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

Encouragements without a Season

Does encouragement need a timetable? Do these precious words need to be added in only during the bleak seasons? It would seem to me that they are always on time! During the dark times they do bring, on their helpful winds, the needed balm for the courage to move ahead. It is often difficult though to tell from appearance that the storms are raging in a particular life.

The unique character of each person is truly an opportunity to see the gift of their wisdom, their resilience, their brightness, their authentic preciousness to make it exactly where they are—whether it is the time of breezes by the shore, or the tumultuous tossing upon dark seas. Thomas a Kempis said it this way: “Be assured that if you knew all, you would pardon all.” This profound statement is so free of judgment that it moves me to know that I don’t have to know it all about another person to encourage them, I only want to extend a word aptly spoken—one that is  “like apples of gold in settings of silver..” (Proverbs 25:11) These are the words surely fit for a feast--for the sweet nourishment of fortification.

These kinds of words can be the treasure that moves a life out of dark dead-end alleys. I have hundreds of these phrases that I cherish upon my heart. Their delivery still carries the import of the face of my friend who cared to move me from shadow to wide sunlight, or to move me to a new stage of passion in my gifts.  The faces of encouragement have given me of their heart when it could have been a risk to do it-- it may have looked foolish, or have seemed too deep when a platitude could have sufficed (Really, never!).

I have always felt convinced that exhortations are really the profuse overflow of grace (as I watch Jesus walk abroad, reveling in the stranger on the road, in the Gospels) and these Love-phrases are always in season. Romans 15:5-6 was the summit for me: “Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus; that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

An encouragement doesn’t need a bouquet of roses for accompaniment; it has its own blissful fragrance. The image that I’ve posted was a kind word given to me along with the joyous flowers. As I set them on the table they were next to the absurdly, but well bound book that you see in the image--the impetus for this post. It is a photography book with a picture, including a clock, taken somewhere in the world for every minute of a full 12 hour period. As I looked at the juxtaposition I thought about encouragements as the true poetry of a life, and if at the end of my life, all of the encouragements that I have delivered could be bound, I would want it to have a massive reality defying binding on such a blessed book. I would want the graphics on the front to be a silver bowl with golden apples, and on the spine it would read in preposterously large letters: ON TIME!

Be encouraged, Dear Reader! You are so worthy to be urged-on in your valiant and singular life.

Gone Bananas

This post is not to curry favor with you, Dear Reader. It actually could make you want to cut and run from Voicing Light. But I have to get to the bottom of it--this thing that I rankle over when it comes to cliches. Why do I always feel that I have a bone to pick with them? When I started this exploration I felt fit as a fiddle, and now all I want is to have the last laugh on these semantic marauders.

For what it's worth, I think that they rarely hit pay dirt with their meaning. They are at their very worst in performance when used to put a band aid on sorrow. They have so tritely insinuated themselves into our speech that they are the proverbial snake in the grass to original thought. Also, I find it a really hit or miss thing to even get them right. So often I have tried to express how I bought a pig in a poke, only to end up with the pig poking me. It can be a sloppy mess.

Am I muddying the water? I want to be neat as a pin in saying that I slept like a log last night (Timber!), and awoke certain that I had to stand pat on this, or I might go mad as a hatter. No news is good news if all that can be said is a cliche.

Please, let's have no ill will, if this has only been idle chit chat I won't shed any crocodile tears, but will only ask that you allow me to pull myself up by my bootstraps and say what I mean:

"Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." Proverbs 16:24

Right on! I shall now cut my banana onto my cereal having made this short story long.