I want to live with a bleeding heart. I know those words sound strange, but I think as my life unfolds I see more and more the richness of a life lived wide open. I don't want to live in the shadows of what could have been, the ghosts of what were. I want to live daily in the love, pain, and anticipation of what is to come. I want to live in the mess. I want to live in the heartache, because a bleeding heart is an alive heart. Love is alive and that is exactly where I want to be, right in the middle of love.
As I sit here, waiting in the Austin airport to get on a plane that will take me to Africa, I wonder how crazy I sound. I don't even know the people I am going to meet, and yet I am praying for the pain of loving them. That's why I'm going. And I don't think it's an unhealthy kind of desire. It's a desire to love more wholly than a closed up heart ever could. A wide open heart is a broken heart and in this broken world, I think to love you must be broken...
Because in the brokenness we are made whole in Christ. Broken love still hopes, but broken love still hurts. The day is not yet come when we will look, perfected, into the face of Christ and hear those coveted words- Well done. In the meantime, though, we must not give up. Live, love, and look forward to that day. Live with a bleeding heart, alive in Christ, hoping for the glory that is to come.
A motto of mine recently lately has been, "Open your spiritual eyes." it makes me think of the lyric from Hillsong that says, "Open our eyes to see the things that make Your heart cry..." that is what I mean to say here. I think too often I live blind, oblivious to the pain of others, apathetic to the eternal perspectives of this world, or even dully turning rote the relationship of heart binding fullness God invites me to plunge into. I trust too fully in my own goodness, my own law, my own self-control. I think a better prayer for my numb heart would be a loss of all abandon. I think a better connection would be made if I unplugged my computer and plugged my blind eyes into the bleeding heart of Christ. What a catastrophe that would be!
A catastrophe of soul. What does it take to live alive? When parents kill the dreams of hoping children? When children break the hearts of loving parents? When divorce splits love into a fractured mask of God's ordained masterpiece? When lies, deceit, mockery, bitterness, pain, and doubt fill the minds of people beaten down by the state of sin in which we live? When countries are at war, when families are torn, when friends betray, and people walk away? What then? What then?
Tell me... WHAT THEN?
What bridges this gap, this chasm that is far too wide? Scars run deep and blood is shed for what? Why bleed more?
Because I want to be like Him, because He bridged the gap. Not only the chasm that he crossed, but carried my lifeless body away from the grave. He did what I could not do; He covered the canyon I could not breach. And when He held out his hand to offer me the answer, I spat in His face. I nailed Him to a cross and I sentenced Him to death. I find it hard, therefore, in light of His persistence, to say no to the sole thing He asks for in return: my heart.
How could I not split open that which he sacrificed so freely for me, to show a broken world the road to redemption He carried me down.
Wide open eyes and a bleeding heart: that's all I ask. And the humility and courage to believe when the rest of the world turns its back.
Go. Be. Love.
