Filled

I want to paint, to sculpt, to create.  But my art is words.  So I'm here.  Not writing the ideas I had planned.  Just sharing again.  Being. 

Not feeling much today.  Spent emotion all last week.  The response is still there, inside, deep. 

Babies die and I speak words, numb from the overwhelming inadequacy - from how little my voice effects.  Friends talk and I hear, but I'm not connecting.  Too hard to shoulder their problems today.  Speak truth I know even when I can't think or feel. 

God wants us to love.  Forgive.  Wait.  And He is big enough to do those things in us.  When we don't feel it, don't understand what's happening.

Maybe we'll look back and see His work through us.  Laughter.  This week I've run into people who like me.  And I don't know why.  I shake my head asking God how this happened, that these new intersections in my life are friend-meetings.  And His laughter fills me.  Wasn't I praying for this, that God would overflow me, blessing these people I meet even when I barely know them?  When I wasn't paying attention, when life and death weren't before my face, I didn't know His Spirit was filling me.  Smile dipped in grace painting my world. 

I say life and death wasn't before my face, but I think now that it was.  I take for granted the little things.  Eyes are opening to the spiritual battle.  Two weeks ago I told my brother, "It's strange that there's a spiritual battle, and you can go or not."  The battle is inescapable, war for souls, for joy, for peace, for faith - sometimes a defensive war, building up the weak and welcoming into strongholds.  How frail our hold on faithfulness.  No holidays from being carried by grace. 

And what when the world crumbles around me?  Though I hold tight in prayer, well-guarded by a Mighty Friend, fellow disciples fall, hurt, cry, tire.  Call for back-up and I don't know what to do for them.  Pray more because I'm not just praying for me.  Because I need my God's eyes to guide me where next. 

But the world keeps breaking, prayers not stemming enough the flood of attack.  To pray for a day, fervently, all day, I can manage.  Rebuke my doubt that God won't answer so quickly; He could, you know.  Then He doesn't, and I wonder... and weary... and wane. 

This feels empty, when I'm not winnowing with God.  I ask for help praying, help loving, help persevering.  Can God fill me again, spend me as His servant in these lives I see? 

To God be all glory.