promise.

I promise you won’t be perfect.
I promise that this life won’t be easy.
I promise that this world is full of wonderful and dangerous and beautiful and terrible things.
I promise you will hurt.
I promise you will laugh.
I promise you will know that I love you.
I promise you will doubt my love.
I promise to show you the creation.
I promise you were not, and are not, and will never be an accident.
I promise I have plans for you.
I promise that you cannot do anything on your own.
I promise that you will not know what tomorrow holds.
I promise you that I will.
I promise that you will never know the number of stars.
I promise you that I do.

What He promises is what makes the birds stay aloft and the sun dance on the sea. What He promises is that He knows me better than I know myself, and that He created me, and creates in me my worth and value and passion and calling. He desires after my heart because it was His first.

To Him, all I can promise is this:
I promise to be human.
I promise to love imperfectly.
I promise to forget You sometimes.
I promise to reject Your gift of grace sometimes.
I promise to live for You.
I promise to die for You.
I promise to not know the difference sometimes.

I struggle with my humanity. I struggle with being less than perfect. I struggle serving a God that is. I struggle not being God. I struggle, and I wrestle, and He wins. Again and again and again. He is a beautiful and terrible God. He is the Great I Am. And I am a small breath floating in between the leaves. Yet He loves me. He redeems me. He breaks me. He restores me. He is my everything.

I think this was the most important of the many lessons I learned in this past week up at Forest Home Ojai Valley. It happened while I was sitting at a picnic table, talking to a man who is years and years beyond his age, in the misty morning fog.

Watching him work with our students and listening to his words of truth spoken to me, is honestly I feel, a bit like it would be to hang out and watch Jesus do ministry. I don’t want to inflate Chris, as he is also one of those humble guys who isn’t posturing in humility, but truly loves serving… but His impact in my life just in the past few months, mostly from me watching him work and from the few awesome conversations we have had, has lead me in a direction of considering what God has gifted me for.

That my heart can listen to the promises of His name is a promise, I think, within itself. But a promise is still at two way street, a promise still leaves room for doubt and faith and trust and pain and healing and truth and for free falling head first into His hands.

He promises to surprise, just as much as He promises to edify my heart for His purposes. I suppose in a way, He promises the greatest adventure is in-store and lies ahead just around the bend.