AT THE BORDER.

 

Have you been to a border before? The line that separates two countries, and just this moment, the line that separates one year from the next... I've had the chance to be at both. For the latter, I didn't realise I was approaching it until people started to ask me questions and lay the task of reflecting on the year before me. 

For the first time in my life getting to the end of a year has felt like a long walk where I was partially asleep while trekking. It looks like reaching a desert-like checkpoint just after sunset when the sky gets darker but the stars aren't out yet, and you can see the layers of the sky and the clouds. 

When you finally turn around with the breeze and look back at where you've come from, you don't even wanna talk. You lay down all the luggage you managed to bring with you and sit on a boulder a fair distance from a dry canyon. 

You seem alone but really you're not. In your quiet you begin to see the year unfold before you, it's like a quick slideshow on a camera. Suddenly you're emotional; you can't control it and you don't want to. You want to linger there a little bit. You can sense there's something happening. Before you know it  you're on the ground, coiled and unashamed. 

Not afraid to let out a manly cry; in it is mixed all the feelings you have deep within you, all racing to find expression. Maybe you don't fathom the events taking place in you, you're sobs seem to be quieting... at this moment, you can speak. So you raise your voice to Him who made you far greater than the stars in the sky and the moon all the same. 

The more you consider, the less you understand. Why would a God like Him care for a man like you? Just then He opens His heavens and out of its chambers flows the melodies of this song;

With every lyric that sets in your heart, your tears stream down hot on your now sensitive cheeks. You remember but can't fully grasp what a LOVE you've experienced this year alone. What a Saviour what a Refuge, what a Father what a Lord, what a Friend what a Companion, what a Helper what a Comforter, what a Preserver what a Provider, what a God!!! What dimensions of I AM. What intimacy is this? It's truly a grace I could never add up - to be somebody God still wants. 

Right there you have a special moment with Abba, that only you know about because it's not a moment that is repeated for others. It's just unique to you. 

What lies ahead for you beyond this border, across the canyon, after the night toward the sunrise is the great unknown. Here, take My hand and  when it's time to cross, we'll go together.

If you're already at this point in time and you don't already know that Jesus loves you, enough is enough. It's time you woke up the sleeper in you. No-one that was blind and is given sight asks to be blind again. Father, thank You so much for the year, let your will be done in Jesus' name, amen. 

Love, Serene Steph.