barbed wire snapping song

{photo by Elora Ramirez}

we live in a world of barbed wire fences.

we're pressing flesh against sharp points and rough edges. we're desperate enough for touch, for connection, for community, that we are willing to endure the slicing and the bleeding and the tetanus-created lockjaw of silence. and it's all for the sake of being touched.

and here I am, in my home with the hardwood floors and the windows that face the East with the sun flowing in, humming Children of the Heavenly Father with tears in my eyes. because this can't be what He meant when He breathed His name over us like the holiest of commissions.

it's fitting that we're stepping into this time of year, slowly placing one foot in front of another as we approach each station of the Cross, each moment in the journey from Son of Man to Lamb of God. we're approaching His time of broken body. we are standing mere feet away from the blood-stained Israeli stones.

and I'm hushed in the holiness of it all. hushed in the realization that there was the barbed wire of nature that pressed deep into the forehead of fully-Man-fully-God. there was the bits of bone and metal and stone twisted into leather strips that severed skin from muscle and bone.

the barbed wire was destroyed the moment that death started working backwards. 

"it is finished." and He meant it, every weak and agonized syllable. it is done. it is complete. there are no more fences, no more twisted rusted metal gates designed to shred and tear and bleed and sever. it is finished. 

we're good at swords, somehow. we're good at evisceration in the name of love. we're good with breaking, but not so good with loving the broken. we're good with thudding, not so good with the gentle touch. we're good with barbed wire fences and darkened windows.

I want to be good with Jesus. I want to become good with Holiness streaming from my lips like water and Grace filling the baskets surrounding my feet like so much bread and fish created from scraps of "all she has is..."

I don't want to be so good with a sword. I want to be better with wire-cutters. there are wounds, blood, all for the sake of being touched. there is the virus of silence raging rampant through the veins of those who have been bound and gagged by the well-meaning millstone carvers.

but look at yourself, beloved ones. those scarlet letters are written in chalk. the rain is coming, pouring, and they are blurring into streaks that match the glorious sunrise. do you hear? that is the sound of rust caving under blades.

run free, lioness. He has laid flowers in your hair. He is leaping, arms raised and mouth wide open at the joy of you. the sight of you has Him undone.

the night has ended. this is the Morning. 

{beloved, there is room for you with us in community. no barbed wire there. only meadows. 

join us.}

deconstructed fences

{via pinterest}

i encountered adventurers yesterday. 

they weren't thrill-seekers with their parachutes or wooden walking sticks. they didn't seek to change the world with fists held high or picketing signs up and down the sidewalk.

they just wanted to be free. past the fence and into the world to see what they had never known, but had long gazed upon from so far away.

did i mention that they weren't even human, 

but equine?

two of them, huge and dark brown with eyes like deep pools of melted chocolate, if chocolate bore intelligence and perhaps it does, actually.

and somehow, they had broken through their hill-top paddock fence and made their way down into the middle of the winding country road. 

but that was as far as they went. the world was so big around them, so expansive and beautiful with grass and hills and rolling fields. but they stayed there, on the pavement, barely a hundred feet from their original enclosure.

they were free, but they did not choose to act in freedom. 

{via pinterest}

they were still caged. 

do i do this? 

do i still live caged when in truth i am surrounded on all sides by open fields of Love and Grace and Mercy and Truth and oh, so much Light? 

do i chose to cower in the darkness right next to the broken Death-fence, whispering

but i know this. i know here. i know now. 

i don't know anything else. 

but i have freedom.

for all those who have dwelt in darkness have seen a Great Light. 

because He used the nail and hammer to tear down fences, and the wooden beams to deconstruct the cages of fear and death. He tore curtains from top to bottom, death working backwards. 

i need to grasp, and inhale and exhale and inhale again

and run free.