After until sundown

How do I tell of the progression that takes place in the wanderings of my mind?

How do I tell you of the changes that the King effects in my slow pacing?

So yet again here, again do I make this my starting point. I fail to understand, I fail to show, I fail to grow. I succeed in learning, I start to shine, I can feel the roots spreading and seeking for the water and nutrients to sustain me. Pull back the stars, let free the storehouses.

I know some of them of whom the world is not worthy.

I'm barely around long enough to speak more than a couple of simple phrases, rarely able to communicate in any kind of meaningful way. Add my lack of intentional development, and you have a disappointing scenario. But the mystery is that even in my stumbling, halting efforts, I can lift my voice to show the Rider.

The world around me is beginning to shake, not from the fear of what man can do, nor from the natural changes in the earth, but from the Hand that moves us to all joy, that brings us to all trials, and shepherds us through them. Fear, yes, but not fear as the common man thinks of it. Fear of a different kind.

Sometimes I don't understand why I get what I don't deserve when I should get what I do deserve. This is the mystery of grace. It shows up so often in my life. I don't deserve to be here, in a place such as this at a time such as this, but I am. I don't deserve to be headed to refreshment and renewal, to another adventure, to a place that has been prepared for me, and yet, there will I go. I don't deserve to have a job wherein I see the line between meaning and my day blur together. I don't deserve to have as wonderful of friends and family as I have been given. I don't deserve to have a wonderful woman like D in my life. But then grace comes and covers me. He's been where I have been, He's there, He Is.

As we soldier through the cold, I think about the people here who have no heat. I think about the families that I know of who can barely feed themselves. And I wonder, I wish to know, Why do the skies not open and the people ask What Is It?

When I sit on top of playground equipment and look up at the stars with her, I find that the simplest of words carries a weight unknowable to me until the measure of my days has found fullness. As our quiet voices carry through the cool night air, I know the beginnings of surrender, and the slow embrace of a familiar hand.

And I trust that there is death so wonderful. The skies open and the flood rolls down. He made a path for the lightning of the thunder. Think of that. He made a path.

What are you so scared of?

And I remember I'll soon be dead.