Thankful

Lord, how easy it can be, stuffed with milk and honey to remember how far you have brought us.

Through the seas, the wilderness, the searing dusty places where our stomachs growled a common language of want.

You fed, clothed, watered and loved us, created in your image, yet so determined to allow only a spark of your glory to shine through us.

How you have nurtured us, and moulded us - God-created mosaics of our experience and your grace.

Today, despondent, forgetful of our journey together I sat, head in hands.

Woeful, mindless in a garden you had me tend, waiting on a pillar of smoke to make me feel remembered, important.

Where were you?

A weeping maple drank my tears. Not salty desert tears, but too much milk-and-honey tears, forgetful self-centred tears. Impotent, not important tears.

Then three weightless fantails, all heartbeat and feathers, designed for your joy alone, alighted on the maple. They chittered their heaven sent message of praise, and when my heart lifted, they alighted back to you; my misery annulled by remembrance of your goodness.

Forgive my forgetfulness.

We have journeyed together over seas and through endless wilderness to this land of more than enough.

Thankyou,

And again, thankyou.

I will remember, in my impotence, your endless and wonderful and central importance.

Broken

I once wrote a book called "Bent Not Broken".
The title was a lie.
I was broken.

Broken, broken, broken.

Like an old-fashioned thermos flask that had been dropped - I was okay on the outside but the slightest shake revealed the shimmering shards inside.
Broken.

Not the pretty kind of broken, nor the wee chip that elephant glue would mend, but ugly, nasty, dangerous, mixed up broken.

Broken like a box of crystal glasses that has been drop-kicked then gift-wrapped. Don't hug it too hard to your chest - the gift is broken, and dangerous.

Broken like a heart, like a vow, like a bone.

Broken like the psalmist who wrote:

I am poured out like water,
all my bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
it is melted within my chest;
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death. (Ps 22 14-15)

And still broken.

Still smashed up inside, still trying with the help of God to straighten my bends, to heal my brokenness, to fix me up from the inside out.

No more plastering over the cracks, no more smoke and mirrors but bare raw broken wounds that weep for divine healing.

Heal us God, give us guidance, for the ways of the world are broken.

Broken.

Broken.