What You Give

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.

-John 14:27

I don’t want the world.

            I want You.

            I want Your goodness, Your light, Your innocence, Your mercy. I want You streaming through my bloodlines, tucked into the snuggest corners of my heart. I want Your voice, a string of satin stars in my bleak and searching sky. I want Your patience helping me up every time I fall and Your strength lifting me when I am weak.

            Each day I am surrounded by darkness and discomfort. I crave all that is You, all that You are and all that You’ll ever be. I don’t want what the world wants. I want to be different. I want to stand alone, if alone means bringing You to my side. I am no one, but You stoop down to my level to raise me up and whisper that I am someone, that I am Yours. If there is any way I can bring joy to You, I want to find it and offer it up in my meager, mud-caked hands. Because I have been in the dirt and buried in shame, but You’ve covered my grime with grace.

            I don’t want what the world longs for, all the excess, all the glitter and brash brightness that gives pleasure and satisfaction for the moment. I want something that lasts. That will bring me life and satisfaction in my soul. I don’t want what the world gives. I want what You give.

            I don’t want to break Your heart. I want to be better. Want to be better for You, to bleed myself of selfish ambition and preservation and lose my life in Your love. I want my ears to perk up at Your calling and my feet to swiftly carry me to the arms of the brokenhearted. When You knock upon my door, I want to warmly welcome You into my heart, into my home. And I want You to take me in Your embrace and fill me with all that is sweet and simple. I want to know You, to intimately and everlastingly know how You live and how You love, what breaks You and binds me to You. All I’m longing for is in Your presence. I am reaching for Your hand, to entwine Your fingers of forgiveness with my hands of hurt and be transformed.

            All this life claims to offer cannot, and will not, compare to all You so generously give, for in Your peace I am perfected.

Prayer:

Father, all I want is You. I want to be close, I want to breathe in Your blessing and be covered in Your beautiful and everlasting love. This world pretends to give, but all it does is take. I am tempted and tried at every turn, and I don’t want to fall. Hold me, Lord. Keep me in Your light, Your laughter and love. Amen.