In the heat of the morning day, I opened my eyes to a peculiar feeling. I wondered what it was since it’s seemed foreign and new to me. Perhaps this feeling visited me once before and I simply forgot. But then still the freshness of this feeling impressed much on me.
I prayed a prayer under
the silence of the bedroom.
I wondered and I wondered,
and the Lord revealed it to bloom.
A tenderness of heart
is what is spoken to me in my mind.
What voice, what mystery,
this scene sweetly sublime.
For the past couple of days I’ve been reflecting much on this thing. As the prayer of my brother Aashik Rao said earlier today, “to appropriate in faith what I know in my head; to see in my heart, what I see in my mind. May God be pleased to grind me to dust, and fill me with a sight of His glory.”
In ways I think this profound journey of sorts
began with a discourse between the two of us,
reflections of His glory and us be left to dust.
It was as if my heart has been dead
for as long as I can remember.
The darkness of that once cold night
seemed like a memory brought asunder.
That once cold night, the blessed night
when Christ revealed Himself
to me a hell-deserving wretch,
in Him was brought to life.
And from those exchanges between dear friends,
even the one last night.
Listening to a troubled soul
sharing her desperate plight.
I reflected yet again on this we call the Christian’s life.
The Pilgrim’s journey to the Celestial city in it’s truest light.
For what is it dear reader,
dear visitor to my thoughts?
What is it in it’s truest sense
the life that died on the Cross?
What changes, what radical words must flow from such a heart? We have seen a heavenly vision of the glory of Christ Jesus in His Gospel, that He would save hell-deserving, loathsome abominations as we are. So I ask, what is the proper response that must be had from your own heart and soul?
We hear proclamations of truth and wonder,
the depths of His amazing grace.
But a what a rebuke when I go wander
in my heart’s empty hall of faith.
What an easy thing it is to see and hear such blessed words in the exposition of God’s Word. But what an other thing truly it is that our hearts may be made broken and tender.
I wonder how many of us could truly explain
in the deepest possible words
the grandeur that is clearly displayed
in the text of God’s word?
Let us labor, labor, dear heart, to see in a greater profound sense the wonder of this mystery. So much in our struggle with our flesh that we somehow focus so much on the things of this earth. Even more frightening it is that at times when we think we are looking up to heavenly things our hearts and our very faith is grasped by nothing less but by an earthly vision.
Tenderness of heart, a profound sense of the reality of brokenness. For the past few days I’ve been pondering these things in my heart. What does it really mean to be “broken”? Not just in thought or in a height of spiritual fervor. But much more so in the normal activities of human life. Shouldst there be a dire tenderness in the Christian heart, bereaved of all hope and peace yet have Christ shine in His soul? Should there not be a fundamental principle in the Christian heart, a principle of tenderness and brokenness that takes each moment to reflect on the beauty and glory of his God?
And in the slightest degree in the slightest reflection
one would be filled to the brim with Christ’s endless affection?
Oh, indeed if this is true. Labor with us to seek what heart of deep groanings, weepings and sighings the Apostle had when he spoke these profound words:
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes though faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…
—That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
—Philippians 3:8-14
And thence with this short reflection of mine, join us in the next days and weeks as Aashik Rao and I venture into the journey of the “Pilgrim’s Progress: from This World to That Which is to Come” by the blessed puritan, John Bunyan.i
