Spaces

If you could hold days and hours like pebbles in palms, I might be able to show you.

Then again, I might not.

If history was a piece of string that ran through our hands, we might get rope-burn. But I could show you.

I want to show you.

If these words are my stones, my memorials and monuments to the places God has been, then where is it that have I found Him these days?

In the spaces. The stones invisible, the empty places on the string.

Sure, there have been rustling waves of morning light through old windows, tea with donuts that taste like autumn, a few kindly given smiles, mystic fog that poses questions, the joy of pen on paper to create. I count them, taking them from their wrappings and ribbons of His love.

But life has been very spacious today and this week and this month. My mind rustles like the drying leaves—restless to glow in truest color, eager for what lies ahead, hesitant to really bloom so late in the season, in this humble patch I find myself.

But somehow in these empty places I have turned my attention—though I sometimes talk too much, rambling on when I should be listening—to Him. And the words from the hymn sung Sunday morning tumble round my mind.

Who floods my weaknesses with strength

And maybe it isn't a coincidence that the song is called My Heart is Filled with Thankfulness, because it takes the humility of a thankful heart to find joy in empty spaces filled by Someone else. I spoke it to the flames and the glowing hearts in a patch of grass among cornfields, that the only way to be full is to let His love pour through us.

And so maybe wasted space isn't empty space, but space full of waste.

And Isaiah is trying to tell me in Chapter 30 verse 15 what God says;

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel,

“In returning and rest you shall be saved;

    in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

So I learn so slowly to let Him fill gaps and hollows, because when He is present, He floods with salvation and strength. I take that extra moment in the staff bathroom, in the empty hallway, in the warming sun, to just be, and be with Him.

And maybe we can learn it together, to look to Him when we drive alone and walk to cars and sit at home and scarf down meals. Small spaces add up to a whole lot of Grace.

Maybe we both need this just now, to turn our gaze, the gaze of our soul, as Tozer pens, and simply look to Christ instead of looking at how empty these spaces are. Even that is a filling, a rising something we cannot claim, but can name, that floods and sways to the brim of our souls.

A subtle knowing that He was here.

He is even here.

Zephaniah 3:17 ESV:

The LORD your God is in your midst,

  a mighty one who will save;

he will rejoice over you with gladness;

  he will quiet you by his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing.

I drew & edited these stones to remind me, for I am absent-minded, forgetful. I am placing them all over my spaces—my mirror, in my planner, in my car. Just a reminder of what I forget sometimes.

Even when we hide, He is here.

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