If I whisper it, if I gasp it, if I murmur and coax with words and touch, will you walk with me and me alone, not now then forever, but more than just this night, will you stand at my side, will you be my beloved, for just five days. Will you give me all of you, will you trust and support me, will you try me on for size, will you hear my yes and hand me yours, will you guide my heart, my body and my life... for just five days?
A friend of mine said powerfully once, "I do not believe what the pulpit tells me. The pulpit is made of wood. If my church ceased to preach what I believe inside myself than I would cease to be a Baptist." She refused to be a label. She was stating, simply, that should her church change their mind tomorrow -- receive divinity retold -- she would walk away to worship one-on-one, just her, just Christ, just the truth. A new holy trinity.
Denomination is broken. Oh? Are you clicking away, closing the browser, muttering to yourself, "Here she goes again!" But here I go again is exactly where I'm going:
Mob mentality. If enough people, or the "right" people say it, repeat it, phrase it or shape it, we believe it. Not our logical mind. Not our heart. Not the voice of God in our own ears. We are egotistical, I suppose, if we have the strength, the confidence to say: I understand that you believe that, mother (father, pastor), but that is not what I believe."
Because in order to say that -- loudly, proudly -- we must know what we believe and know who we are. We must be, if not doubt free (though the strongest people I know are) than on the path to that shining destination.
How can you know that I am not the one who will love and cherish you, fight for you and hold you? How can you know when you will not look at me, look in the mirror, look into the surface of the baptismal pool and see our faces, side by side, every Sunday? You have seen me awash with desire for you. You have seen me fight with words and fists for you. But you resist, you insist, you desist any activity that might allow you to glimpse me as more than just a creature passing through your life when you need it. To you I am first a miracle and second transitory, short-lived. You leave me notes that thank me for reports and charts and chocolate chip cookies and unspoken, unexplained evenings of passion, and you compare me to falling stars, comets, bright, brilliant, burning away.
And Christ says just the same. Why are you mine only on Sundays? Why am I yours only when ministry fills your ears? Why won't you carry me with you always? Why don't you hear me when I urge you, "Kiss him..." Why do you allow secular doubt to fill the sacred, holy places I made hollow only so you could fill yourself with me?
Does doubt help you? Decide. Move. Looking back doesn't teach any lesson. If you must look back for the lesson, it wasn't yours to learn.
Does fret buoy you? Or does it sink you into mire and muck and shadowlands of twisted paths cobbled with more of the above (doubt)? Throw out fret because it kills you and kills your light, and reach out for faith.
Does that sound overly simple? Do you crease your brow and cry, "How?"
Just try it. Replace every single act or thought of doubt or fret with action. With decision and with faith. That means doing the work. Going the extra step. Do it for five minutes. Than five hours. Then, finally, five days. When you doubt, decide. Sometimes you will be wrong. But do it anyway. When you fret, turn to faith. Turn to the light, to the sky, to a child's embrace, to a friend's laughter, to a favorite verse in poetry, in song, in scripture. Instead of leaving your place of worry filled with dread and inaction, go forward from your place of light. Open yourself up to inspiration... and then leap.
Leap right in.
Five days. Be mine. Look at me and see that I will love you forever. That my promises are absolute. That my mind is my own, but my heart is already yours. For five days look at me... and see yourself in my eyes. You will know everything inside me if you only take the time to see. Just five days. In the eyes of our Lord. Just five days.
It will change your life.
EJ
