I am worthless.
Thirty six years into days given as free opportunities and I’m still tripping over clumsy steps, breaking promises faster than they have room to actually settle in place, speaking dishonest words, doing dishonorable things and managing to mess up with fervent regularity. Left to myself, my actions and intentions cannibalize my heart into fragmented pieces consuming life selfishly, reducing me valueless in those moments to anything but my own desire.
Like a moth to flame do my actions draw to mistake.
I am weak.
One would think that after 432 months survived, strength would be an aged virtue. There’s no virtue in these bones. Strength invades in losing moments when unfortunate circumstance boasts victory, but I don’t really know strength any better than I know magic. I am not strong.
Like a treeling bent in howling winds does my heart run ground low in adversity.
I am not good.
After 13,148 days deep into the life given me, I am no more good than the babe I started as. In fact, maybe I’m worse the older I get, tangled in what I think wise and noble. My heart breeds contempt for all holy. It doesn’t fit naturally. My heart is incompatible with the good illusion I project which reveals just how undermining it really is.
Like a peddler selling something his hands didn’t create nor own, I hang my life in the day hoping to convince onlookers and passerby's.
And here is mystery softly rebirthing me in moments broken and fractured by my own worthlessness, weakness and badness - love. In each creaking day leading me to 36 years old, I am loved completely. Never can I outrun it; no where can I go to escape its reach; nothing I can ever do to cancel it. God’s incalculable, immeasurable, confusing love inverts the reality of what I know to be true in my heart - the worthless, weak, bad - to hold and own a new value to the measure of exact opposite. He loves me to worthy, to strong and to good. His love regenerates me leaving me someone new ...again.
I stand readied for all ahead by God’s love that only consumes the evil of my heart in all of its brooding and repetitive evil. More than these 3 ways in which I know myself so well, I’m learning one, God’s love, which masters them all in my receding and allowance of that Love owning me.
Another year. Amen.
[meditate::John 3.16-21]