What if you jumped?

"The people who walked in darkness
Have seen a great light;

Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them a light has shined" (Is. 9:2).

What gets me is that He knew all along how dark things would get. This Author who sits above time, who knows the end from the beginning, when He dreamed us up, He saw it. All the suffering that would follow the choice to give us freedom to choose Him. I wonder if it all unfolded in His mind like a movie script, the whole huge holy mess that is the story of us.

And yet He did it anyway. Breathed the breath of Himself into story and song, unleashed all the howling beauty and passion and sorrow and laughter and suffering and all of it--ALL of it--He knew.

This overwhelms. And it could easily lead one to anger and despair. Why? Why would He allow it? This hurts too much! we cry. We didn't ask for this. And maybe He seems cruel. Distant. Unjust. Certainly we do not understand.

But there is another way to see this story. It begins with an Author so full of love that He cannot keep it to Himself--He MUST love. He breathes this world into story and fills it with the people of His love, and He gives us freedom because after all, what is love without freedom to choose it? And yes the darkness descends and we, muddled and confused and choosing the wrong way, we lose the way and stumble along, and really to us none of this seems worth it. And so we climb to places we think are safe.

But climbing onto comfort cheats us of our true story.

The One who is very Love itself knows it is all worth it. He yearns over us, He whispers our names in the darkness, and when we lean out, when we grope for Him blindly, He comes. Love steps down and walks straight into our suffering, walks straight into the death we all must die, because Love is worth it.

We don't believe Him. We are filled with fear. We hold back and rage at our sufferings because we don't believe His love is worth the sacrifice.

But all great love stories are built on sacrifice, aren't they? And when we give up who we think we are, then we discover who He meant us to be all along.

Beloved.

I know it sounds all wrong. It sounds crazy and silly, and even if we say we believe it, very few of us are really living in the freedom that is Love. We would rather cling to our comfort in the darkness.

What if we really believe that His love is worth this story? What if we begin to trust an Author who knows the pain of living is nothing compared to the Love that rescues us in our dying? He knew what this story would cost us. What it would cost Him. Nothing less than everything. But what if we choose to enter in--to come out of the shadowlands and truly live this story?

The darkness is still dark. Unknown. And it costs us everything. But there is this light shining away in the distance, and there is a hand reaching for us in the dark, and I'm starting to see that taking that hand, jumping all the way into the darkness, there is a Love story waiting, a story I never dreamed could really be true.

I have seen it.

(To be continued)