1-12

Holy One, I remember how I felt, lying in bed,

awake, unable to sleep. Each night

I managed only a couple of hours.

Those were interminably long, lonely nights.

I ached for your comforting presence,

but though I knew you were present

I found no warmth, nothing to ease the void

of darkness.

It was then that I had to draw on faith, on resources

within, on memories that testified to your love and provision.

And friends, who loved me in the day so I could last through the night.

A place I love so much, that had been a thin place

felt heavy, thick and barren of all it had ever given me. I moved

as one moving in bitter cold—hunched, stiff.

Job, I hear your anguish, and the memory of mine rises up in accord.

I have learned this:

what seemed insurmountable called forth faith, perseverance,

and courageous hope. I have learned that scars can make us beautiful

if we will allow them to be seen.

Presence

Isaiah 41:10

When all seemed hopeless,

when the path I envisaged washed out before me,

through days of distress and nights of sleeplessness and tears,

when I was exiled from what had been my life,

even then, when it was so dark that I could not feel your comfort

I knew you were with me.

As I lay at the bottom of the pit,

my identity smashed, feeling worthless

and very small,

you sent an angel, and another

and in the dark depths they pieced together

my shattered self, slowly.

It took months, but more angels came. They

knitted my broken self together,

each working a different way, but all

from you and for me.

Freed from that dark pit, I live.

I live!

God of the broken, you have strengthened me,

you have helped me,

you have held me with

your righteous strong hand.

I am loved.

I am yours.

I am grateful.

Praise

Psalm 36:5-9

How do I express my love to you, O God?

You surprise me daily with the depth of your love for me.

You make a way for me and go with me as I walk its path.

Some love you for what you do for them.

But I love you for who you are, a love forged in the wilderness,

where I was led but not abandoned. You were with me there!

My heart erupts with love for you O Lord,

O lover of my soul!

Confession

Isaiah 40

God, whose way leads through

wilderness, whose desert path

uproots us out of ordinary time,

forgive us when we choose

complacency over change,

ease over transformation,

numbness over attentiveness.

We prefer the false security of

easy answers, blame and prejudice

rather than the disciplines of

understanding, patience and

accountability.

Hold us in the desert long enough

to clear our vision, change our hearts,

gentle our judgments.

Hold us accountable even as you

hold us in your hand.

Flatten our mountains of pride.

Raise the ones we have despised.

Make our desert sojourn fruitful—

harsh enough to soften us, to turn

us to you in utter dependency,

so we will know that you show

your power in gentleness,

your strength in compassion,

your greatness in proximity.