He is Here

Jehovah Shammah, it's my favorite of God's holy names. He is here. When the world shakes and trembles and eats her own in a rage of swirling wind or whelming tsunami flood, He is here. When the mama overwhelmed by brokenness marking her child leaves him to the bowls of an institution to rot and deform, He is here. When the diagnosis is cancer, and the dreaded enemy consumes flesh and hope, He is here.

When blackness mars what once was our beautiful garden home and evil marches taking captive after captive and sometimes it's hard to raise our eyes to the carnage of it all, He is here. Amazing grace, he didn't leave us in our state of death. He came here, and joined us in it. His death here, with us, surprising victory, swallowed up death, in us. Nothing saddens me more than to see a Christ-following one exchange life for death and strap back on the sin that destroys. Renaming death by a holy name but denying God's power to break the chain once and for all. But that's another thought.

He is here. Can you hear the rumor of him striking Asland like out among the enchanted winter with spring in his footstep? Do you smell him around you in the form of every goodness preformed in the face of evil, for a stranger? Do you see him in the eyes of the broken, worn out soul finally free of the sin that has shamed and hammered merciless for too long.

He is here with me in the dark when I tuck in my babies and pray God's faithfulness and righteousness follows them all their lives. He is here when I falter and his hand lifts me from sin, again. He is here when I dance in the yard with the butterflies and a curly haired princess. He is here in the dark when my heart spills grief for neglected children I'm coming to love, in a country far away. He is here when misunderstandings abound among his own children and tenderness has left the building. He is here. He is here.

The Lord your God is in your midst,
     a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
    he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.

Zephaniah 3:17

On this good Friday, where death and life collide, whether you're singing a joyful tune or a song akin to a wail of grief. He is here.