Down to the River

I went down to the river to pray.

The sun beat golden bright in the sky, its light bouncing off the water. I could hear the waves beat a tattoo on the rocks below where I sat. My heart was keeping the same rhythm.

My faith was fraying. It had been for a long time. Like someone had pulled a loose thread on a sweater. I tried for years to keep a grip on its unbelievable thinness so it wouldn’t unravel into a curling mess. I was failing, my grip had loosened.

It all came apart on a hot summer day.

I’d been fighting the unraveling. I didn’t want what Jesus had to give. I didn’t want it because somewhere along the way I began to believe that what he had I didn’t deserve.

I didn’t deserve a scandalous grace that ushers me into a Kingdom where I am called daughter.

There I sat, rivers of tears leaving tracks on my face. I went down to the river to pray, trying to remember the good old days when I first felt the rush of purest love. Trying to remember that moment so long ago when I begged Jesus for the gift of his unfailing grace. I tried to remember the moment when I forgot the name of Redeemed and lived by the name of Broken.

I went down to the river to pray and God met me with a whisper of a question that echoed in the wind across the waves.

“Do you want to be saved?”

And what do you say when the maker of the stars reaches down in the river of your brokenness and builds you a vessel of salvation? What do you say when everything in you is thirsty because fear is a relentless desert?

How do you answer the question of salvation when you know that it can bring the sweetest of pain? Saying yes to salvation is opening up your heart so Christ can stitch over the ugly with His grace. He takes every tear, every screw up, every moral failing of our lives and covers it with the gift of the cross.

“Do I want to be saved?”

I am almost breathless in my answer, time has slowed and my soul has responded with, “it is well.” My pain was laid bare at the foot of the cross, a messy, stained and ugly heap – laid bare at the feet of my Saviour and my soul proclaims, howls even, “it is well” – because His bloody side, the holes in His feet and hands covered my heap with grace.