He is Jealous for Me...

And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way
Oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves all
How He loves...

In a world riddled with pain, I read these words and feel the beauty of them consume me...

After writing in several Caringbridge guestbooks this morning, MY heart turned violently in my chest, and I needed to be reminded of our purpose, and why God created us, how God created us, who God created us to be...

He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions
Eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

God's love for us is so powerful, we are like a tree caught in the hurricane of his love...we bend, blown over by his love, his plan for us, his mercy...oh, to be bending under the weight of mercy and forgiveness...

...and then suddenly all the pain and afflictions we suffer here on earth are "eclipsed" by HIS glory...

Eclipsed: a total or partial cutting off of view (based from the observer's viewpoint), a dimming of importance, an obstruction or darkening...

So, while our pain and afflictions are still there, and they are still visible from another person's viewpoint; to us, the observers, the suffering is cut off from our view, no longer fully exposed but dimmed, darkened, obscured. The suffering we endure is nothing compared to his glory.

When we feel his glory wash over us, we realize how much God loves us.

He loves us so much that he is jealous for us, and will go to great lengths to have us turn to him. Whenever I start to stray, whenever I start to feel like I'm capable of "going it on my own"; I get blown over, and I wind up on my knees, face down in the ground waiting for the ocean of God's mercy to wash over me.

And we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If His grace is an ocean, we're all sinking.

As his portion, we are part of his family; we have a unique claim to God's royalty and throne. He is our prize; at the end of the suffering here on earth, we will win our race and claim our prize. But we can't take short cuts, and we can't quit early...to get the prize, we have to finish running on the course that has already been plotted. 


May you all feel his grace overwhelm you today...
May you bend, but not break, in the hurricane of his love...
May the your pain be eclipsed by his glory...
May you know how he loves us...


(All song lyrics were quoted from How He Loves by John Mark Mc Millan)