life life and more life

the heart is the core of who we are... our understanding, intellect, emotion, desire, will. unguarded and exposed, things tear away at it and everything is affected. and the heart numb, it almost stops living. it doesnt even know what to feel or think, or be. its just pumping and keeping you half conscious.

i am seeing my heart bruised and bleeding, me holding my skin together to keep it all inside- the bleeding- feeling like maybe i did this, i deserve this, not sure what happened. and the blood is drying and somehow in the shock of it, i got a needle and stitched myself up- the black thread stark on flesh. and in waking, i am wiping away the blood ... seeing my skin fresh again.

yes, there is an awakening. dead, numb -- for months. and now, awake. but not a sudden jolt, not an anxious awareness of a different state... its a slow waking, like on a good morning, when you have rested and are ready to get up and have a full day... ready to face it.


in that awakening, the heart, to do what it does best (which is to love), must forgive. at times, forgiveness feels impossible, impossible. but forgiveness and love, in the face of the reality of sin, are "inextricably bound together. God is continually, literally, second-by-second covering our sin under his sons blood and forgiving us our sins. God cannot love us unless He forgives us and cannot forgive us without a committment to love us. Love and forgiveness are equally bound together in all human relationships." (dan allender)


and so, the heart must forgive. not simply feel like forgiving, but must chose to forgive.

"Forgiveness is a not a feeling. Neither is it simply trying to forget the bad things done to us. it is an act of the will and heart. It is giving a person something they have not earned the right to have-- pardon. Forgiveness acknowledges that we have been wronged but it goes beyond that and extends mercy." (floyd mcclung)

In isaiah 53, we are given a prophecy about jesus and reminded of the bloody, violent sacrifice made that we might be forgiven. the images we see and feel are both the description of that violent sacrifice and the beautiful truth that forgiveness offers -- to be whole and to live.

"But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed."


"Still, it's what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain.The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he'd see life come from it—life, life, and more life. And God's plan will deeply prosper through him."


this heart can no longer hide because it is numb. its feeling again, finally. and so it choses forgiveness. how can it not?

"Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you."eph 4:32