When you look closely enough to see through the glitzy, fashionable, "together" outer shells of people, you notice the conglomeration of raw feeling; the deep, unchartered ocean of emotion, and the sense of incompleteness, of inadequacy, of broken pieces barely being held together. The unseen patchwork of dirtied, ragged pieces. A subtle yet achingly exsistent awareness of imperfection; you see the intense inner struggles against the ingrained nature of Sin, and a constant dissatifaction with the outcome of compromise. And you see a raw need - a complete hunger - for freedom, for something more, something complete, whole, clean. Something else, something that is no longer of the ordinary. An audible voice. A sign from this God that he is listening. Desperation to see him, to touch him, to feel his arms around you. You get to a point where you can do nothing more than dump your load of self-righteousness and sophistication at the foot of a thing called brokenness. Because this need, this deep, deep hunger, keeps coming back, no matter how we try to bury it or push it away, and reminds us of the shipwrecks we really are. The skeletons needing real, thriving flesh. We become aware of the fact that we can't do this life on our own. We really need help. So badly. From outside of ourselves. Because we can never have it completely together…But even when we reach out to find empty space, faith takes the rebound, and we cling to hope, to words he has spoken, and put our trust completely in a thing called Grace. Knowing that in our weakness, He is strong; in our sinfulness, he bore the nails; in our holes and failures, he never failed, and in our repentance, he forgives.
Knowing that we will never get it perfect can only result in one conclusion:
We need so desperately the One who is perfect, in every way. Because no matter what presents itself to us, what we think may be solid and tangible, will never become too tangible and bank-worthy to write off the parts of us that we know are incomplete and will always be incomplete. We’re always left with a portion of corroding doubt. But faith defies that, and it’s all we have; faith is what connects us to salvation; faith, though puny, though invisible, is the thing that declares us to God. Whatever outer layers we accumulate, they will never fully disguise the emptyness and need that lies underneath; the longing for acceptance and affirmation. Nor will they ever completely blanket the equally strange stirrings of certainty that fulfillment can be achieved, just not from anything inside of us. And a persistent urge for improvement, an urge to become better, get cleaner somehow, we are never able to wholly deny.
So our need for God is great; the measure we acknowledge that with will be the measure with which he reveals himself to us in return.
