The Lid is Off

Today is my darling husband Jim’s seventieth birthday. We have been married now for half of his lifetime, and I still marvel over the vibrancy and enthusiasm that he has for a life lived in Jesus. He is always the last person standing and talking with a passion that seems to not recognize time, but only eternity. I love his energy in the tender and wise ways he has in loving others and me by the sweet unction of the Holy Spirit.

I am posting the letter that I wrote to him today as a precious reminder of how we can all be a love letter written in the hearts of those whom we love in Jesus. His way of doing this is his genuine way in Christ. We can all be this for each other by being real in Jesus, and by loving those He brings to us with the Savior’s love and truth.

May you be blessed by the deep gift that this can be in a life. Truly it is the real wealth of a lifetime. A love letter upon a heart is the mark of one loved by Jesus, and that can only be a gift extended to another with His fervency.

Most blessed day to the gift of my dearest husband:

Dearest Jim,

These heavenly gifted reflections follow a long line of love letters that we have written to each other on holidays and birthdays over the decades of our glorious union in Christ. But this time I thought I would use the extravagantly lovely 2 Corinthians 3:2-3 to show just how fervently you are written in my heart:

“You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

If ever a bride waited for the Father’s shout to the groom to go and get her, it was I while watching for you. The oil in my lamp was earnestly full of the Holy Spirit’s unction as I searched the paths that you might come. My heart was so ready to receive singularly who you are as my love letter written in my heart. And you started the exchange with: I believe in you in Christ, my dear Debbie! You show me Jesus running for His Beloved Bride uttering love’s words to His precious gait! It is so breathtakingly full of the near touch of His sweeping tender embrace.

You are my love letter to the world about who Jesus is in me. You have loved the tablet of my heart so much that you have voiced in ruby red your love for me in grace-filled eloquence, the most fervent joy, and the belief of a faith that has carried me to many a heart-hurting mailbox to love upon them supernaturally.

I love you in so many ways, but you as my love letter must be one of my most cherished treasures. Words have always been our delight to share and to handle together as they are spoken and written. His Word shows that a written letter will never be irrelevant. He allowed His Saints by the Holy Spirit to write to us so often in this way. And so I proudly show my darling’s love letter on the flesh of my soft heart to a world so stony and aching to be made pliable again.

In the 2 Corinthians passage, I became so excited when I looked-up the Greek word for being manifested (phaneroo). This would have to be a deeply embedded part of any letter written by you through the Spirit! It is what you do all day and night in your counseling room, your teaching, preaching, writing, in your conversations, and in your precious love of me. It means—to take the lid off! The lid is off of the goodness of this letter in my heart. Jesus makes us into lovers of His own and the meaning of that must not be closed. In my life, I have found no other person who is so personally delighted with the transformation brought about by taking the lid off of the goodness and greatness of the Lord than this husband of mine. This letter that I get to carry about as a heavenly invitation to those who would feast at a place where the lid has been lifted is like a royal dressing in the best bridal gown, because of your love, my dear man of God.

As you write this glorious fervency on my heart, I imagine you dictating to our dear Holy Spirit so that He could apply the very words in my heart that would be both intimate to me, but also winning to others. The remarkable and precious comments that we have received from strangers and friends about how our love nourishes and encourages could only be the Heavenly Author’s work through two who were born to minister His care together. I love being by your ever so charming side in all conditions!

A letter must have a delivery system. For this I see those Holy Spirit winds that blow where they will. In soaring freedom He takes this love letter, that you are in my heart, and carries it to places that I could never devise. And the fragrance of your love for me in Jesus makes my letter impossible to ignore. It may be convicting, or abhorrent--but oh for those times when it is the balm appointed to soul-healing! Your lovely heart overlaid upon mine, and mine upon yours, must be full of exponentially more love than we could ever imagine. This Lordly Love is even more than the innumerable actual love letters written and stored in perfumed and grateful places in our home.

A postmark appears on a letter. Your letter upon my heart, dear husband, is stamped with the Cross draped with the burial cloths that Jesus left behind. This speaks to all that this letter emanated from an open heaven and its contents bring that to all who would embrace it. The Bridegoom Who performed His first sign at the Wedding at Cana would want His blessed marriages to bring the best wine wherever they go, and to let those who receive it know that He brings it lastly (after all the sin of a life) when they may have lost all hope of such love. He dances at weddings and so do you, my darling, over all the years of our gifting you have made me laugh the pent-up joy of one who finally got to dance with her husband before the Lord. What a spinning, leaping, frolicsome joy is found in the grammar of your love letter!

Paul says that this letter is known and read by all men. It must be true! Christ would never hide, or have secret phrases just for a few special people. The meaning of Christ’s letter in hearts would have to be full of His authenticity, His authority, and His abiding concern for hearts to be real with Him. They would be compelling as is His love for us. They would have to be reaching and inclusive of all. Everyone who would read and find His love in these never before heard of missives that walk abroad, as Jesus did along a Galilean seaside, would be known and loved in ways that they had previously thought to be impossible. That is what I get to take of you into the everyday world of cynicism, lies, hurtfulness beyond belief, and loneliness like a complete loss of heart. My heart brings Jesus and its very prose is punctuated by the rhythm of our love in Him. At times that sound is a bit like Vivaldi, or Handel, or Beethoven, or Mozart, or Hillsong, Jesus Culture, and even Bob Dylan. But music it will be to the heart without a song!

To write a letter takes a special kind of intentional care, and Paul makes this clear to the Corinthians that the letter in the hearts only becomes a fervent script by the lavishing of care. As your wife I have known a care that makes my letter irresistible. To take the loving leap of enclosing your love around one as wounded and wandering as I was when you first found me always astounds my heart with the gifting. And through that you have lived with me as a loving bride to a tender and wise husband— as we both always long to grow more in Jesus. I never feel adrift by your love, as the Light that beckons us on is bright Jesus. Such care, so singular in a pain riddled world, must be lavished abroad, and it is my letter of introduction, upon my heart, through Christ by you that has often won me the entrée to bring such caring attention as I have received of most gratefully in this blessed marriage.

Would you dare to try to use ink in this letter that we have between us in hearts? Never! As you know that the only indelible ink for that Love has already been shed in the blood of Christ. You have written with the Spirit of the Living God. The real fountain of life that shoots-up from you is what you are wisely trying to bring by the Spirit to those trapped in pain and turmoil. Transformation in the everyday waking and walking lives of people is your heart’s gift, by the Holy Spirit, which you take with such a deep knowledge of His pleasure into each treasured encounter that He gives you. As we travel to see fountains, waterfalls and crashing waves I always think of the unique brand of joy that He has fashioned into this husband of mine. Glory and praise to Him!

Having once had a calcified and entirely stony heart, I can only thank God that He would not have my husband write His love letter to me upon the shattered Old Testament tablets of a heart of stone. Having a human heart for the receipt of your words of love to me is so thrilling. A human heart is the very thing that the Lord searches for the truth of a life. It can be read and known by all, especially when Christ has lifted off the lid. How blessed I am to present to Him and to anyone a letter of your love for me that shows His grace, mercy, peace, hope, and truth.

What an exciting time for us to revel in writing and extending the letters in hearts and in our personal writing to give him the glory! With your first novel coming out early in your 70th year it is such a time of sweet fullness in Him.

My dear, may each day of this new decade, have some piece of a meditative time set-apart to intentionally write in hearts and on paper what Jesus has done for us. There is no calligraphy that could fill the entire ethers of the universe that is more important.

I love you my darling for how you never run out of His love words to inscribe in my heart. I cherish each one, each phrase, but especially so do I cherish you, my lovely fountain of Life husband! The closing of our letters are eternally:

In JESUS!

Your Debbie

The Baby's Cry

Jesus broke into time with a Baby’s cry--nothing profound, but He was all Profundity. The little swaddled Boy had no words for us, but He was all Word. He had to struggle through the pains of Birth like any baby, but His pain would always hold all of our pain.

His family appeared to be the two caring for Him at His manger-side, but His real Dad was the Heavenly Father, and His real family is all of us who love Him. His tidings are always Good News, and never the negative and evil news that the world releases unceasingly. His Baby-cooings were the first Holy Spirit breathed prayer--at places too deep for words. His Stepdad was His midwife. His Mother was informed of a cosmic mystery that she couldn’t speak of, but she would ponder for the rest of her life.

That cold lonely night brought our gift of never again needing to be alone. The angels that hovered over His Birth gave their first message to the most alone and separate in all of Bethlehem’s society. The shepherds, because they would actually be full of the wonder from a hillside and the silence of a closely starred night sky would be able to see and hear the angels. The donkey and the cattle at the Baby’s manger-crib knew somehow that the whole groaning creation had an added note of praise that night. The people who turned away the helpless pregnant couple on a donkey, so that the Baby would have to be born in a cave-like barn, were fulfilling prophecy spoken so long ago about a Messiah would enter our lives in this poor and humble way.

The common swaddling clothes that Jesus wore were the gossamer for a King, in eternity’s evaluation. The shepherds, with obedient and humbled hearts, who went to see the Baby led their lambs to the place of The Lamb. The cold winds across the land were the notation for every melodic chorus in our Christmas Carols. The dismal cave was the longing of the heart of every architect who ever hoped to design the palace of a monarch. The Mother’s labor cries were the lullaby calming the People of God that their hopes and prayers were finally met in her trusting push of this Baby into the life of our incalculable gift.

Was the Baby Himself--the promised Redeemer--given in this way as a note of touching sentimentality to the whole story of the Savior Who would grow-up in such rejection to die on the Cross for the sins of the whole world?

Oh, No! The coming of this Baby from His eternal place as the Son, always with His Heavenly Father, is a movement of such grandeur that it moves the heart over such a travail of love.  For Him to stoop to the place of earthly parents with breastfeeding for nurturance and diapers to be changed is unimaginable in the reach of the Lord’s love to find and save us. This Baby drank the milk of flesh to give us the meat of His Word. This Child, known forever as The Word, came crying unintelligible baby-tears. His wail came tearing into time, and the Little-One had to learn the language of His family in the same ways of all the children. The Word Incarnate drooled Baby-talk for us!

The Christmas Child, who could have had legions of angels at His disposal at any time, came as any other child--entirely helpless, accept for His ability to cry and smile--the only things that can ensure the survival of the Dear-Ones to bring help to their sides. By these wordless calls the infants bring those who love them to care for them. Jesus came without any resources. He was utterly helpless, except for His need for us to care for Him. What god, but the Only One, who fully wanted to identify with us would be willing to suffer the humility of this Baby—who was indeed, God With us, Emmanuel?

The Son, free through all of heaven, had freely chosen to come to earth to be bound by our human cloths. From a swaddled Baby to His death-cloths He would be wrapped-up in all of our ways, so that in another cave--His tomb--He could leave behind the grave clothes finally as evidence of the possibility of our Resurrection in Him, if we just embrace the One who came helpless—the One Who is our complete Helper.

The Jesus Child came as a Baby in the deepest part of the night along a forgotten rocky lane, in a barn barely fit to house the animals. His life, from such dark beginnings, brings Light always--even in the places of dense darkness and evil. If you look richly into the Face of Jesus there is no end to the transforming life He will bring to you: cries for carols, baby-talk for the Word, pain for embraces, loneliness for abiding love, shepherds before royalty, caves for castles, a poor Baby as King, common clothes for regal robes, milk for meat, labor shouts for redemption, the helpless as The Helper, death cloths for Resurrection, brief lives for eternity, deep night for the Light of men. As we are told in the Gospel of John 1:4~~”In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.”

In the image attached, a beautiful Christmas card from DaySpring Press, we can see the Holy Infant in His manger. I have placed it with a gift that we received of a seashell bearing the calligraphy of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus always wanted us to know how to speak readily to His Daddy. He knew how important the words were to us. He had learned the language of man. And so, He gave us prayer long after He left His manger origins so that we would have the kind of prayer that he always spoke to His Father from a hillside under the close-by stars over His lovely head. If you will pray it you will know Emmanuel’s heart to give us dear entrée with His Father! Glory on a bright Christmas night!