22 march

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
look full in His wonderful face;
and the things of Earth will grow strangely dim
in the light of His glory and grace.

The blackness comes always & only when He isn't first. Anything that isn't built on Him will collapse. We know this. But sometimes we get all carried away on the goodness of the thing that He's given us and we start unconsciously hammering away at that foundation, stuffing pieces of ourselves in instead, without realizing that with magnificently flawful Us as the foundation it will wobble and fall. We protectively close our fists on the thing He has given us, and somehow forget that a closed fist is lonely and dark.

Sometimes, if we are partcularly stubborn, God has to pry our fingers apart in order to let the blackness out. Sometimes it takes a real whack to the foundation before we realize our unqualifications and let God build what He wants built.

How ecclesiastical and proverbial "we" sounds; I don't know why I say "we"; i really mean Me.

It haunts me, kills me, that there isn't any return on human love. There doesn't seem to be an interest any longer in loving for loving's sake, just straight unadulterated love. People like to put films on it, looking at it through one screen or another, without just using it the way it is. Why is it that we have calloused ourselves against that natural Human warmth, of senseless loving? That now love must be worked at, earned? I've never thought about it, i've always just loved. And so when asked to work for it, i do not know what to do. This is why relationships frighten me. I am trapped squirming in the parallax of loving people and hating relationships.

But we are not only human, we are the children of God. And he loves us painfully, senselessly. Just straight unadulterated love. He gives us people to love, sometimes magnificent marvelous people to love, but these people are fallible and they will not always love us back with that senseless untangled love. But God loves us; and honestly, if God has decided to love me than i do not need to worry about being after all that work worthless after all. And so, the black subsides, and solid ground returns beneath my feet.