James 3:1-2

Leadership is not a hobby. It is not temporary. Its intensity comes in waves, but the influence never dies.

Live it.

It's just simple economics, really.

I have made a friend recently without knowing it or trying so much. To be completely honest, I was just doing my job. I was handing coffee out of the window with a smile on my face. I do that with most people, most cups of coffee. I am paid to stand at that hole in the wall that unites me to you, the customer, for those anticipated three minutes or less, and talk to you. I will ask you about your day. If you won’t tell me, I will tell you about my day. I am generally prohibited from abandoning people at the window. Other than the particularly awkward, skeevy & flirtatious, and clinically anti-social, I have no choice but to talk to you. Talk we shall.

We have talked about her day many times, and she is not afraid of telling me all about it. Recently more personal details have come to surface, and I have invited her to my community of faith that we call “OakLeaf Christian Fellowship.” We have talked about tears at night, vacations and marriages, parenthood. We’ve talked about school. We’ve talked about books. Tonight, we talked about grace. She loves God because He’s God, and as much as she believes in the new covenant, this blood that saves us from works, she’s caught up in them. She is caught up in her list of things she can do to show God she loves Him. Self-admittedly, she cannot just be in love with God.

Today, a hurricane came to Florida. I don’t really care that it wasn’t in the news and no meteorologist deemed it to even qualify as a tropical storm, but the contents of the Atlantic ocean were dumped on Jacksonville today. Particularly on the campus of the University of North Florida, and particularly from 11:45 A.M. to noon, when I walked across campus to make it to my psychobiology class for our first exam. I was drenched. I give my dogs a bath and laugh at them for looking like drowned rats. I think today I gave them a run for their money, if they could only see me now. But it felt so good to walk in the falling water. It was the perfect day for it.

I am not one to understand grace. It’s not in our economy, wreckless unmerited favor. I cannot make sense of it, and I have yet to meet anyone who can. Other than Jesus. Jesus Christ is grace incarnate. As soon as I went to school, God made sure grace was the first word to drip from Heaven to my heart. It still makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable. In the economy of divinity, my place in the royal dining hall is outside, on the corner with the other whores. With the liars and the cheats and the scoundrels. With the Pharisees. But not with Jesus.

You can’t blanket entire populations, but I generally think most people regard God in this way. If in fact there is a God, then you can’t be around Him. Because you don’t want to be or He doesn’t want you to be, which will ultimately make you not want anything to do with Him.

None of that is Truth. All of that is false. A lie from the pit of lies, a pit ruled by bitterness and resentment and hatred and evil of the worst kind. The pit my blood runs from.

A lot of people had umbrellas today. They were smart. I have an umbrella, and to my defense it is in my friend’s car, but even if I had it on hand I probably would not have used it. For some reason I think they’re unnecessary. Color me a lunatic.

So I’m holding my flip flops, with my jeans rolled up, bolting across the green. Eventually I got to the point where I just didn’t care anymore and had a stroll thing going on to get to the test I was running late for. Eventually, I came to a dead stop behind a wall of girls afraid of the puddle they circumstantially had to cross [stairs on one side and construction on the other left them few other options].

Dead. Stop.

I like to think that I’m charging right through the puddles, that I’m enjoying being soaked. That I will dance in the rain if it means that my heart is, for even just that moment, synchronized with the heartbeat of Heaven. But I was told long ago that I cannot dance.

They were probably right, let’s face it.

I do not think that I am new or fresh or exciting half the time, but Heaven disagrees. I do not think I’m accomplishing much, but Heaven disagrees. I do not think that I have anything to say that anyone else will want or need to hear, but Heaven disagrees. I do not think that I have a heart worth pure and true love, but Heaven disagrees.

What I’ve found, then, is this God that I generally try to distance myself from pursues me like white on rye, like peanut butter on jelly. It will make me uncomfortable, walking around all wet afterwards. It might force me to alter my living habits, having to let my clothes dry instead of putting them away all nice and neat-like. But it also might remind me of bigger things, better things. A better economy than my own. Adam and Eve messed up, screwed me over [I would have eaten the entire apple], God is the only one who could fix it, and He did fix it. I take or I refuse. No more, no less. That is the economy at stake.

Friend, I am sorry you don’t love God just for the sake of love. To respond to romance in the ways we dream of. Just to love in the name of love. My heart cries for that to change, but I know that as I write this, I still try to pull my umbrella out sometimes. But something in me tells me to hold off, to let the water fall from Heaven and drench me. Soak me. To leave no room for air. To know that grace exists, it’s just not in my economy. Grace and love and peace exist, and exist for me.

I feel a rain a’comin.’

the heart of the woman on the wall.

I have taken on a thousand names, playing each and any part that was asked of me; demanded of me. I have given myself away for less than I am worth. I have taken little in return. I have walked by the disapproving eyes. I have spent my life sitting on the wall, partially in but mostly outside. I have begged you to leave me there.

I have felt the weight of an empty heart as often as I have scanned the bare cabinets of an empty kitchen. I have tasted dirt and gold for my sins. I have taken the beatings that come as often as the jewelry.

Time has left me nameless, my resignation bearing my defeat. I have heard of you; your pursuit. The stories of you have melted my heart, making me aware of what stopped beating long ago. Those stories claimed my courage, taking hostage the false bravery I muster every morning just to get out of this stained bed. I see only the fear of you…at the moment of my last breath, please let the flames come quick. I, more than anyone, am aware of this economy of gracelessness, knowing where I stand and how little I have to offer. Surely they reflect your judgment—and my own—that I do not deserve you. Just leave me there.

—Rahab. Gomer. The Church. Me.

I like this.

"Eyes speak before the lips move."

- Arshile Gorky