Take away the Stone.

This is the part where I should put some flowery language that sounds nice about you God.  About how You are the Lord of All the Earth, but I just can’t do that today.  It would all be true, I am just worn thin.  My skin is tight over my heart.  I just need You.

Just You.

I need You because I am all out of me.  Finally.

We have both been waiting for this part for a while I think.

I here because I just can’t see the next part.  It is smoke and mist and burden and joy and trial and sustenance and pain.  I am not sure where it goes.  Where does this curve wind out to?

There are questions I have…

Who am I that you tell me secrets.  Please answer me what right I have that You whisper in my ears the things You dream of me.  I am scared of the passion.  What did I do to deserve to see the words I must give to others?  You really trust me with the crumbs of heaven to pass out to the broken?  You don’t see the chains on my own wrists?

And what of the truth of others?  Why do I get to have the goosebumps?  Why do I get to hear of the chains that wrapped a student around the neck and dragged them into the pit, AND THEN you let me speak the key.  You let me push them into the Light and see the blowtorch of Your Grace wrench the links to dust.  You let me see the hands raised and the tears stream and the hearts turn to wax.  How could I have ever thought of anything good enough to be showered with that blessing?

Your weights and measures are unequal.  The pestilence of my sin should chafe my wrists and wring out my blood as I collapse into the pit, yet You do not let me fall in.

Maybe not that You won’t let me fall now, but I can’t.  I cannot separate us.

Something has filled it.

I cannot sink down for there is no down to swallow me. 

It has been covered.

It has been stretched over.

It has been

                  paid.

What Love is this God?

How can this bring me back to right? 

You grasp my entirety and bless it eternally.

             You brace my back for the load.

      You pull me into the more real me.

You bless my darkness and my light and scream into my soul, “I love it all, now what have you to fear!  What can stand against you?  Who can oppose you?  What else could defend your life?  Now it is time to fight.”

But God, I need You to go before me! 

Yet, in the dark hear You shout that You have…

So I stand.  I rise and feel the strength come back.  This tunnel has an end and I hear the call to come out.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

^“35 Jesus wept.

³⁶ Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

³⁷ But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

³⁸ Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹ “Take away the stone…

⁴³ When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

        -John 11

Thank You God for taking and letting us help take the stones away.