Jesus and I spent a long weekend together.
Tent pounded into a little mountain-nook.
Fire crackling, creek murmuring, and my heart resuscitating as I opened up to the living words of the Living Word.
Beloved with beloved, and the words came to mind:
My beloved speaks and says to me:
"Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away,
for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come,
and the cooing of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away."
- Song of Songs 2:10-13
"vacation? with your family?" ... my co-worker sounded interested.
"nope, just me, the mountains, and Jesus..." I wasn't trying to hide my excitement.
"Oh, gonna go get your life figured out?" pshhhhhhhhh.... right...
"No, I think I'll go and wipe the slate clean, throw my plans in the trash, ya know?"
"Hahaha, gotcha." They didn't get me.
Sometimes my soul needs that kind of getaway... like Jesus did...
a few days (maybe 40, who knows) to meet with the Father in the wilderness.
Precious time, not to make sense of the present or future, but to make sense of who I am.
Maybe it's backwards thinking but it's exactly what needs to happen...
Life’s a bit like quicksand... the more you try and help yourself, the closer you get to drowning in your mess. So really, our time in this world is best spent throwing our hands and screaming, "Abba! Please!" When He sees me in my mess - kicking and making my situation into a bigger unholy monstrosity - He has always grabbed me and spoken to my soul something like "Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away..." And there I notice something deeper than the unanswered questions of all my petty to-do's - That I am loved, despite my unholy mess.
Because, if I'm honest, unless I know that Jesus loves me... unless I am living in full-fledged knowledge of His
backwards, paradoxical, jealous love... then I won't live like Jesus is all that important to me. Jesus becomes the chore that I might get to after all my other chores are done... maybe. And then, after the day is done and I'm fainting, I slip under the covers and whisper "tomorrow Lord, yes, tomorrow."
But if Jesus loves me (oh and He really does), then my attitude changes and the chores I have to do become
love songs... they are indeed themselves the "cooing of the turtledove" and behind them the voice of Jesus saying, "come away with me," and in doing them my response becomes, "yes Lord, I am on my way!"
"Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away."
