We were doing our morning devotions, and today, we decided to do a devotional thought over "O Come O Come Emmanuel", which happens to be my favorite Christmas song.
It also happens to correlate with my favorite Bible verse, which had been weighing on me heavily for the past week or so. This is what I shared and what brought me to big tears of remembrance and of thankfulness and humility.
It re-appeared in my heart last Thursday. I was sitting there beside my boyfriend, our mothers, and our fathers, in the Candlelight service at my university.
As I sat there, I marveled at how far removed and redeemed both our families (and us) had been in the past two years. In the past two years, both our parents had been at places where they thought they had lost their children to darkness forever.
We had thought the same about ourselves.
And in the past two years, we have been restored to joy, to God, and to our families. Granted, more work is yet to be done, but God is so good.
My heart felt full to burst, and the words of Psalm 126 pushed their way into my thoughts:
When the people returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon, they became as those who dreamed. Their hearts were filled with laughter; their tongues with shouts of praise. The people of Earth said to them, "The Lord has done great things for you." Indeed, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.
That's the verse I shared this morning after we sang.
I reflected on my own "return from Babylon" two years ago tomorrow.
I was broken. I was ugly. I was beyond all reckoning.
And my parents opened their arms up and loved me. My aunt, my uncle, my cousin, my grandmother. They loved me and took me as I was: broken. ugly. lost.
And yet, and yet!! the Lord has done great things for me.
Though Decembers cause me to get way too deep in my head and heart and ache with the past woundedness, I know too of the deep joy of restoration to hope and light and life.
The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.
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