journey onWord with us

As I began to write, a floodgate of tears burst open.  I’m guessing I’m about to find out why.  Maybe they’re for something that’s going to be revealed in my own life.  Maybe they’re for someone I’ll never know about.  Maybe it’s because the reality of brokenness is so close to my heart and experience in walking with God.  Whatever the reason, they were very real, and I haven’t the first clue why they came.

We are makers of plans and this is our season.  The end of a year invites reflection, and the dawn of a new one turns our minds to fresh possibilities and plans.  We resolve to do better or anew.  We set a target.  We write words or speak a promise.

If you were to lay out all the resolves, promises and plans you made at the beginning of each new year, I believe most (if not all) would fall into a very specific pattern.  While the areas and applications vary widely (health, wealth, personal or professional growth, spiritual discipline — to name just a few) the intent and resulting actions would almost always be to build up.  It seems as though our innate nature in planning and goal setting is increase.  It is into this nature that I’d like to speak a suggestion.  What would our lives look like, at this time next year, if we set a goal of radical decrease?  What if we would pray without ceasing the words of John 3:30 — He must increase, but I must decrease (ESV) – and then submit ourselves fully to a brick-by-brick dismantling of everything we’ve built up in our own power.

As my mind began to consider this, I recalled the melody and lyrics of a song I heard on the radio and then immediately downloaded last year (The Unmaking by Nicole Nordeman).  The title and tenor of the song shocked my senses.  I was moved and inspired … and then it went all but dormant.  It came flooding back to me as the thoughts of decrease and deconstruction began to expand in my mind.  Truths in the lyrics like, “Only when we’re broken, are we whole.”  Questions in the lyrics like, “What happens now, when all I’ve made is torn down?” and “What happens next,  when all of You is all that’s left?”  The chorus answers:

This is the unmaking
The beauty in the breaking
Had to lose myself
To find out who You are

An unmaking — Is it possible to wish for this … to plead for this?  Beauty in the breaking — Oh, the life-changing experiences God has brought me through which shout that truth!  Had to lose myself to find out who You are — My heart shouts, “Yes, Jesus, yes!”

Are we off target in all our well-meaning plans of increase?  Are we starving our true selves, which crave perfect union with our Creator and Father?  Are we willing to be stripped of everything we’ve built — emptied of every bit of ourselves — to finally find oneness with Him?  Will we stop bending, and finally break, in order to be made whole?  What would our lives, and the patch of kingdom ground God has gifted us to move and breathe within, look like one year from today if we said “Yes!”?

This is the possibility and promise of an unmaking.