(Postcards from Cyrene)

The Lord came into your history, into the dust of your human being, barefoot and bearing his own cross–all the makings, all the markings of a world-eaten love. The Lord came into the darkest corners of your heart, dragging his own cross, beleaguered, hounded; all his life followed, sought, solicited, but not consumed. Cloying multitudes, oceans of want, worlds of need: here the Lord walks, all his life an object–an object of our devotion. We read it with our eyes closed, feel it with our arms crossed–our approach is blurred by sin.

But this tired Christ came to seek with a once whole heart; given whole (and once) for all. All the world. Open knows no way but this, this Lord–born open into pure being. Born, this Lord, to drag his cross through our dust. Ours! Christ born and Christ being. Incarnate love, walks and reaches, wants us more than a thousand lives of pure yearning. Into the dark den of the hell of myself, here is the One who is. Here is the One of God, the Christ: a breathing mercy, a walking love. By his touch, the world is healed. Untouched Lord, cross-bound yet borrowed back, our Father opens in the hearts of us each a window, a wide window–and in the calamity, the light shines forth. From wherever I am, there will be this light.

So the Lord is setting a window in your heart; see, the curtains are being pulled away, slowly, gently; Christ’s hands reached out into air that reeks with doubt. Beaten, bartered, broken One: be in this light. God be born here before me, God be in me. I pray passive prayers: steal me, heal me, lead me, fix me…a din of delivering up to God with hands that never quite let go. And this God who walks, whose hem eludes me, heart undoes me, he offers this one unspeakable gift: not the “I am” of the Father (“tell them…you must tell them, I will be with your mouth but you must go, go and tell them that I Am has sent you), but the “You are” of his life-changing love.

No, existence in the garden was unfathomed, un-savored, all but unlived. For such a short stay. We cannot grasp. Cannot model, cannot be. But this, the Son who walked, and who walks, dragging his own cross through human dust, this Lord came, and did and was and is because he believed. I so believe in you. I so believe. Your insides will crawl and your heart will drown in its own shame and your quiet, industrious self-sin, thin and close as skin, will begin to undo you, from the inside out. You will forget me. You will forsake me. You will neglect and misunderstand me. Cocks will crowd the morning out, and murmurs rage like thunder. A curtain will tear. Beyond repair. I know. I know how it will go. You will befriend a part of me, and fly another part like a self-righteous flag. But I know. I know the gutters, the rivers of bile in your own soul that you will never even see. You will not see them because I have stretched out my body in them, and my blood has washed them clean.

You will never be with me as I am with you. But oh, am I with you. I am the Lord who came all this way to find you. I have lit a lamp and swept the whole house looking for you. My lost coin. Did you think your sin would free you from me? Did you plan to slip by through fingers that have cradled the world? Beaten spirit, sin-ridden heart, be quiet here. Lay your head here, and you will see. The window. The footsteps I left through your earnest dust, all that industry. I will hold your head still. And I will hold your heart. Together. I will love your sin white as new snow, for I am the One.

I am the One who believes in you.