at the end of my days,
my final act will be
to split open my chest,
revealing my inward parts.
engraved on my heart, my lungs,
and etched into my bones—
every square inch—
covered in the Beloved’s name,
so that all who look there will know:
every beat of my heart, every breath,
every movement of my body
was for Him alone.
© 2023, Sarah S. Walters
The temptation for the believer is to look without instead of within. Biographies of great saints are great. Sermons are great. They become a problem when we take what is said and try to apply it to our life like plugging in numbers to a formula in order to solve a physics equation. Life in the Spirit is not like this.
I am not you, and you are not me. I have a different daily routine, different responsibilities, different human relationships, different resources all specific to me, and so do you.
We can go after God trying to make Him do for us as we would like. Or we can sit and wait for Him to come to us. Pursue us. Lead us. Guide us.
This takes trust. And I have to admit, I am not there–yet. I want to be there. Sometimes I think I am, but sometimes I fall back into the religious mindset of cause and effect–sowing and reaping. But if that is religion, then what does life in the Spirit look like?
I think it looks more like Sonship. It looks like resting in the knowledge that I am a Son, that I am loved unconditionally. My only responsibilities are to do as I see my Father doing and speak only as my Father speaks. My privilege is His provision for all my needs, for all that belongs to the Father is mine.
“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” Gen. 6:8
Genesis 6:8
“But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”
Matthew 13:16-17
What do you see when you look into another’s eyes? If you are farther away, you might see their emotion. As it has been said, ‘the eyes are the window to the soul.” And if you are close enough, you will see a reflection of yourself. When Noah looked into the eyes of the LORD, He found grace there–grace for him, grace for his family, and grace for the whole of humanity.
He had a revelation of the grace of God. It had nothing to do with what Noah had done or had not done, nothing to with whether he had a corrupted lineage. God looks at the heart, and Noah saw the righteousness and purity of himself through the eyes of the LORD.
After he had this revelation, he walked with God. He acted in accordance with God’s will and vision and built an ark that would preserve and protect LIFE. This is what a revelation of the LORD does for us. It brings LIFE. He shows us who we really are. He shows us the grace He has poured out on us, the love He has for us. He shows us that He never thought less of us, though we thought less of ourselves.
Look into the eyes of Your Saviour; there is grace to be found there for you too!
A Bell and a Pomegranate 