February 25, 2017

Oswald Chambers writes of “the last aching abyss of the human heart”—that bottomless depth we try to fill with anything but God. Tomorrow will mark five years since I got baptized, expecting to be made clean. What I really expected was instant healing of everything that had ever ailed me. I had no notion of what it looked like to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” No idea that when Jesus said, “Behold, I make all things new,” He meant it, and that every incorrect thought and every harmful way of being would have to be undone. That even still, I would endeavor to load my heart with human love, ambition, and control. That I would pry the scalpel out of God’s hands and cradle my wounds like they were all I had left. I had no idea that, when I let go and let Him begin to fill my misshapen cracks, those bottomless depths would turn into mountains I had before been too fearful to see—swallowed as I was, and in some ways, still am, in that last aching abyss of the heart.