The morning breaks and the busy streets of Edmonton are starting to wake up.  The chill of the March morning settles and lingers.  A bird chirps and I am content to just lay there enjoying rest.

I could rest all morning.

Stay.

But the morning wakes and with it, there is a call to this beautiful, broken life.  I am pushing back the quilts and another day begins.

If I could see it from the outside, I could see God holding it all together.  Holding me and being weaved into my life in intricate ways.

But I am blind today.  I cannot see it.

I feel abandoned.

I go out into my kitchen where the world is a little chaotic.  I made cupcakes yesterday for my youth group and the remains are half cleaned up.  But the project was worth the chaos and I yawn into the morning.

Alright God, You can have this day, I say.

Oh but my heart is hard this morning.  It's a shell and it doesn't want to let God in.  Inwardly I put up a fuss at this.  Wrestle with God a bit.  He'll win, but my heart will kick back.

Why can't I just tell my heart to be open?

I read Jeremiah from the Bible, my Bible a neat little table infant of me on my lap.  A table of life.  But I am weary of Jeremiah.  I see and I've seen I am Israel and I am Judah; the places who are wayward.

I need the words of Jeremiah.  

They are a warning.  

My, but they hurt and I am tired of hearing about impending death and desolation.

How about some life?  How about some jaw-dropping, never-ending, heart-stopping life?

But this is needed too.

This correction.  This turning.

I reflect on it, wondering how is God good in this?

Because I know he is good.

When he says, "'So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when they are punished.'says the Lord, 'I will take away their harvest'" (Jeremiah 8:12-13), it's hard to see him as good.  There is harshness in this book and its hard to stand it.

It is hard to see the righteousness of God here and yet Jeremiah, even as he goes to tell this hard word, says, " You are always righteous, LORD, when I bring a case before you" (Jeremiah 12:1).

Is it that God himself cannot even deny his righteousness?

He cannot go back on his own perfection.

I imagine that the church of this age would often emphasis his (God's) mercy.  However, deep down I know there is a God who also corrects and trims the branches of my war-weary life.  He brings me in line and sets me back on his right path.  And that, at times, hurts like heck.

God's love is so wide that he would punish so that there would be turning.

So I go through this: the rivers and the valleys in my life and I am allowing God (calling him really) to do his work, to make him number one, and to weed out the other desires that rock heavy in competition to him.

It is in everything that I do that I want God weaved into the fabric of my life.

Idols laid down, even if it requires some hard work.

I want him taking over my relationships, guiding my friendships, calling me into a deeper type of love that is for the benefit and edification of others.  I want him shaping my music, shaping my writing, in every bit of my artistic endeavours.  I want him in my intellectual pursuits.  I want him in my laughter.  In the morning.  In the evening.  

And I want him here in my struggles too.

For I tend to hide when things get tough.  I hide even from God.  

But I want him there to weaving, carving me, carrying me though.

For it is in the places with the most tangles that I need God even more, even closer, even in the shame.

For that is what Jesus came to do; to awaken the world to a great hunger and need for him.

He came to be the very fabric of my life.

And that is what Jeremiah is about.

Ultimately its a call to Israel and Judah to turn back to God, to reform and revoke their worship of other gods and other things.

It's about making God the fabric of life.

Here comes the thought through the fog; like a train with a clear path, snow splaying and wheels racing to its destination.

When surrounded by light it is easy to shine, to be seen, and to see clearly.  

How did it take so long to get to this conclusion?

But the darkness, where I live, I am but a tiny flickering light sometimes very alone.  It's hard to see there.  In order to have light I need to be equipped with light, like an explorer entering a cave with a headlamp.  

Bombarded by messages all day- my own thoughts, the reality of world news, snippets of songs, texts, portions of conversations, photos after photos with messages- I am always reeling.

Take it all in.  Interpret.  Correct. 

My mind's caught up in the fog of interpreting all these messages, sometimes taking them and owning them.

I want to do that someday, I think to myself as I listen to a part of a song that wretches on the strings of my heart so easily played by music.  The soft enchantment of a voice and a honest soul-searching lyric gets me caught up.

Sometimes I am rejecting them.

I absolutely see no worth in displaying my entire life on social media.  Oh but wouldn't it be nice to be loved this way?  Wouldn't it?  But no, I've decided to live differently.  

When I listen to the messages and all I do is focus on them, I get so lost in them, sometime I can't tell which way is up or down.  I could be walking on the ceiling for all I know, thinking all along that it was solid ground.

In the darkness there are lies, deception, deceit.  In the darkness I make my mistakes.  

'When Jesus spoke again to the people he said, "I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life."' (John 8:12)

Whoever follows me.  Whoever.  Follows.  Me.

Words spoken so quickly by Jesus when earlier judgers mocked a prostitute, ready to stone her.

Whoever.

The words are for me as much as her- as much as anyone.  Everyone's invited.  Whoever.

I have to say it slowly because I am in the pitch black and my eyes dim throughout the day, bombarded by the messages.

But have I not been following?

In part.  In part I kneel and I go to him- Jesus.

But in part I follow the world.  I go to my vices- old patterns, old lies.  Oddly comforting.  Yes, I still kneel before them in corners of my heart I don't even fully recognize yet.  You'd think I'd been done but they have a hold in the darkness and with the messages all the more muddled, I go further into deeper dark, my light (at times) a flickering flame.

And here I find the need (so much insatiable need) to kneel and bow and to come into the light, to truly follow as the word says, to spend time in abiding, to soak in the very ground breaking news all over again, making it ground breaking all over again.  I need to tell my heart all over again to 'Bless that Lord' and all the is in my soul to 'worship his holy name.'

The Message, "Whoever follows me" follows with a promise: "will never walk in darkness, but have the light of life."

I see a different way.

A harder way.  A way that requires breaking, bending, tearing apart. 

Being other and not fitting in.  Not even- no not even with those I love the very most.

I see a 'following' way.

The result is not to walk in darkness.  Ever.  It's eternal, this promise.  Somehow I know it's eternal and is already and not yet with me.  For those who follow.

Doesn't my gut twist in a thousand ways as I look longingly at the world?  For a part of me wants it and a part of me hates it. 

The 'following' way is better.

The Light of life.  I ponder that.  I know what it is.  I hesitate around it.  The light of life.  It's something so other, so set apart, that it seems forbidden. Yet it is a gift.

Light contrasts with darkness here.  Life Contrasts with death (Ellicott, 1954).

It is, as if by 'following' opposed to 'wandering', I am literally choosing between life and death.

Am I doing that all day?

Am I choosing between life and death all day?

And I see, suddenly, that so many of the messages I have received during the day, so many of my longings were death.  These messages handed me death on a shiny platter in my up-side-down world.  And I wanted it.  Until I saw.

It is with relief that I see I have the light.

My Jesus saved me long ago and made it possible for me to walk in the light of life and to face this darkness, this death with his light.  I am eternally freed from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2).

I have chosen the 'following' way and still need to everyday.

And now I leave with just one last thought.

Whoever.  





Ellicott, Charles J. (1954).  Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers.  Retrieved from,   http://biblehub.com/commentaries/john/8-12.htm