Love, for you

When you know the real-deal, you understand why everything else wasn’t it. That’s how it felt when I started dating my husband – the closer we became, the more it made sense why it couldn’t have been anyone else. 

The real-deal is the mechanism that dissolves every impersonation – it illuminates the past, the present, the way forward. I felt that way when I got married but even more, I felt that this morning in the pages of breathed-out Word.

Love is, perhaps, the single greatest mantra of the human experience. It seems to unite people everywhere, anytime – tying the whole globe together around some throbbing need to be loved – and to love. The universality speaks ubiquitously to our intrinsic longing. 

It seems our two most inherent qualities as people are our longing to be loved and our inability to consistently love. Our world is love-crazed, yet intent on sowing division and competition and senseless violence. Our world longs for love, but struggles to be civil to each other, let alone kind. Our world struggles to love out of our own selves and our own strength, but we keep going, thinking something might change and somehow, we might get “love” right.

Could it be that we’re missing the real deal? 

It seems the world that preaches a gospel of relativity thinks it can define love with absolute authority. It tries, and touts its mantras and its slogans and its prescriptions. Time proves the axiom of defeat, because what the world defines as love can never ultimately satisfy. But it keeps trying, and our weary, enraged desperation grows. 

Could it be that we’re missing the real deal? 

The world’s many attempts and copies and knock-offs are a dim reflection of what love really is – and that isn’t just something I learned in Sunday school or a sentiment I’ll proclaim to sound spiritual – it’s something I know because I have encountered the real deal. 

God didn’t set the world spinning in motion and leave us to figure out Himself and everything for ourselves – from the beginning, He gave us His word and His order and His attention. 

God didn’t let the world keep spinning through the tyranny of sin with no hope or cure. He gave us His Son – His redemption, His love. 

Jesus is the only true definition of love – you can never experience what it is to be unconditionally and perfectly beloved apart from Him. Try to love on your own and you’ll always fall short – try to be loved by your own definition and you’ll always remain desperate. 

Jesus is the only thing that can fill every longing and satisfy every desperate desire.

It seems that I so often miss the mark of obedience I’m called to – in the little moments and the big fears and the temptations of my flesh. They all convince me I know best, or that I deserve a break, or that it isn’t really such a big deal. And those pages of breathed-out Word tell me if I love, I’ll obey – and I realize that the root of my sin is misplaced love. 

Could it be that the reason I struggle to obey Jesus is because other loves crowd my heart and push Him off the throne of my exclusive worship? 

It’s true – the real deal is the great Illuminator – the closer I get to Him, the more I realize how far I am. But the miracle of Jesus coming is that He came while we were broken and sinning and desperate and far from Him. How grateful I am that He gives us His closeness despite our wandering. What glory, what goodness – this gift of perfect Love. 

Merry Christmas, there’s love for you in Jesus.

joy, for you

In the season of cheer and merriness I’m often struck by the starkness of contrast I see. Amidst the greeting cards and well-wishing bell-ringers on street corners, all the obligatory parties and gift exchanges, advertising frenzy, I see the cashier whose eyes held an emptiness that betrayed every ounce of happiness the store could muster. 

I see the brisk-walkers whose steps follow a grim, resolute rhythm of escape. I see those public service workers who never get a day off, checking every calendar day off with dread, their countdown to Christmas more like a ticking reminder of fearful futility. 

It hits me more this time of year than any other – that contrast – but it isn’t only external. 

It’s the internal stomach-sinking grief I feel facing a world without the joy I’ve found. 

I’m winding down a year in no state of manic, euphoric excitement – I’m tired. It’s been a long year brimming with busyness and obligations and more questions than answers. I’ve felt that depleted, burnt-out exhaustion this year – I’ve felt tired and discouraged and overwhelmed. But the difference is, despite what I feel, I have joy.

Lewis once wrote: “I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy” — and I wonder with him when all the world’s desperate attempts to prolong pleasure fizzle out into futility – because no earthly pleasure is fully secure or guaranteed or eternal. All pleasures are just a substitute for the wellspring of knowing Joy that transcends all pleasure and happiness the world could possibly offer. 

We can never find cheer in anything we can’t take confidence in. We can never resort to trite self-help slogans telling us to choose to be happy. We can never wish joy into existence or manifest contentment. It’s a wonder that in a world plagued with tragedy and depression and the worst kinds of surprises that we can even think it’s possible. We medicate with materialism and fuel ourselves with futility – and it’s fatal to the very thing we’re desperate to obtain.

The season advertising cheer spends it’s time on the trappings and misses the point. 

Joy can be ours because God came to be with us, and in His coming He lived the life we couldn’t and died the death we all deserved and resurrected in glory to secure the eternal joy of salvation for anyone who believes Him. 

The next-step on your joy-journey? Believe Him. If you know Him, believe what He promises His own. If you don’t know Him, believe He is Who He says: the only Salvation, the only escape from the cyclical emptiness of a broken world.

The wildest, most wondrous truth is that God sent Jesus to be with us – and in His salvation is the only abundant, unbridled, everlasting joy.

Merry Christmas, there’s joy for you in Jesus.

Peace, for you.

It’s widely-hailed and well-advertised, a universally coveted virtue. Everyone wants it, and most people are willing to try for it, falling for the urban legend that peace is like weight loss, like there’s some sort of science to it. If this, then that. I’ll feel at peace if I’m productive…once my whole life is perfectly organized…once all my relationships are in order. There will be peace internationally if we advocate for it long enough…I will feel personally at peace if I’m an activist for peace.

The trouble is, we’ve equated peace to control. We’ve philosophically assented to peace meaning the ability to control our emotions to a constant state of zen – the ability to control our circumstances to predictability – the ability to ensure all of our relationships are harmonious at all times.

But my own experience proves the lie, because I have had peace in seasons when everything has felt entirely outside my control. I have felt peace at times when there is no practical, sensible explanation – when I should have been drowning, but I wasn’t. I’ve felt peace that has illuminated paths that were uncertain, like a singular compass in the wilderness.

I haven’t found true, deep, lasting peace in a planner or a workout routine or a clean house; I haven’t found it in any relationship or commentary or podcast, in a nonprofit donation or yoga class.

I have only found true, deep, lasting peace in Jesus – in the pages of His breathed-out Word and in the light of His presence.

Prince of Peace is the capstone to that infamous prophecy:
“For unto us a child is born, to us a Son is given…and the government shall be on His shoulders…and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

The capstone, the deep exhale at the end – Prince of Peace.

Peace is the oft-quoted slogan of the Christmas story: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace – goodwill toward men.”

I haven’t tried everything on earth, but I don’t need to to know that everything on earth fades and fails. In all my advent reflections, it seems that peace-week is always one that challenges me to the brink of my own emotional threshold. It’s the week I inevitably feel tapped out, tired and tried and worn thin, when circumstances feel so wildly outside my control. Maybe that’s the lesson.

Peace, on earth – found in the presence of Peace, on earth, with us.

Maybe the most difficult weeks and seasons are an invitation to trust Him and His promise – “I will keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Me” …

We have peace when our minds are stayed on Peace, the person, Jesus – come to be our Peace on earth and our eternal Prince of Peace.

We have peace because God in His heaven, needless and satisfied, sent Jesus to satisfy our greatest need – reconciliation with God.

Peace – that Peace – is our most desperate need, and Christmas heralds its wondrous fulfillment.

Merry Christmas – there’s peace for you in Jesus.

Hope, for you.

Disappointment: the all-too familiar ache ubiquitous with the human experience – the common curtain call to high expectations.  I’m realist enough to say I can live with a less-than-fairytale outcome – but one that surprises me or turns my expectations upside down? One that actually crushes every little dream I had carefully stored away? I’ve wondered in seasons of loose and shattered ends how I could even push forward.

We’re in a world full of loose ends and dead ends and empty promises and unfulfilled expectations. Wherever people are involved, disappointment will be found. We place our hope in a neatly-tied finish and we’re crushed when it isn’t so neat after all – or when we never really get the satisfaction of a finale – that email, that apology, those reciprocated feelings, that returned gift, that coveted reply. We place our hope in our own potential to achieve it all, to get it all done, to balance our precariously high stack of responsibilities with perfect precision and never let anyone else down. Wherever our own strength is involved, disappointment will be found.  Yet how often we glibly push ahead into building our next ivory tower of expectations – only to repeat the cycle and reap the inevitable harvest of hurt feelings and gnawing disappointment. 

We’re in a world full of loose ends and dead ends and empty promises and unfulfilled expectations — but God. Hope has been in our DNA from the beginning – when sin broke the perfect glory of creation – and Creator already had a plan to redeem. In the beginning, long before the dawn of time – redemption was in motion. Hope is threaded through millennia – the parallel that ties then to now. For thousands of years Israel hoped desperately for her Messiah to come and deliver her – and history marched on, a saga of destruction and captivity and idolatry. But God – came. Just like He planned and promised.

We’re all intrinsically hopeful – almost as if our very souls know that there is a worthy object. The only thing that will set us free from the tyranny of disappointment and dashed dreams is to stake our lives on the only Hope that can deliver us from our human experience – the Hope that came and lived it, human yet holy – the Hope that died and resurrected, redeeming it.

Now, we wait for that same Messiah – Christ, to come again and make all things new. Christmas heralds the only pure and perfect, ageless, complete Hope there ever was – the Hope of redemption that we could never construct or contrive or achieve on our own. How liberating to hope in something a sin-broken world could never destroy or soil – how wondrous to know that the object of our Hope is secure. Disappointment may be the world’s tiresome cacophony — but Hope is heaven’s tireless victory.

Merry Christmas – there’s Hope for you in Jesus.

the atonal & the avant-garde: a study in artful antagonism

Leonard Bernstein is sitting at the piano, giving us a tour. He walks us through the first, the fourth, the fifth, the third, and so on, and we see the tones building, we see how they work together, we see so clearly one of life’s most embedded realities: natural order. 

Music history is a saga of exploration – a family tree of composers and interpreters alike, discovering how to follow the rules and how to bend them. In such a varied canvas, the most gaping wonder is the unchanging order that carries every instance of creativity. Bernstein’s fingers seem to declare this deafening reality of meaning. A perfect fifth is a perfect fifth, in every language, on every piano. 

Increasingly, the modern moral virtue of creativity seems to be founded on how artfully one can unravel the melody of meaning and challenge its very existence. This is peak enlightenment, some say; the pinnacle of creativity. The most artful achievement is to deconstruct reality and meaning. 

Yet the question of meaning is the ever-constant hum among museum throngs, in concert halls and classrooms. Creativity is really only ever a reflection of reality – even when it’s purposed to challenge what is real. Absurdism proves this by mocking what is real, thus magnifying it’s existence. Absurdism wouldn’t be funny or intriguing if we didn’t have an ordered reality to compare it to. Atonal music wouldn’t sound dissonant without a concept of consonance. 

Lennon & McCartney were that once-in-a-century dynamic duo that produced in 10 years what many artists could only dream of creating in 20. I love the product of their creativity as much as anyone – no, probably more. I said it only last week: “post-1965 Beatles are the best Beatles.” That’s when the avant-garde started to pierce through the marrow of easy, catchy harmonies they had built an empire on, and their albums became stranger and more substantial, simultaneously.

Is it the strangeness that makes that mature Beatles sound more interesting? I may have thought so if I didn’t know that those post-’65 chord progressions are addicting because they’re echoing the melody of meaning. Abbey Road is in many ways a re-telling of that tour that Bernstein took us on. My husband alluded to it 2 weeks ago, in one of many philosophical dinner conversations which are slowly becoming a fixture in our own little empire. Avant-garde for the sake of itself is just…well, pointless. The avant-garde is appealing only because and only when it reminds us that there’s order woven into the fiber of all life, and that creation is more certain than our own capacity for creativity. 

I’m a museum lover who can usually find it in myself to be more intrigued than irritated by what I don’t understand. But when art is just a monument to baseless, boundary-blurring perception? It’s akin to the agenda assumed by most modern social institutions to wage war on semantics and call everything symbolic and subjective. Symbolism rests on the laurels of meaning. It exists only because meaning exists, and definably so. If nothing means anything objectively, nothing means anything symbolically. In other words, everything means anything and everything means nothing. 

Maybe that’s the traceable conclusion of the modern art crusade – to embrace nihilism, albeit hedonistically. It gloats in its progressiveness, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s really just grasping for relief. When you haven’t found meaning or truth, you’ll fight tooth and nail to convince the world it doesn’t exist. Like absurdism is a mechanism to ultimately magnify what’s real, perhaps radical devotion to the avant-garde reveals the longing that deconstructionism produces. The war waged on meaning has done more to lay hearts to waste than to elevate minds. It’s digging deeper the hole in the human soul that longs for truth – not a chaotic semblance of “lived experiences” and feelings, but dependable, definable truth that is undefiled by the horrific chaos of a broken world. 

Towers of tinfoil collapse at that piano where Bernstein sits, showing off the mesmerizing predictability of the circle of 5ths. If you want proof that life isn’t meaningless or that definable truth isn’t just a façade – look no further than a piano, a pinecone, Pythagorean. 

What Bernstein explains on a keyboard, Fibonacci explains through a pinecone, Pythagorean explains in a triangle. The circle of fifths, the golden ratio, geometric proofs — all testaments to an astoundingly precise order that composes the universe and points inescapably to a characteristically orderly design.

Truth and meaning compose the reality of life, revealed in the pattern of creation, magnifying a Creator Who breathed order into existence, who sustains existence with His breath still, who does everything on purpose. There are no cosmic accidents, there is only Hope to hang your heart on.

Jesus, our Love

“All You Need Is Love” is the mantra that’s echoed down decades of history, immortalized as a hit in 1967 but the sentiment tops the charts every year. Along with it, the nagging feeling that despite desperate attempts to find it and possess it, love eludes millions of longing hearts – year after year, century after century.

Sometimes we’ve searched for love and lost it. Loss is the common thread that binds a globe of varied experience together – try to find someone who hasn’t known the pain of losing someone they love. Loss is the inevitability we all face together but commiseration can’t stitch what’s shattered.

In seasons of loss, the knowledge that others have “been there before” is merely a band aid that provides cosmetic correction but doesn’t solve the stinging. All earthly solutions are fleeting and fading because in the wake of loss, we are most desperate for a love that binds our wounds and blankets us. The only solution to the bruising ache of loss is a Love that loss can never touch. 

Sometimes we’re lonely for love, maybe not licking our wounds but maybe staring at a horizon that looks blank, and sometimes the bleakness steals our breath. It seems to be amplified at Christmastime when everyone is on the edge of their seat with nostalgia, when togetherness is on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

Loneliness gnaws at the chinks in our armor of thick-skinned smiles and it has no respect for how many friends we have, how many assets we have, how nice our cars are. It can come to us in prospering or poverty, the relentless cynic, convincing us we’ll never find love or that no one really cares. And staring at a blank horizon – we have no refutation to give. When life is uncertain, loneliness seems to have the upper hand. 

The only cure for loneliness is the steadfast assurance of a Love that washes across our horizon, unmistakably, all-encompassing, more relentless than any cynic, more unreserved than we are undeserving. 

Sometimes we’ve searched for love in ourselves and we’re sore with disappointment. Self-love will never satisfy and the proof is in surround-sound societal discord. There are few doctrines more religiously preached than self-love.

The of post-modernity says you’ll only be fulfilled if you’re living your truth, in control of your own destiny, that your most authentic “you” is the one most deserving of love. But it doesn’t fill the gaping hole because we all live with the broken, shameful pieces of who we really are, and the most authentic version of all of us is the most undeserving. When we’re fully known, we feel the shock of shame that wants to run and hide, not flaunt the spotlight. Maslow’s hierarchy preaches self-actualization as the pinnacle of enlightenment, so why is it that the most endemic condition is searching, not satisfaction? Follow the world’s recipe for love and you’ll find loneliness – and self-love is the gateway drug. The truth is? People don’t need self-actualization, we need salvation.

The only remedy for the disappointment of self-love is the enlightenment of the True Light that came into the world – that sees us in our sin and shame yet gives us His righteousness. 

The cry of Christmas turns everything on its head and deafens the defeating voices of the world with the resounding truth — Jesus is better. Jesus is better — He nullifies the futility of every cultural identity trope, He surpasses every loss and earthly love, He blankets the loneliness of every longing of the heart.

Jesus – Love’s pure, Everlasting Light – may we be moved to endless, everlasting praise.

Jesus, our Joy

I was asked a question this year – in a pre-marital counseling session – “what does the world say that marriage means?”

And I answered as best I could through the bewilderment this question produced. Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t know that the world really knows what it means. 

The world’s marriage edges out all boundaries of anticipation, neglects the distinction of permanency, retains no quality of separation from any other arrangement or relationship. The world says marriage only means something when you want it to mean something – the way it says a life only counts as a life if it’s convenient. 

When we make our own rules about everything, we’re ruled by the tyranny of selfishness, one that is willing to embrace contradiction and even gloat in hypocrisy if it serves the purposes of our own agenda. 

When we strip away the fundamental principles to something, we shouldn’t wonder why the foundation crumbles. The world has tried to cut God out of the fabric of existence, then wonders at the existential holes.

What does the world say that joy means? Honestly? I wonder, when I hear it used as just another word for happiness – the kind you get on the giving or receiving end of an act of kindness. I wonder when I hear it used as just another word for excitement – the kind you get in anticipation of a great vacation. I wonder when I hear it used as just another word for contentment – the kind you get when you’re with people you love. 

But there’s something missing in all of those – there’s a quality to joy that is distinct and left uncaptured. The world’s definition of joy displays a semantic ignorance of the deep-rooted reality that life beats you down. Earthly happiness and excitement and contentment can’t nullify the fact that the human spirit needs sustenance sourced beyond the realm of what can be produced or manufactured by our own effort or what can be grasped from the platform of secular achievement. 

Joy is impossible without an enduring, eternal wellspring. Joy is impossible in human terms, on human terms. Joy is complete and perfect in the Eternal Word – Jesus – the enduring source, the Word that reigns supreme over every temporal term, every fleeting happiness. 

The world needs to hear the news of this enduring Joy and it’s on those of us who know it to declare it. Come, all ye faithful – joyful and triumphant. We triumph because of the object of our faith and we are joyful because we have known the presence of the King. May every heart that knows His name be compelled to adoration — Jesus – the Wellspring – the Triumphant King – Joy of man’s desiring, holy wisdom, love most bright.

Jesus, our Peace

When did we start thinking peace was something we could legislate?

Politically, it’s preached from podiums, in pamphlets, at presidential debates. Peace – simultaneously elusive and easy to achieve. We just need the right policy, the right plan, the right perspective. 

Always, when the world speaks of peace, it’s centered around us – what we can achieve, what we’re doing, what we need to maintain the façade of self-worth and control and positive relations.

Personally, it’s the billed as the signature of self-care, sung by the champions of self-actualization. We just need to take time, be intentional, create boundaries. 

Create boundaries? Ironic, because every instance of peace-less-ness in the world all finds its origin in a single boundary. It’s the one we created when we thought we could do a better job ourselves, when we started thinking we could have anything good without God. We haven’t just failed to find peace –we’ve pushed Peace away.

It’s easy to concede philosophically, to intellectually assent to the history of human rebellion – but it’s harder to admit the ways we do it every day. Honestly? I’ve pushed Peace away this week every time I’ve chosen worry over trust. I’ve pushed Peace away every time I thought more about what I deserved from an interaction than how I could serve the other person. I’ve pushed Peace away every time I’ve let the stuff of earth send me into a panic rather than drive me to my knees in prayer. We choose earthly clutter and instant gratification and mindless minute-fillers over communion with the very antidote we’re after: Peace – the Person. Not the politically correct kind, not the cross-stitched pillow kind, not the massage therapy kind. 

Peace – the Person – that shows us our pride and our need far eclipsing any semblance of heroism – that proves that self-care boundaries are obsolete in His boundless, perfect love – that can make reconciliation possible because He spills His blood, the spill that makes us clean. 

John Lennon famously urged the world to “give peace a chance” – but really, it’s Peace that gives us a chance. We went wrong when we decided we could have anything good without God. So often we push peace away — if not on principle, then certainly in practice. Could it be that God, in his unmerited kindness, responds to our pushing by pursuit — by coming closer to us?

Yes. Jesus, Son of Man, come to reconcile, come to be with us.

Peace can’t start with us – it can’t be about us – and yet, God, in His lavish mercy makes it for us? 

Yes. Jesus, the heaven-sent, only Prince of Peace, given for us.

Jesus our Hope

It’s been a year of incredulous, imprecatory Psalms – my mouth often full of despairing questions, my heart often full of discouragement, my mind often racing to reason out the lawlessness I see. I’ve prayed the same prayers stuck in rush hour on the 405 after beat-down weeks and let-down news as David did in the heat of the battle – “How long, Oh LORD?” “How long must evil prevail? “How long must righteousness be forsaken and trampled while lawlessness and wickedness abound?” 

Hoping is humanity’s constant, throbbing condition. Excepting the staunchest of nihilists, it’s hammered into the human heart to hope as sure as reality is shattered with sin and suffering. The existence of hope implies a reality that is incomplete, and this is a common thread that binds a whole world’s worth of history: everyone, everywhere, hopes. 

We go wrong when we hang our hope on what can be seen, what can be sold and solved and self-serving – but all of these fail. Sight fails, along with dollars and sense; stuff and self-gratification burn as fast as they come, leaving only longing in their wake. Hope all you want, but you will always want if you haven’t found the only worthy object. Hope is a condition that only finds resolve if it’s object is sure.

I think of the billions of people who hope, desperately, day after day in the wrong things. I pray that my imprecation and incredulity – induced by headlines and hard weeks – would only fuel my desire to share the hope I have – the only Hope that is steadfast and anchoring and sure.

I’ve long treasured the season of advent for the mirror it is – the long-awaited arrival of Messiah two thousand years past joins the present long-awaiting of His return. How often I miss the meaning that so richly fills every second and stretches far beyond this season. How often I become like those who have no hope when I survey a broken world whose fixing seems beyond finite feasibility. How often I foolishly believe that hope is dependent on what I can see or sense or make sense of, forgetting that sight fails, forgetting the desperation of the ages that advent remembers — when no eye saw and no ear heard and it was then that Hope was born.

I have hope in the incredulity and despair, I have hope in the face of hard weeks and headlines crying “how long, Lord?”. I have hope even when I feel blind, even when the world seems to suck and suffocate my breath away. I have hope when I can’t feel it, and when I can’t touch it I still know it to be tangible because Christmas is the prelude to the torn veil. Hope – promised – incarnate – sure.

on worship / advent week 4

I stood in a throne room once, in teary-eyed wonder at the majesty and the sheer magnitude of the history that thickened the air. It was surreal, but it was sterile; and I think of how many times I’ve been before a throne in prayer — it’s tear-stained and never sterile, but the history there is sweeter. How many countless hours I’ve poured my spirit out to parching – yet how often I still live in practical forgetfulness of His presence. 

Too often, it’s the trappings of earth that clutter my mind and attempt to lay claim to my heart’s allegiance. 

Christmas confronts the rhythm of everyday existence, fills up the pause with a pulse-stilling question: what will you do with Jesus?

Emmanuel is the initiative, incarnate rescue that cannot be ignored, so Christmas is coming face-to-face with the non-negotiable reality that holds logic and experience in even-handed demand. 

C.S. Lewis said it well that when it comes to Christ — there is no middle ground between worship and spurn, and hundreds of prophecies chorus in agreement. Jesus fulfills every promise, defeating all human likelihood and statistic, proving every objection null, demanding decision with the proof of His Godship. 

It’s the season for sending out cards and wishes of regard, but make no mistake: Christmas is the arrival of the One Thing all eternity hangs on – and He leaves no room for pleasant regard. What will you do with Jesus?

It’s the question most divorced from any option of neutrality, the question that throbs with the urgency of eternity, the question Christmas asks, the question of every day. 

The scholars have summed up well the logical case for exclusivity, and hours before the throne have fleshed out the experiential case. Because I’m not simply repeating a catechism – I’m bursting with the joy in the glow of His presence — I know Him. 

The promise of a child born to be the Mighty God, the Exalted One, finds precise fulfillment in the person of Jesus. And the promise comes full circle when Jesus said: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through me.” 

Jesus demands decision. You must make up your mind what to do with Him. 

Whoever does not gather scatters. How often my own mind is a scattering, wind-swept landscape of futile thinking, consumed by the world rather than with Him. I’d rather be before the throne than subject to the throes of my own idolatry, and as my prayer grows louder, the glow of the trappings fades —

Jesus — forgive my every day idolatry and consume me with the singular glory of You. Keep me wonder-filled and worshipful in the wake of your majesty.

Isaiah 52, 53; John 14