Jesus,
Who are you?
Honestly. I sometimes can't wrap my mind around the old dusty roads of Israel. It all seems so foreign. I am thousands of years removed, reading words about your life. Words that haunt me in the best way I have ever known. Life, death, heaven, hell. Sometimes the things you do crack me up. Like that one time you preceded World of Warcraft by millennia and had Peter slay a fish and loot it for coins.
Sometimes I can't sleep. I think about stupid things like what I will wear tomorrow to present my identity to the world. Will I drink coffee? Will I catch a girl's eyes, secure a grin, and live a brief moment of fleeting love on this floating sphere? I really mostly fall asleep thinking about the day I'll have answers and reconciliation with that one bright spot in my life.
I'd like to think I would remember you.
I long to just remember you.
Oh, Jesus.
These days I'm starting to like you more than people. You're hilarious. Life seems more like a divine comedy then a tragedy. The little messages you send me in a sunrise. The playful way you make life tantalizing and terrifying. The way you tell me if I pray it will be answered, so I command my cat in your name to come to me. So he runs away as fast as possible. I'm left thinking that you are just really playful. Then I start to look at the things around me. At first they seem strange, just metal and wood, animals and glass. Then the closer I get the more I understand the genius of all this.
Jesus you created materials, atoms, laws of physics, circulatory systems. My synapses fire off and explode and think of how incredible this world is around us. The intense beauty in the art. You can tell who an artist is by what they paint. If I hear Mozart or Justin Beiber, I know it, because the flavor of the art is so unique.
What does the mighty rushing wind say about you? What does the Kodiak Bear hunting for wild salmon say about Jesus? What do the rocky crags of the grand Canyon proclaim about you, friend? Your art is so beautiful.
I guess I never realized until this year how human you are. I mean if you were the most perfect man who ever lived. You would be the most human right?
What if you don't like mustard? Is that even possible. Could you have created something you didn't like just because others would? I mean NOBODY eats certain things so it is not a matter of finding joy in your food. Nor is it a matter of contentedness. Humans have desires and preferences. What if you strongly dislike the flavor of cow's milk. What if you loved pizza? The very thought that your personality is so unique it could have preferences is so shocking to me. I have put you in such a box of infinity. Oh, Jesus, there is so much about you I don't know.
That blows my mind.
I say that often.
Like when the ferret steals my things and hides them under the couch. Blows my mind. Doritos Locos. Blows my mind. Getting up before noon and not cursing the sun and spitting in the face of whatever ripped me out of blissful sleep land. Blows my mind.
It's an overused phrase.
As you know, but this really does. It overloads my brain. Maybe it's the daunting combination of perfection and humanity. Could a human really ever be perfect? Could God really die?
I long to see your face. I wonder sometimes how I'll feel when I see you.
Like the first time I read Harry Potter and then saw Daniel Radcliffe.
I had formulated this different image and he seemed foreign to the paintings in my imagination. Will I even recognize you? How could I know someone and love someone so much and yet have never even seen your beautiful face?
Will you carry the scars? Were you pierced through the palm or the wrist? Do you still have a beard? I know you save, but do you ever shave?
I long to just weep and bawl and find my place in your big carpenter arms. To know what your voice sounds like.
I want to sing with you and hear the harmony that we can make. To tell you I am so freaking sorry for all the stupid things I've done. I know I say it all the time but it just means so much more when you look someone in the eyes.
What color are your eyes?
You see Jesus, sometimes you are so real that I can imagine you right next to me. Hand on my shoulder, smiling as I write words late into the night. I get little goosebumps and I grin as I think about this god. This man. Who so loved me that he intimately fashioned my heart. I think about all the times you stood with me through pain and hurt. I think of all the times I thought I was alone only to find out I had a defender and advocate. I think of all the times we walked through the flames of life and came out unscathed.
Sometimes I feel like I have Alzheimer's. Like that silly girl from the notebook. I forget you. I forget our story. Then you come to me and slowly and faithfully read it to me all over again. And again. And again.
I go to bed thinking of you. Grinning over knowing the very God of the universe. A God that wants to know me. Then I wake up and I hardly remember you. I walk through my day as if I am in a dream, hazily existing, until at some point I am jolted awake.
Lucid. Salient. Clear. And for a brief moment I'm with you. The world melts away and Jesus, oh Jesus. I know you are real, and powerful, and near, and lovely. I am filled with wonder and hope. You are realer than the room around me and the air in my lungs. Then I slowly fade back away into waking life. I cannot help but feel like a growing man who surfaces occasionally for that much needed breath only to fall back down beneath the waves.
When I am away from you I hardly miss you. Yet when I am with you I miss you more than I can hardly express. I just say I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. Oh that I would feel an aching in my soul more and more.
It kills me. If only I could remember you for more than brief intermissions in my day. Oh what a wonderful life that would be! If I could wholly and fully spend hours with you.
I keep thinking this thought. If I woke up tomorrow and I could not find you Jesus. If my prayers felt blocked and stifled… your word was missing… the small reminders of who you are were gone. Would I miss you?
Would I even miss you?
I am so haunted by that story of the disciples on the way to Emmaus. How they talked and walked with you until you fluttered away as you so often did. It's hilarious how often you left the disciples stunned and shocked. It's not like omnipresence makes you a hard to find person. Yet the disciples knew you had left and when they thought about it they said… we knew it was Jesus because our very hearts BURNED within us as we walked and talked.
I want that. Oh God I want that. I want to have my heart feel on fire in your very presence. To weep over the pain and hurt in the world and others instead of turing a blind and apathetic eye.
I'm so sick of looking at homeless people and wondering why we feed them. Of hearing holocaust jokes and celebrating the death of Osama Bin Ladin. I am so sick of letting the hurt and pain in this world be something that I can laugh about. Why can I laugh at suffering? Why can I forget that pain is real so quickly until it finally touches me. Oh Jesus, come into these moments friend. Make my heart tender. Make it weep and mourn for that bright spot in my life. For the people who have hurt me. For the people who robbed me in my youth.
Oh Jesus. I want to know what your favorite television show is. If our human art and music is pleasant to you. What would you pin on pinterest? What would you write if blogged? I want to know you so badly and yet so often I find myself fading away from you. I hit the bed at the end of the day and as my thoughts swirl around I recall you.
Do you long for me? Do you like me? I know you do Jesus, but I need to hear it more and more. I want to be hugged by that crazy rugged grip I know you have. I want to sit at your feet and listen. To share a moment together walking along a road. To take it back to that garden. That forbidden moment when we all stuck our finger up at you and said we love ourselves more then you. Oh Jesus, I am sorry for us. For all of us. For our wars, our pride, our anger, our selfishness. I am sorry for the innocence that we rip away from our children. The children we abort. The races we love more than others. The hate we spread. The lies we live. The cain we raise. I am sorry for us.
Yet you're not.
You're not sorry for us. You're not sorry that you made us. You're not regretful that we exist. You adore us, love us, cherish us. I am almost indignantly confused over that matter.
How… how could you not be sorry for us? Your wayward children?
Oh Jesus. I love you.
You were here all along. You are so patient Jesus. So wonderful.
I'm beginning to like you more than people these days Jesus. I love you.
