Cracked Grace

All month long. This struggle. Been there? This willingness and want to know the right way thru, but your blind? Fog. A smoke screen. This thick that seems to stumble your step.

Those marriage discussions that seem to topic dizzy. Round and round we babble without resolution and seeming oneness. 

Children. Those given us, so different one from the other. How to truth nurture each soul to HIS design of them. To teach and raise them up. To make them hungry. For Jesus. 

Friendships. We hurt when they do. Because love matters. Wishing we could do more for their burdens. So we pray. Hearts full and heavy.

Extra expenses, because this health we crave, will not cooperate. Will not make a permanent home in these bones. 

It all just comes, too much sometimes. And when we have a willing heart to obey thru, but He stays quiet, what do we do? We must keep seeking. Never stop friend. It's the seeking that keeps our eyes open to God in the minute. We can witness Him true even when we can't hear. He can be seen in the "just wait". Tasted in the famine.

Sometimes He has to build our hunger. For Him. 

Us desperate and ready.

Ready to still when His voice does come. Ready to awe at His accuracy. Ready to open our hands to Him in this now.

In the tired.  In the "I can't take it anymore".  In the sleepless nights.  And the tear filled days. In the "I don't understand."  In the soul agony of feeling alone.

  Hands. Open. Hungry to just have Jesus. 

Because He cannot be near without the filling. And contrary to our flesh's rational, open hands are never empty. 

Whether letting go, or receiving. We hold a gift.

This upside down way of living. Not clenching tight to maintain order. Not knuckle white to keep safe. Rather palms up to be given life. Life that slows us when everything else says to cram in and speed up. Order rarely comes from the fast and lurching heart. It is gift to remember He is king of backward beauty. 

Insane sensibility.  Awkward composure. Un-bordered safety.  With Him, open hands that would seem vulnerable to no good, become embraced in His holy "Yes." 

We are never safer than when we receive the manna.

Life has these deserts. These places of scorching heat that sear soul. Wind whipping sand so hard upon us we raw. Thirst so constant it may kill us. But God....  Water comes from the rocks. Food falls from the sky. Shade comes from a tree that had no right to be on that desert floor.  When we look up. Past the noise, messes, pain, and loneliness... Look up beyond the hard things... We will always see manna fall. Snow bread landing light nourishment on our soul. Life giving provision that meets lifted hands again and again. 

Say yes to what He allows. Thank Him because He is always good. Because He is worth it. Because you are always loved. Because open hands lead us in to what we ache for. This haven. This place to breathe again. This perspective altering refuge that just might heal us whole. 

 

Today he slowed me with cracking glass. Sweet boy, playing all joy, makes picture window crack. Maybe that was divine. Cause I feel cracked too. That noise of popping glass filling me today... What if I shatter? What if I can't do it all and my shards cut people on my way down? But my upside down Savior stops me sweet. I had to see the glass cracked to bend the knee. To lift up blind eyes and see. 

Sometimes we have to get hungry enough to slow.

Today I am thankful for little hands and cracking glass. For rhythms that don't make any worldly sense. 

I lift up open hands and soul breathes. Because with my Jesus, shattered glass mine as well be diamonds. He's just that lovely.

Be blessed today. Say yes to manna on upturned hand. His provision never ends.

" For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you shall be cultivated and sown."  ~ Ezekial 36:9

"When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Thy consolations delight my soul."

~ Psalm 94:19