Come Before Winter – Chapter Twenty-Six – For God SO Loved
December 26th, 2021
2 Timothy 4:21, “Do your utmost to come before winter.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX – For God SO Loved
Time stood still. In that beautiful sanctuary—with the wind whistling outside the stained-glass panes, with the molten scent of melted wax and flickering fire from lighted wicks, with the dance of tealights and candles moving like silhouettes over the church walls—Mercy sat like a statue. She heard every word her dad spoke, she felt every muscle of her papaw’s clench beneath her. She was aware of those who dared to breathe and those who held their breath. She wondered if Gwen was mortified and if the child in her mother sensed the seriousness of the moment and sat motionless or if the excitement of what hung in the air moved her with angst. All of it, Mercy felt in her chest like the beat of her heart.
She felt something else also. There was a pull in her soul, a discomfort, a tug at what she’d never understood was missing, perhaps called heartstrings. She was safely curled against her grampas’s chest, listening to the life of him thrum through his body, but there was a magnetic draw and a voice that beckoned her, speaking to something deep inside of her. She closed her eyes and for just a moment, just a flicker, she saw Him. She gasped as He turned His kindly eyes to gaze deeply into hers, the magnetism so strong she could not resist as He raised His hand and invited her close, the Man from her dreams.
Mercy had felt many emotions in her lifetime. She had felt the agony of aloneness and the prick of pain and the force which shuts you down completely of fear. She recalled the sweetness of her grampa’s comfort and a longing for a love she had had once long ago, as well as excitement and joy, happiness and hope. All of it over the years, combined with the dread and doubt recently, kept Mercy fueled and alive. But there was nothing in her she had ever experienced which moved her like right now, the yearning she felt at once awakening something long since asleep inside of the little girl she once had been; a current so strong it nudged her forward.
She heard the words her dad spoke, how he talked about the empty places she had tried to fill with something that would never fulfill, and how He, this amazing Fixer, was there just waiting to repair what had been broken in her and that there wasn’t anything too messy for Him. She heard all of it and felt this yearning deep within. But it was the moment He appeared which changed everything. He jangled the keys as He walked by her and then He smiled, and a love like nothing she had ever experienced which twinkled in His eyes was too irresistible, irrepressible for her to ignore.
It was as if her body didn’t know how to work, and it took a minute for her to stand. Slowly, she made her way forward, one step at a time, like she was waltzing on air, like gliding, like being drawn simply on a conveyor of grace, magnetic mercy. Her dad held his arms out to her; suddenly she felt everything else fade away—the fear and doubt, the resentment and inquisition, the falseness and loneliness. Mercy let it all go, rushing forward, and falling to her knees, she began to pray, ‘Jesus, hi; it’s me, Mercy. I am a sinner, and I am in need of a sinner. Please, Jesus, come inside and do what only You can do. Cleanse me, wipe me spotless, forgive me, restore me so I don’t waste any more time trying to find myself. Thank You for my new beginning. Amen.’
Mercy lifted her head, and her eyes met her dad’s, and for just one moment everything vanished, all the separation and loss, despair, years apart, as if it had never happened at all. And she understood immediately…it was a simple offer to start over, start fresh, begin again,
John 3:16-18, ‘“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.”’ (MSG)
To Be Continued…
