Just Another Brick in the Wall

Do you have a wall? I have lots of them, and they seem to be boxing me in these days. You know, a brick wall. The thing that if you're running hard and fast enough toward will make you bounce when you hit the ground.

I know some of the ways God works. One of those ways is that your walls all come together at the corners. They grow so tall you can't scale them, so thick you can't shatter them, so dense that no one can hear you cry for help. Well, almost no one. There comes a time when the Lord needs you to turn to Him so deeply that He'll let your own stuff hurt you so you'll look up, press in, move on. I am in this place.

I have built some amazing walls, if I do say so myself. Each brick is crafted with care, inscribed with its particular hurt or wrong. I mortared them myself too, with amazing precision. They're solid, those bricks of mine. But now I'm in a place where they're ready to come down. I hear people calling to me to fellowship with them, and I can't get out. I hear the sounds of the life I'm called to have faint in the distance, and I want to run there. Except I can't because of these darn walls.

The only way out of this mess is to let God break down the walls, break down my heart, melt the hard places. It's not fun. It's not glamorous, it's not even really all that fascinating to anyone who isn't in it with me (though it seems that RG has endless amounts of self to invest into this process, which I find bewildering as really, I'm just not that interesting). But it's good. It's sweet to feel God's pleasure as I walk through it. It's sweet to have friends affirm small changes as they see them. It's sweet to know that my relationship with the Lord is growing deeper roots.

"For who despises the day of small things?" Zechariah 4:10

And a friend's favorite verse,
"Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you." Zechariah 9:12

I am, you are, we are forever and always PRISONERS OF HOPE!