a deep fried love letter
I dream of the day you hand me a deep fried love letter in the rocking carriage of a Ferris wheel. You’ll wipe the joy from my chin when I take my first bite, and we will finish it together while sitting at the top of the ride; the stars kissing the tops of our heads.
Never have I ever felt more connected to a biblical character than the woman who sought the hem of Jesus’ robe to be healed in Luke 8.
She wasted her life to find the ultimate source of healing, and when she saw it, she did whatever she could to get to Him, crawling throughout the throngs of people in the streets. And when she touched the edge of His robe and felt His power, I can only imagine she wanted to cling to Him for the rest of her life because she immediately knew she was healed. When He asked (though He already knew) who had touched Him, she told Him incomplete honesty, believing that He would have nothing but the best of intentions for her.
His reply to her simply was “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.”
God is more faithful to our prayers more so than we are.
I. I am ’(almost)’ personified.
II. My lungs can’t handle for their breath to be taken away
because the oxygen I’m breathing these days
is borrowed anyways.
It hesitates to enter in because it’s apparent
that this element
isn’t in its element
in my element.
III. When you continuously repeat a word
it starts to sound mispronounced
and I wonder if that’s what happened
whenever people told me i’m worth(y)
IV. Inhale.
Exhale.
V. I know that life is just a shot in the dark with Thee, but
dammit, God, do You even hear my pleas
for some sort of ‘yes’?
or even a ‘no,’ I don’t care where We go;
I just want to know.
Jehovah Shammah: The Lord is there. This is the last name used for God in the Old Testament in Ezekiel 48:35. It beautifully describes the promise of the Lord’s restoration and faithfulness in our faithlessness. When the Israelites were rebelling against the Lord, God said He would remove His hand from them. And He did, but not completely. His love; grace; and mercy were always there with His people, and He was constantly drawing them to Himself. He promised through the prophet of Ezekiel that He would bring restoration to Israel and they would be the city of Jehovah Shammah.
I am that city. I am constantly failing and doing things for myself and out of the righteous love that I believe I have for others. But thank God that His promise is true. That He is there. He has already redeemed my future and ultimately won the battle. He is holding my hand to walk with Him into tomorrow, even after I already screwed up today Not only that, but He is here. Jesus brought that promise to life when He hung for me- a sinner who nailed Him upon the cross two thousand years ago. He is here. He is holding my hand, constantly drawing me near to Him, inviting me into His glory.
Habbakuk 2:5
“…like death, he never has enough.”
I read this today, and I was full of shame. One thing that has been revealed to my heart lately is that I am not letting Jesus be my satisfaction. I’ve turned gifts into idols: adventure, experience, love, good coffee. They’ve all become idols and they haven’t been satisfying me the way my sweet Jesus does. That’s why when opportunities for adventure have been falling through lately, I’ve been becoming so incredibly sad about it. I’ve been living as death: greedy and ungracious.
But God,
Being rich in His mercy and abundant in His love, is giving me the grace and the faith to believe that He is enough. And because He is a good Abba, He will give me my desires (which are ultimately His desires) without delay, because they will be fulfilled in His perfect timing.
I hope my love for you dies in its sleep
I exchanged my dignity for an altar to beg for you to take it away
Just get it out of here, please
Lose it when you wade through the ebb and flow of the river
Let it fall from your pack as you climb
Ignore its screams on the way down as branches mangle any sort of potential it had
Abandon it on the trail when it stops for water and when you take a break to count the group overlook its absence
Or simply lay it down for the night on the bench in the city and let its warmth lull you to sleep
Be kissed goodnight by the innocence of our roof top memories
Let the twinkly skyline flit across your eyelids as you drift into our final conversation about poets and their muse
But when you rise in the morning, don’t wake it up
Let it pass on peacefully and walk away
Reserve the self-denial to find yourself in a different city before you stop for your morning coffee
Because we both know how hard it is to tell those big sleepy, solemn eyes to go back to bed
He would let us put our fingers through the holes in His hands if it would help us believe.
How sweet is it that we truly need nothing else but Jesus? He is the only one who will ever be constant or faithful. We are free to be independent of everything else.
How do I not doubt that you think I’m beautiful when you’ve only told me a handful of times? Because I see it in the way you look at me. Every single time. There is no hesitancy or glossy gaze. You’re enamored. And I don’t say this to be prideful, I say this to say: you look at me like I’m a work of art, delicately crafted with skilled hands, and when I see it in your eyes, it helps me better believe it for myself.
Rae of Poeima 