When we yearn for more than heaven.

Its those nights of which we sleep comfortably, sheets coddling us & beckoning us to release. To give it all. To lay it down.

Soundness hushes the mind & soft rhythms escape our lungs. 

In the smoothness we long for evening, to slip beneath consciousness, lingering a little longer where we are once more innocent to the days before us. We long for evening & pitch black rooms.

This is rest & day by day I find that rest comes in cycles of deep hibernations & insomniac-type periods. Because in the midst of the silent nights of heavy sleeps we forget the reason for fear until the one night arrives to shatter beneath us.

The cotton sheets grow cold at the nightmare that jolted peace & we are stirred to an unshakeable clarity that we are in a pitch black room completely alone. All of the sudden the darkness isn’t comforting, & the silence carries paranoia.

We are stirred.

This is the lights on moment. We travel & wander & forget what we’re told & dance with complacency. We become weary & our vision for the future blurs along with our passions & we become lifeless in these bodies. We become numb. We become cold. We become careless. Until the words lift off the page. Until we find commonality with the stranger in the hospital sharing fears & encouragement. Until we confess we are blinded by fog, walking circles. Until.

You finish the blank.

This is your moment, your cloudy day, your lifeless feel. This is your turning page, your pivot point where the smoke fogging your vision and the doorways vanish.

Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name,

you are mine.

When you walk through the waters, I will be with you;

& through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

& the flame shall not consume you.

ISAIAH 43:1-2

These are your forest fires. This is your flash flood. & it’s funny how the emptiness can burn like a festering wound, how nothingness could be something more powerful than words. Here is where our steps feel more like stumbling forward, where the light & darkness is fogged with grey soot. Here is where the game of pursuit is overshadowed by complacency. Here is where it takes all our energy to be careless. & this moment, this consummation of flames & flooding, this is the refinement for greater things to come. & through the unpleasant, there is a powerful love. Because these are the ingredients for the golden. This is where the living stones become royal jewels. A beautiful transformation that can only come under high waters & consuming flames. Stones under water & fire. Stones under pressure.

The pressure of fire & water does beautiful things, doesn’t it? A grey rigid rock, crystallized to reflect & behold more light than possible apart from the stress applied.

& I am always taken back to the Valley of Dry Bones, where hope is restored in a way that I cry because I am so thankful for the rattling sound of dry, lifeless, hopeless, rigid bones coming together as if a normality of gravity, when in reality, it’s simply a normality of our loving God. Our healer who fills us with breath until we are more than bones, more than flesh, more than a body. He breathes until we are filled with His spirit of life.

What glorious grace.

Following Satan’s tempting Jesus, Jesus returned in the power of the spirit. He was placed in the fire, but not singed. The furnace’s heat was demolishing the number of men outside, & adding to the number of the men inside (Daniel 3). The bush was completely torched, yet, completely unharmed (Exodus 3). Water, empowering. Fire, empowering. Spirit, empowering.

This, my friend, is fear diminishing.

You are more valuable than that bush. & like Moses, I’d say there’s a great chance God’s speaking to you through that fire, making way through the flooding waters.

& in the beginning this was just about the joy of a deep sleep. The ten days of consistent somber nights followed by ten days of restless, sleepless nights. For me, there’s usually a pivot point. A dream of being hunted. A night terror. A scary movie. Stress. But I am telling you this because of the complacency I find in the dark nights when sleep comes easy. It becomes habitual. Easy. Until the one unexpected day that I have the awful dream that sends such terror through my bones that I dread the thought of falling back to sleep. I fight awake, just as paranoid as if I were drifting off to sleep once more. This is the moment I am reminded that there’s more than the blur, more than the fog, more than heaven, & more than the rules. There is a relationship at stake. There is someone who knows all mysteries & everything I don’t even know there is to know. & this someone cannot be found in complacency. This someone is worthy of an alert mind & pursuit. This someone is a depth beneath the surface of normal that if seeked could be found, & upon ignoring still exists.

This is the story of fire. This is the story of flooding waters. This is the story of dry bones. & this is a fine line that works its way through fear & destruction. If you would only fight the urge to cave to the fog, choose not to sit in the chaos. To not be comforted by the safety of less, but to always raise your voice for more.

& sometimes there is the occasional prayer from my knees.

& here, Lord, is my cry. This is not pursuit, as I sit and pray for the fog to pass. I sit in this complacency, & this is not pursuit. Lift me on your wings. Give me strength to rise. Clear the air that I might know that the fog is only water molecules thick & that you are a molecule away from me now. That though I don’t see you, you are here. That though you don’t feel close, you are beside me. That if I would reach out, I would brush hands with my Maker. Breathe life into these dry bones, that I might be revived to greater pursuit.