One of my squadmates had us do an exercise where we visualize a real place where we can sit and be with Jesus, and I wanted to share mine. I kind of went of on a tangent, but I'm going to blame that on Jesus, because I asked him what I was supposed to write and this is what I came up with…
We're in a library. I walk through 30 foot high ancient dark cherry doors into an atrium of stained glass. There's an ornate front desk, but no librarian. I walk among the shelves- filled with all of the great books in the world. All of them are big and leather and old and filled with yellowed pages. Somewhere in the middle of Shakespeare, Lewis, Keats, and Chaucer, there are two massive, soft and worn leather arm chairs. There's a small coffee table on either side of each chair and there is a fresh mug of whatever I'm in the mood for. And we sit face to face and talk, or read together, or we walk among the shelves. Sometimes we just sit and think at the same time and don't say anything. Sometimes he tells me stories and I just listen.
There's also a music section in the library. When we look at a score, the music just fills this old, beautiful room right from the page and it speaks. It speaks in a voice that is the cry of humanity's soul longing for and praising the creator of everything. It is the music that speaks in the voice of Jesus and everyone in the world at the same time, because the great composers understand that music is the language of heaven. It is the language of light. It is our cry for God and his cry for us all at the same time. It is the expression of everything inside and outside of us that we cannot see or understand, but we just all somehow know that it is, whether we know what to call it or not. It's like the sound of stillness explained, the feeling of gut-wrenching pain heard, the smell of rain made into little black dots on a page, the taste of sweetness made into a feeling. Here, in this place, is the connectivity of every human that is the living God in them expressed. And Jesus gets that, so we can just stand there and listen, and it's like we're having a conversation, even though we're just listening.
And sometimes we write and I show him what I've made. He always loves it, even if it's not very good. Because that's what he made me to do.
