On sleepless nights, such as this one, my thoughts will often return to a place of peace outside a window of a house I no longer live at. Early in the morning I would sit and stare out the window, a cup of coffee cooling in my hands in the early morning before the dawn. The streetlamp would bath the street in dark shadows across a lonely park and two corners would merge out the orange glow. Lost in my prayers, those cross streets would be the place where God’s hope would bring to life my faith. It was the corner called Love.
Tonight I look out my window. There is no cross streets. Only a lonely cul-de-sac. Nothing like that bit of grace that comes unique to a night during the land between. But the same God who sat enthroned in my life during that struggle remains on His thrown during this one. He reminds me in the early dawn with whispers of his thoughts towards me. I listen sweetly while I hold coffee cooling in my trembling hands that His love remains the same for me that it did that night, and last night…
…and the night before
…and the night before that
…and the one before that
This corner in my own dark cross street of my soul is still called Love, and it’s still here where I meet Him.
It’s the place I can sit and think and pray during my long, dark nights of the soul.
It is a good place to wander too when one’s heart is broken, and tonight I have a broken heart. Tonight it’s broken because I see too many people wandering in the dark streets at lonely hours trying to find this corner in the mists, but wandering right by. I call to them and tell them that it’s here and it’s waiting for them. Some smile and wave before they walk on. Others tell me they are on their own path. Yet others laugh. Some find it and all of heaven rejoices.
I think so many have trouble navigating themselves to this corner because they have a mind-image of it that is too different. This doesn’t fit into the way they say it should be. This breaks my heart because their description of the corner they seek is always a lesser place inhabited by a lesser god. Others yell at me that “love is love” and settle for something that has never been love at all. Lies are so sweet when they tell you what you want to hear. But deep inside we always know when we are settling for a cheaper knock off. We settle, becoming enraged with any that disagree with us, and remain lost in the night.
But the corner of faith and hope still sings to us to come.
We tell ourselves that not all who wander are lost. But here’s the thing… we ARE lost. We’ve been lost for so long we don’t know what it is to be found.
And still the corner sings to us, and calls to us.
We share our brokenness in a vain hope that it will bring peace. We tell ourselves that we are on the path to enlightenment. We strive to evolve. We sing of our passions. We scream of our anger. We fight and rebel and demand.
We wonder those highways in hiding as lost, broken souls in the long dark night. Sometimes the glamor fades and we panic in the darkness and we call out for someone to take us by the hand and lead us to that corner of faith and hope.
I have done that.
I have done that and I have felt the hand of the Ageless Friend as He led me down the street of hope to the place where it met faith, and there together we have stood on that corner and there my heart has broken. And there my heart has healed. And there I entered into a new kingdom that is no longer of this world.
It was at that corner that I was finally found.
It was at that corner that I was finally home.
So tonight, as the dark night of the soul ticks onward, I will once again look out my window at a corner that is always as close as my Creator. I will pray and hope for those I love that still wander in the mist of the dark streets. I will still call out to those who wander by. I will sing of a love that I do not deserve, but yet have; a love greater than the brokenness I brought it.
So tonight I will sit here praying on this corner that marks the meeting of the street called Faith and the street called Hope…
…on this corner called Love.
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