Praying for the Bride

The air perfume heavy

Silk and lace swish gaily

Sighs and sniffles linger

As holy women pray

“We rejoice in you, Beloved

For you love rightly your lover,”

Call the maidens all together

As they stand round the bride hands clasped

“We rejoice in you,” they again cry out.

“For from death rose unfathomable love,

From mourning came laughter, from the grave, life.

May you never forsake this great romance.”

Communion

Footsteps crackle over small stones and gravel

The delicate, musical drip of a slow trickling rain

The whisper of the willows

Wisdom and comfort

The breath slides over my lips

In an elegance known by one

And meant for one.

Tear drops mingled with raindrops slide over my skin

Impassioned petitions lifted high to the One most holy

Arms wrapped around knees

To be as small in this vast space as possible.

He will see the smallness,

And He will care.

It is heard.

There is a reply.

I walk home.

Worship

I am convinced that words cannot capture the beauty of the experience of worship, but I just want to try. Fortunately, he doesn’t much care how eloquent I am, only that he is the one who holds my heart.

It is this pleasant sort of tightness you feel in your chest. You begin to understand how small you are and how big he is. You start to see how all your glory and all your grand accomplishments are worthless compared to his eminence. Then you feel this terrible pain. As the song repeats over and over the things he suffered at your hand when he was so great and you were so little, and as the understanding of what that really means begins to dawn in your heart you experience this heavy and penetrating sadness. It is like nothing you have ever felt before. Your body can no longer contain the anguish and you begin to cry. The first teardrops drip down your face unnoticed as you are completely enraptured by the deep mourning.  The pressure builds until it explodes into this breathtaking feeling of utter brokenness. You start to weep as if the pounding of the nails through his hands had just rung through the air, as if his blood had just dripped to the ground at your feet. It was your fault, the song seems to accuse. You killed the Lord of life.

But then, just as the pain of all the guilt you carry becomes unbearable, something wonderful dawns in your heart. It is like he is there next to you, picking it up and bearing it for you. All of a sudden the entire world changes. The song then repeats this infinitely sweet exultation of his resurrection, of his victory, of his miraculous rescue, and it’s like all of the hopes you never dared to hope have come true.

Your entire body is overtaken by the most exquisite feeling of joy. It is like he sweeps you up into his arms and twirls you around after you have been separated for so long. In that moment you feel, I mean really feel, the most intimate moment you have ever experienced. You know that you are completely known and completely loved. You are valued and cherished far beyond any other possible thing. Then as you crest over the wave of that joy, it is followed by this cool, sweet peace. You are wholly at rest. You are wholly safe. You are precisely and exactly where you belong. The warm glow of his passion still burns steady in your heart. And everything, everything is all right.

Music

My very soul knows the touch of its creator, and it calls for its. Blind from the darkness that surrounds it now, its song rings through the night till it meets that ever attentive ear. That ear that waits so ardently for the helpless cry of its beloved.

Then the reply sounds and the night splits. It is rent in two by the symphony that explodes from the lips of my lover. It is so beautiful it makes me weep as it holds everything I have ever longed for. In it is power, strength, the unyielding force of the Almighty. It is enduring and compelling. It sings of an unrelenting pursuit, and an uncompromising love.

In that sound are also the sweetest notes ever to float through the air. It is comfort, rest and pure gentleness. I feel so safe wrapped in the sounds of this kind of love. I am completely known, and I am utterly cherished.

Underneath it all is the tone that binds it together. That is the deep, fathomless tone of His love. A love not bound by sin and death. I love that has gone to depths of hell itself to rescue me from my enemy. A love that has carried deep sorrow for my separation, and unending joy for our reunion.

This love cannot even be compared with another. It is more intimate the even the most passionate affairs. It is more faithful than the rising sun. It is more humorous than a thousand laughs. And it is more beautiful than anything I have ever beheld. This is the love my God has for me. It is the best song ever played.

Oh, Micah, must you be so right?

That last little sentence in Micah 6:8 is what gets me every time. “…walk humbly with your God,” it says. I think it is a bit of an understatement to say that humility is a very difficult thing to do. It is a battle I know I will never completely win while I am on this earth, but as is the case with all of what God asks of me, I want to pursue this wholeheartedly because I know that it is what is best for me and it is a beautiful expression of my love for him.

I regret to say I have not been doing very well as of late. My pride seems to be getting the better of me. Usually, in my experience, it comes in the form of this huge compulsion to do excellent things. I try so hard to accomplish, to be the best so that I can prove I have value. Then of course I want to be recognized for my good works, and that is where fishing for compliment or bragging or other things like that come in. Facebook is an exceptionally good vehicle for this kind of thing, by the way.

So usually in the past, God would convict me of the fact that I was being a jerkface, and I would sort of try to control my outward behavior to seem more humble. That, however, is hardly a good way to operate, and it is definitely not repentance nor is it deep-seated change.

A few years ago, however. I think it was my second year of high school, but that doesn’t really matter. I observed something in myself and in others that helped me out a lot. Of course it is not an easy, quick, surefire cure for pride, but it certainly sheds a lot of light on the subject and it helped me better address the real issue. Which in turn helped me follow God more sincerely and, of course, humbly.

What I observed is that pride and self-centeredness is usually accompanied by insecurity. This is not a new concept and I am sure many others before me have observed the same thing, but for me it was one of those lovely epiphanies that suddenly make everything somewhat intelligible. Why is that important? Well, I will tell you. I think that a lot of times our pride is due to our insecurities. You feel really down on yourself so you naturally desire to make yourself feel good. Sometimes people do this by bragging, by putting others down, or by striving for excellence.

In my experience this has certainly been the case. I remember a particular time last year when I felt really horrible about myself, and because of that I compared myself to a lot of other people in my mind. I thought to myself things like oh I get better grades than her, or I am a better writer than her, or even I am a better Christian than her. It is horrible, I know, but that is honestly what went through my head. A lot of it was pretty unintentional, but the fault still lies with me.

So basically, because I did not know my value, I was insecure; and because I was insecure, I tried to remedy it with being full of myself.

Now, as is proper with any observation, we must ask the question, “So what?”  I know why I do what I do, so how do I use that knowledge to stop doing it? That question is very elusive. Honestly, I do not think I can ever definitively answer that question. I do, however, know something that helps me.

It is conceptually pretty simple, practically it’s a little challenging, but it definitely helps.

First, it helps me a lot to do a little bit of soul searching. To really look into my life, and see where I have been prideful and where I feel insecure. I think that the Holy Spirit really helps me out here. It is so easy to ignore him, but as soon as I sit down and really listen, he likes to talk my ear off with all the areas of my life that need work. It is really hard to be unafraid of this conviction, but it is like putting alcohol on a wound. I hurts like nothing else, but in the end it is really good for you.

Second, I remind myself of a couple truths:

• My value comes from who I am, not what I do
• The things that I do in my life that are glorifying to God are not what makes me valuable, they are a reminder of the value God has placed on me.
   
• The value of who I am does not come from me, but from God

A couple verse that I really love for this are Romans 5:6-8 which says:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

And Psalm 139 which is a little too long to put in here, but hey that’s what Bibles are for.

I think these things are so humbling, and yet so encouraging at the same time. I mean, nothing I can do can truly make myself valuable. Also I am supremely unworthy of value. Which sucks a lot and certainly knocks one off their high horse. BUT God values us sooo much that he died for us. I would say that is a definite morale booster.

Okay, and lastly, I like to meditate or keep in mind these truths. Ah, I can hear you now, “I read all this for someone to tell me to remember the truth?!” Yup, you did. But I promise it helps immensely. Also, something that really helps me keep these things in mind is to write them down which is what I am doing right now.

So, in conclusion, thanks for the therapy, and I hope that this was remotely understanding and helpful to you as you seek to "walk humbly with your God."

Love, Ashley Bliss