Tuesday, April 19, 2005

holy week

Sunday afternoon I joined a bunch of kids to go watch my apartment-mate (Becca) sing in the Gospel Choir concert.  It was truly amazing.  A few students opened by playing worship songs and leading us in praise.  Then the choir processed out, and the “concert” began.  (Though, as the emcee and the students kept reminding us, it wasn’t a concert as much as it was a “praise opportunity”—a chance for all of us to join our voices in praising God.)

I’d been thinking that morning and the day before of being rescued, how true that is.  During this past week, I was too conscious of—I would say my “dark side” but that’s a little too Darth Vader—all my flaws.  Faults.  Pet sins.  They’d been clamoring at me from Monday to Friday (or you could say from September to April): prosaic, mundane, and deadly.  (Nothing weird, just your everyday, run-of-the-mill nastiness.  You know.)  If I sat and listened long enough, I felt broken and very very small.  So I tried not to listen too often.

And then Saturday, I kept thinking about the image of Christ as the bridegroom, from part of a recent discussion on the book Every Young Woman’s Battle.  There’s a story near the end of that book about a dream one of the authors had: she dreamed about watching a bride at her wedding reception, welcoming guests, laughing with friends, glowing and radiant.  But alone. 

And in the corner, the dreamer saw the bridegroom by himself, crying, twisting the wedding band on his finger, and wishing to be with the one He loved. 

(This story was the most powerful part of that entire book for me—suddenly I can see it, it’s in terms I can best understand.  I have such a romantic heart, and the horrible pain of this picture somehow strikes a chord, and I can see more clearly how things really are when I distance myself from Christ.  Breaks my heart to think of it that way.)

Anyway, I had been thinking of that story, and how much I truly had been saved from.  What my story could have looked like—how I could have been given over entirely to bitterness and anger recently.  How stupid things I’ve believed or thought could have had disastrous consequences.  How I could simply have been lost, always. 

And Sunday morning, things started to really sink in.  I can say over and over that “Jesus loves me” without it really impacting me.  But now and then, it filters through everything else I’m focused on and knocks me sideways.  What does it mean, what does it really mean??

It means that the bridegroom is still holding His hands out to me.

At the concert, it was like the weather broke—this was the wind and the rain, the welcoming home, the gold rings, the fatted calf.  And I just ached to be dancing.  I scarcely realized it as I walked over to the Fine Arts Center, but as they opened with praise and worship and as they continued worshipping, everything in me seemed to open up.  All the pain of the last week (and months before), all the wonder of redemption, all the joy of knowing He loves me.  Still.

The good little church girl in my head told me that it’s rude to stand when most people are sitting.  You block their view.  I understood this.

But my soul knew it was time to dance.  I was too aware of the prison cell that could have been mine—that had been mine—so I stood and clapped, grinning until my face split, crying as I laughed.  So I do apologize for blocking the view of the people behind me for a song or two, but I simply couldn’t sit still.  Every song struck that same nerve, whether it was overwhelmingly joyful, or soft and sweet.

Looking back on it with a little space, I realize that this was a whiff of heaven—the scarcest breeze from Home, the echo that resonates and makes my soul homesick, eager.  Maybe that’s why my face felt like it was splitting.  I don’t think our bodies are able—perhaps they’re not even meant—to contain the joy that comes of being set free. —jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 04/19 at 09:08 PM
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