It was so vast that no picture can do it justice.
I looked a mile deep into a huge abyss. It was grand and it was beautiful.
I once likened my life to a canyon.
I wrote a poem about the emptiness that once consumed my life. I felt as if I were totally, wholly, and completely void....
Of course, my poem is lost...but I am going to try to recreate it....and then, I will add to it...
You see, my life with Jesus is the the opposite of a canyon. It is full. It is spacious. There are no more empty places. I'm also working on a post about the amazing things that Jesus worked in and through me on the trip, so stay tuned......
Meanwhile, here's a poem for your entertainment.....
of emptiness, and fulfillment.... please continue reading to the end because if you are empty, there is a special message for you.
OF EMPTINESS
Every morning, unitl now, I have awoken,
to find myself standing over the Grand Canyon,
where there is a vastness inside my gut that swells, reverberates,
and echos against walls of the darkest rock
Boulders like mountains hang in air that never ends
and rivers that lead to nowhere carve out
places of sadness
and lead to places, called Despair.....
So,, I attempt to fill the void...
I walk into the kitchen,
it is not made of rock,
it is linoleum
and it has things to fill.
So I open the refridgerator
and I look for something round,
something that looks like rock
that can fill this massive void....
I am temporarily satiated.
This hunger is deep,
the size of black holes.
there are universes trapped in my belly.
I dance to try to shift them around.
The moon rolls along the sides of my stomach
craters form in deep places within me.
Craters that hold nothing,
craters where no life grows
Craters of rock without color
And nestled in the hidden crevices
of canyons are snakes that devour,
they eat joy like eggs...
and threaten to swallow things that sound like laughter
So I dance and I sing
to shake up the stars within
But my dancing only stirs more emptiness
and my song only echos on the canyon walls.
Nothing is heard. The sound is hollow.
It echos nothing and no one hears.
There is a face swirled in the marble in my bathroom.
It is the face of a small boy.
I wonder if he is empty.
I wonder if he lives in the desert and has a moon inside of him.
I touch his small face with my fingers, hoping to know, but I find nothing.
He is a mirage. He cannot lead me out. He is lost, too.
He is only made of rock.
There is a pool of black that ate all that I was,
a pool whose tides
swelled with salt
and left me drowning,
groping for the sand or the shore
but there was nothing to hold onto
(or so I thought)
The sounds of Otis Redding,
two hour drives into the Crescent City,
the taste of wine and the fuzzy effects
but nothing, nothing
satisfied...
Shoving books down my throat, hoping to learn
tearing out pages and watching them float to the bottom
of dark places...
where the wind only blew things away from me....
and never towards
The wind, whose hollow empty reaches only
scattered things like dust inside something as big
as Kansas
and as empty as the burnt down sunflower fields in fall.
So I sought to fill the canyon...
with relationships....
....but nothing
only people that fell from the edge of a cliff
into nothing.
Hikers , disguised as lovers, searching for truth,
along life's journey
reaching the bottom,
only to find that there was nothing there
but snakes and dust.
The water supply was wasted.
Fatique set in, and the mission was lost.
Of emptiness,
It is the teeth of vipers
and the sandy, grain of dust storms
It rips into flesh and stings the eyes
It is a promise to the end of caves, and the beckoning of false light,
only to find dead fireflies
whose fuses are still burning
with mockery...
It is the shapeless, shiftless
mass that grows in the dark
but when Light is shined upon it,
it is exposed.
and less intimidating
You see, just as there is that threat of emptiness
there is a promise of fulfillment...
_____________
I have to stop here for now. You see, that canyon is where darkness and sin led me.
Into places of darkness and despair. There was once a time when I was on my last leg. I was the dry bones walking in the desert, but even in the midst of my sorrow, I saw a Man waiting for me at the bottom. And He held out this brilliant Light to me. And I could've walked away from it. But if I had, I would've surely died. I would've been eaten by the wolves, an empty carcass.
But like the dry bones in Ezekiel, my Father bid me to walk, he put flesh upon my dead, dry bones and breathed a new life in me.
Today, He is handing that Light to you. Will you take it?
It is a Light that will dispel the darkness and expose the rock without root
I was talking with a coworker recently. From discussions with people, I really don't think a lot of people have a true understanding of Jesus.
I often find that people look to Christians who have hurt them and that pain and suffering to hide from Christ.
But Jesus isn't the evangelist that stole your money. Nor is He the pastor who preaches the gospel, then cheats on his wife. Jesus is not the one from your church who threw stones of judgement and condemnation at you. He isn't the one who hurts children or who fought wars based on differences.
You see, I know Him. He is the One standing at the bottom of your canyon. He is the One waiting for you in all of your despair and pain. He is there in your tortured moments, holding out His Hand, bidding you to grab onto His Light.
Because in that Light, there is Life. There is Peace. There is wholeness. And in that Light, and Only in that Light, can you ever be truly Full.
Time doesn't exist in that Light. It is eternal and it breathes. When you are in that Light, you will come to understand many things and all of the corners and corridors of conufsion will cease to exist.
Your eyes will open in that Light, and you will see people around you that you haven't noticed before. And your heart will be open to Love. Because the Light that I am speaking of, the One that He is holding out, is the Light of the purest Love.
And He loves you. If you could wrap your mind around that infinite, all encompassing love, then you would want for nothing else. He loves you!He gave me a dream not too long ago. In the dream, was the Light that I speak of.
It is so real. And so misunderstood.
It is brilliant. It is beautiful. It is the source of love and all that is good.
And the best thing is that it can be yours.
It's a gift. Let Him lead you out of your canyon.
Let go of the things of darkness. They are the things that blind. Sin is the stuff of rot. But to take is Light is the difference between being free and being held down.
Take it, it's yours.
Today, if this message touched you in any way. It was meant for you. So that you would know that there is a Light waiting for you. I'm praying for you. I love you.
23 Psalms
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