Faithfulness (push and pull)

So many things happening in this season seem to reflect a certain wrestling. I'm sure it's like this every year, but this year I am noticing the tug. There is discomfort here.

Life, to death, to life as I attempt to sit and feel and be with Jesus as He moves toward the cross. What did that feel like to Him, in his human body? Feeling His feelings without the dimming veil of trauma or shame? I am trying hard, but I can't imagine.

Yearning for more experience of His presence, even as I recognize my smallness to be in it. Wondering how it looks flowing out of my daily doings, and in my relationships.

Watching spring try to sprout, only to be covered in heavy late season snow. Hope and persistence, still, bursting through.

The physical, the spiritual, my interior space are all engaged in this push and pull with faithfulness. The faithfulness of Messiah, walking through the dreadful valley of death. The faithfulness of the seasons, coming to life after a winter of dormancy and rest. The longing for faithfulness in my own heart, the searching for fruit.

One Life, Two Rhythms

The soul moves in two rhythms

like the tide drawn by the moon:

one reaching, the other resting

one in shadow, the other in light

one striving toward glory, the other already touched by it.

She walks the road of faith,

yet at times the veil thins

and she glimpses the homeland,

not as distant but as pressing in upon her,

whispering through the silence of prayer,

flashing forth in the love that costs everything

yet takes nothing.

She labors,

yet in her toil there is rest.

She wars against sin,

yet even in the battle the Victor fights within her.

She weeps,

yet in her tears she tastes the joy that will dry them.

She forgives,

knowing in that act, heaven touches earth.

She discerns between good and evil,

but in her cleaving to the Good, she already stands upon holy ground.

One life is in the sweat of the brow,

the other in the stillness of contemplation.

One bears the wounds of love,

the other is healed by Love's wounds.

One is the seed in the earth,

the other is the first green shoot breaking through.

The two are not far apart:

the one, rightly lived, is the threshold of the other.

Todd Ell, March 2025

Can you feel it? The relaxing of a held breath into spaciousness? An invitation to be whole in the tension; not a struggle to win but instead the one amplifying the other. Faithfulness.

Wrestling is a construct of my own way of doing things. The truth is, faithfulness begins and ends with Christ. My longing for it, and any measure of it that I may have, are both gifts from Him. The mystery of the Almighty and the intimacy of my Abba, brought to me by Jesus.

I may not have imagination large enough to grasp how it felt to Him, to be facing the horrors of His particular valley of death. But He is happy for me to be with Him there anyway, because I want to know Him better and He wants to be known by me, my smallness notwithstanding. Amazing. Amazing grace.