I want to change. I crave a deeper loyalty to God, a determination to believe in his goodness. I am dismayed by the transience of my faith, the frailty of my trust.
But I don’t think I am alone. We all draw our first breath with the taste of death already in our souls. (Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah) Fear and doubt call to the fallen dust within us as the moon draws the tide.
I remember laying on the bottom of the swimming pool as a child, and staring up at the world above the surface of the water. Everything was warped, distorted; a jumbled mass of colors and movement impossible to discern. I think terra firma is much the same, especially when the road before me is marked by pain. I turn the picture of disappointment, and loss this way and that, desperately wanting to understand. I want to see purpose and hope in the blurry images. I strain to see God’s will in the murky depths. I and I cry to the Father with the Psalmist-
“Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am faint, O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in anguish. How long, O LORD, how long?”
Psalm 6:2-3
And so, I want to change. I want to trust in the kindness of God’s heart, and the surety of his promises.
When my children were small I was the center of their world. Some of the sweetest moments of my life have been spent in a rocking chair nursing my babies. I would watch as their eyes grew heavy, and they drifted off to sleep. “Milk drunk”, we called it.
In silence, I would lift them to nestle their warm, rosy cheeks into the bend of my neck and feel their soft breath against my skin as they slept in perfect peace.
“But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.”
Psalm 131:2-3
I believe this is posture of the heart is my inheritance as a child of God. This is the picture of perfect peace he wants for me.
“Aren’t you weary, child?” he asks.
“Trust, trust…” he woos.
And so, I want to change. I need to be transformed. His heart calls to mine to become like a child.
“And he said: ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3
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