Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.
—Psalm 139. 1, 4
When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
—John 1.47-48
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
— 1 Corinthians 13.12
I
Even the most secret place in my soul,
the darkest hidden cave in me
where I know God has never been,
the dreams I’ve not yet had,
their meanings layered in murk and mystery,
the things I don’t know I know,
locked and buried beneath a mantle of ignorance,
the most well-veiled secret prison cell within me,
the remotest, most desolate moon of my thoughts
that surely God could never imagine,
even the things I will never have guts to consider,
even the absolutely unknowable in me
God already knows like a nest,
thought of first, saw how it got that way,
knows where the blessings are.
II
Jesus is scary to follow,
because I know in his gaze
I’m going to see
more of myself than I want to.
III
Who knows what unseen forces pull on us,
what invisible wounds we protect,
what untold stories have given us our place and our name,
what tyrants we fear,
what side effects of ourselves we suffer,
what twisted ways seem in our blindness
the path of nobility?
We can’t translate the poetry of our own cries.
But the author of our souls sees, blesses,
misses nothing.
IV
The struggle between good and evil
is mostly a struggle
between awareness and unawareness.
V
Maybe I would judge less
if I knew how much of myself
is invisible to me.
Maybe I would wound less often
if only I saw how much mystery
entangles even the simplest gesture.
Maybe I would fear less
if I had the eyes of the One Within
who sees all and never recoils, but leans close,
who sees even my most awfulness,
tiny as it is amidst so much glory.
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve
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Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net