...into my brokenness

Jesus, the name that calms my fears, that bids my sorrows cease;

‘tis music in the sinner’s ears; ‘tis life and health and peace.

He speaks, and listening to His voice, new life the dead receive;

the mournful broken hearts rejoice, the humble poor believe.

---Charles Wesley, 1739

I don’t like admitting it. It doesn’t make me proud, isn’t the sort of admission that I’d want engraved on a plaque or cross-stitched on a pillow. But because I don’t like it doesn’t make it any less true: I’ve been battling the way of the world lately, and the world is winning. I mean, I am beat. If you are not seeing the scars, it must be because I’m dressing right. I am just weary and worn with the meanness that seems to be around every corner, waiting to pounce on the weak or unsuspecting. And the weariness feels cumulative and exponential, building on itself like a runaway snowball (children, remind me to tell you about ‘snowballs’ from the good old days).

In my weariness, it is so easy to forget. To forget to listen for the voice that is always whispering life into the stillness. To forget to listen for the presence that is always calling into the absence. To forget to listen for the joy that is always singing into the despair. To forget to listen for the voice of my brother Savior speaking wholeness into my brokenness.

But, oh. When I remember. The mournful, broken hearts rejoice…

Half-spent

Lo, how a rose e'er blooming from tender stem hath sprung.
Of Jesse's lineage coming as saints of old have sung. 
It came a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night.
This flower, whose fragrance tender with sweetness fills the air, 
Dispels with glorious splendor the darkness everywhere.
True man, yet very God, from sin and death he saves us,
And lightens every load.

Are you like me? Do you have those nights where you wake, peer futilely into the darkness, and know that you won't be going back to sleep? 'Half-spent night' seems like the perfect description of that 3 a.m. kind of waking; Ray Bradbury said in his novel 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' that nothing good ever came of a wakefulness at such an hour. When I picture the world at the time of Jesus' birth, I think of a half-spent night kind of existence. For the Jews, a prophetic voice had been absent for 400 years or so, and the Romans were firmly in control of their lives. It was time for...something; they may not have known what, but for something.

Then, into the emptiness and dark of a 3 a.m. waking, a rose; more than that, a winter rose, one out of season, and the more precious for it. I am not sure what 'glorious splendor' would look like, but it seems you would have to feel such a splendor. And, along with the darkness are chased away the fears and doubts that wait till 3 a.m. to surface. The fragrance of splendor takes up the space once filled with the acrid odor of unknowing and doubt. And that Rose, with an unimaginable tender power, lightens our load, and continues to lighten our load.