For Those Who are Lost in Caves

I read the Scriptures primarily because they paint expansive pictures of what’s happening in my own soul, which sometimes soars and sometimes plummets. They help me make sense of the Bigger Story when I myself have lost the plot. They remind me that I’m not the only human being that has gone through whatever confusing thing I find myself going through. They paint pictures of a God who at times overwhelms me with love, at other times eludes me with silence.It’s the landscapes – the mountains, the deserts, the gardens, the rivers and the caves – to which I am drawn; they tell my own story of hope and doubt, of climbing and falling, of searching and losing. They rise to meet me and they stoop to find me, they lead me and they follow me. They surround me and I inhabit them, and they inhabit me.When it is time to learn something new, I climb mountains and like Moses, I receive sacred words on tablets of stone; I hold them, I break them.When I sense the tides of change beckoning me, I wade into rivers, and like Jacob, I leave behind what I was and swim towards what I might be.When I cannot bear it any longer, I escape to the wilderness, and like Elijah, I lay down, I sleep, and I am nourished.When I am exposed and need covering, I look for the garden, for shade and for hope, and like Adam and Eve, I search for new beginnings.And sometimes I find myself lost in caves, like David. Spittle covers my beard, and Light plays a cruel game of hide and seek, only I cannot find her.Long enough, God— you’ve ignored me long enough. I’ve looked at the back of your head long enough. Long enough I’ve carried this ton of trouble, lived with a stomach full of pain.** * *You walked and then you ran. Gasping, you slowed.You stumbled, you fell.You hid, you mumbled.Your tears escaped, of course they did; the breach let them out.The damn breach.You saw it coming. But when it came, it was violent, and it knocked you down. It’s what you had been running from, but it outran you in the end. Of course it did.You got up again, knees buckling and bloody from the fall, and you kept walking. You didn’t know how you did it, how you dragged your body through another day, another moment, another breath. Your feet kept moving. Your hands kept grasping.It was your heart that stopped, there in the cave.Your companions in the dark were the smells of earth and water, on either side of you, underneath you, hovering over you. Somewhere in the distance, the drip-drip-dripping whispered a tale of emptying, and you knew it whispered for you. Your chin rested on your knees, you were folded up and small, so distant from that day when you were chosen, on that bright, shiny day, so long ago.Did it even happen?You were anointed, in front of them all.King.King of nothing, it turned out.Long enough, Lord.* * *You may be in a cave, and if you are, you can hear the drip-drip-dripping and you wonder if you’ll ever see Light again. Everything feels heavy; every conversation weighs a thousand pounds.Hold on.Sit in the dark and notice what rises up around you in the dark.You will hear the whispers, those specters of shame, and those ghosts of failure. They are there in the cave.But those whispers will not last.No, they won’t.You will see that they are only echoes, words spoken long ago, bouncing around the rock and the earth. They will stop.In the cave, you must also notice what else rises; the new whisper, the new Word. It will come.Yes, it will.You are not alone in the cave.

Take a good look at me, God, my God;    I want to look life in the eye,So no enemy can get the best of me    or laugh when I fall on my face.

I’ve thrown myself headlong into your arms—    I’m celebrating your rescue.*

* Scriptures taken from Psalm 13, The Message