Ways

The beauty of the waves.

Weight of bottomless depths

Rise up in power and pound.

The still swirl of fathomless feet

Rise up in peaceful sway.

Tumult and tranquility

From the same depths.

The beauty of the Lord.

Wisdom of infinity and eternity

Rise up in power and peace,

In trials and tranquility

From the same heart depths.

The ways of the Lord.

David: “In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches….[I will] fix my eyes on your ways” (Ps. 119:14-15). Those same eyes, fixed on the Lord’s ways, “My eyes long for your promise; I ask, ‘When will you comfort me?” (Ps. 119:82). The same heart that delighted in the ways of the Lord’s testimonies, “For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke….. How long must your servant endure?” (Ps. 119:83).

The ways of the Lord.

My head knows the Lord’s ways are wise. Great. Awesome.

I trust.

Yet—do I love them? Love his ways?

Do I love or just submit to his timing in answers to prayer? In his allowing the tempter and enemy? In his allowing persecution and suffering? To love—not as emotional delight but love as cherish, meditate, consider precious, to see the value. To love as more to than submission. To love as to reflect. To ponder and see his heart in them.

How can I love the Lord if I do not love his ways? How can I love only part of him? To love his face and not his hand?

To grumble is to rebel. To grumble is personal against my King.

See his heart.

See beneath the waves

To the fathomless depths of a love

From a heart and wisdom

Of an infinite, eternal God of love.

His heart and his ways:

His love is stronger than death (death of pain, sickness, trial, doubt, depression), his jealousy for us is fierce as the grave and pursues in joys and pleasures and prodigals and wandering. His love flames out in flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord, a passion that strikes and spurs in hearts. Many waters of trials cannot quench his love, neither can floods of world-pleasures drown it. (my paraphrase of Song of Songs 8:6-7a)

His heart and his ways:

That requires a spiritual strength from the infinite, all-strong, Almighty Spirit himself infused in us to grasp in a bit the endless breadth, expansionless length, unmeasurable height, and fathomless depth of a love that surpasses knowledge, filling us with the fullness of God of love, becoming like him in response to love as in weakness and pain, in joys that reach out in heart-leap-response, fullness. (my paraphrase of Eph. 3:18-19).

Waves of wisdom and love.

Yes, Jesus; yes, Father; yes, Spirit.

In my whys I love your ways.

In my waiting, I love your ways.

In my weakness, I love your ways.

In my weeping, I love your ways.

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

‘For who has known the mind of the Lord,

or who has been his counselor?’

‘Or who has given a gift to him

that he might be repaid?

For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be glory forever.

Amen.” (Romans 11:33-34)

Amen. So be it with and in love.