Friday 15 July 2016

Eyes of the heart

Ephesians 1:17-19
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you, what are the riches of God's glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of God's power for us who believe, according to the working of God's great power.

What is the hope?
What are the riches?
Where is the greatness of God's power?
Gifts not discerned by human sight but by the eyes of the heart being opened?
For me, right now, that feels like the morning after the night before, when you've had one too many, and you find yourself opening your eyes really gingerly, trying to limit the onslaught of pain you know you are about to experience.
Or that feeling, some time after the onset of a migraine. When you've taken all the medication that you can and you've managed to catch some sleep in a darkened room. And then you begin to awaken, frightened to open your eyes to the light in case your head reacts with more vicious pounding.
Or the pain that comes and settles on your chest, like a scheming cat, refusing to move, refusing to be cast aside. Just sitting there, a dead weight, restricting breathing, refusing to be ignored.
It actually feels much more like grief than any enlightenment.
What is this physical and spiritual pain assaulting my senses, refusing to be ignored? Bubbling up in inconvenient times and places?
How can I unlock it's mystery and relieve the relentless pressure it exerts - a pressure that, for stretches of time, can be contained - until it can't. 
What I have perceived - and I think it's helpful - is that this grief or ache or longing, or whatever I choose to call it, is not subject to a quick fix. And it won't just slope away. It is demanding attention,claiming space and time and discernment. And, while it is sore, it is not something to be feared, rather something by which, in some strange way to be excited. For it promises growth.
And enlightenment, when it comes, promises a glimpse, beyond the veil, a glimpse of the Unknown.
And I am impatient to get there. Impatient for the next stage of the journey. For the not yet to become the now.
But neither frustration nor impatience will impinge on God's timing or the Spirit's wisdom which is always just right.
And so I sit with the heaviness, that one dead weight in the midst of so much light. I sit and wait on the eyes of my heart being fully opened to properly see the hope, the riches and the greatness of God's power. 
And I give thanks for those who sit awhile with me, bearing the weight, sharing the load, praying for the good timing and wisdom of God in the things of the Kingdom.
Open the eyes of my heart.

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