One Thing

I wasn't expecting it when I walked out the door last night. I knew we had snow, I knew that more was coming. But I didn't expect it to be breathtaking. The fog graced the streets and the Christmas lights reflected off of the fog in the warm kind of way that makes you want to dance for sheer joy. 

I shivered, inadvertently catching the snowflakes in my hair and my eyelashes. I giggled and opened my mouth to let the snowflakes hit my tongue because no one's too old for that. Not when it actually snows. 

How to express it perfectly? I can't. My words are just words after all. If only I could take you there, to show off the world like the gift that it is--See, see! Come and look! The words are blessedly childlike, and my eyes are, too--wide, and filled with wonder. 

I have had to grow up a lot this year. Each passing day makes me a day older. I'm an adult now. I've learned things; hard things, good things. I've let old things die so that new things might sprout (or at least, it's happened with me kicking and screaming and then finally seeing it as good). 

But it has all come down to this one thing. This one thing that often it takes being a child again to see, because it's simple enough to miss. 

It's Christ, and only Christ. It cannot be anything of myself because myself is fading away day by day. What is eternal? Christ is. And He is my one desire--not these other things that I spend so much time working after. 

How beautiful to fall so madly in love with this God, this Creator of snowflakes that cling to my eyelashes, this Author of the joy that pours through my heart and pumps through my veins. Would that I could be emptied of all the me that is left in my heart, to take on only the fullness of Christ, because the me that I have held onto for all this time is nothing compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. (Philippians 3:8b)

How good it is to be nothing, for He completes me with His everything! 

One thing have I asked of the Lord,

that I will seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

and to inquire in his temple.

Psalm 27:4

To the Gate

Me and the unsurpassedly lovely Addy T. Photo taken by the unbeatable and unmistakable Dally.

Autumn leaves kiss winter’s frost.

I wait.

The breath of the morning is frozen

And my chest aches with a cough, but I run.

I run.

Just to the gate, not beyond,

For it looks lovely, sparkling in the bright sun.

Gently, gently, gently,

Says the morning with a laugh.

But I am young and stupid

And I would rather save gently for withered hands and crippled feet.

To the gate, then, I stumble.

Oh, aching lungs, would that you could breathe a little deeper of this purity,

Would that you could laugh a little longer,

Or sing a song to the Maker of this abundance.

But gently, gently, gently. You’ve reached the gate now.

These farmers’ fields spread out before me,

At the end of their bounty, but not the end of their beauty

For God has painted them in earthen gold,

Not to die, but to live and proclaim the works of the Lord.

I think my heart is full to bursting with their life,

Where my own had shriveled in the fear of loneliness and the dread of emptiness.

But now my weary, cold-weakened body drinks deep the cup of holiness,

And it is enough—Oh, God, you are enough!—

My being cries out in deep-seated hope,

For my resurrection eyes will always see fields full of gold, and I know,

I know that the Beginning is nigh.