Beautiful words...

... from a college acquaintance and certainly words I need to be reminded of daily (and especially so lately).

Is God faithful? Sometimes, Jesus hid himself; he hid himself when the crowds expected, and even demanded, the wrong things, the self-protective things, from him. He is faithful only to his expectations, his demands, his un-self-protecting promises--his own words.

With those words, does he promise redemption? Heartache? Speak into our lives sun and fields and fears and longings and loves? Trucks and sunshine turning on the wheels? I'm not sure. But I am sure that when I shrink into myself, try to protect myself, he doesn't say, "I said, 'Don't mess up'" but "You messed up, and I have promised to love you still; there is a future for us."

So help me, God, help my wife love me still. Help my child love me still. May I say to him not "Don't mess up" but "When you do . . . ." This is labor. The sun is setting. The fields are ripening. We need not protect ourselves. We have a future.

Read the whole entry here.