Talking to rocks

I’ve been blog-blocked.

And when I’m blog-blocked, I’m almost always heart-blocked.

I have heard God speak to me many times before.

And sometimes, in the middle of all that glory, I still hear the things He didn’t say louder than what He did.

When the King of Kings says, “JUMP,” I want my response to be, “How high are You taking me?”

But sometimes it’s, “Where will I land?”

He says to be mama to a little boy - to love him with all of me.

But he hasn’t said anything about the stifling corruption or why it’s so difficult to get a birth certificate. Or about the father that has come back into his life– or how to be mama to a long-distance little boy who suddenly has two families.

He says to build a house with extra rooms. That He’ll fill it and He’ll make it a place for Family.

But he hasn’t me given blueprints, the materials to use, or even a desire to learn the ins and outs of house-building in Africa. He hasn’t told me how He’ll fill the house.

Instead of living under a cloud of glory, I’ve been drenched in a downpour of doubt. His word is complete before He even speaks it, but even God uses the spacebar, an occasional ellipsis, and periods. There’s just no hurry when you are outside of time and space.

But that holy gap that has held me hostage in my own humanity.

Moses physically watched God punctuate the journey to the Promised Land with a cloud by day and a pillar of smoke by night. When it moved, they moved. When it stopped, the stopped. Easy as that, right?

Some things never change.

Humanity stomps.

Thousands of Israelites in the desert filled in the unknowns by melting their own jewelry into a cow-god, throwing carnivorous temper tantrums for a piece of steak, and using all the voice they had left to threaten their leader for a water fountain.

I do it.

Sometimes in more holy-looking ways. And sometimes in less.

I can melt my words into a tear-jerking blog, throw a righteous temper-tantrum for what breaks my own heart, and use all the voice I have to tell God what I want.

Moses got to talk to God face-to-face, like a friend. And Moses still got worn out in the in-betweens. When that Wind blows over you and Holiness sweeps you off your feet, anywhere you land – in the heart of South Africa’s orphan crisis or on Mt. Sinai with a wandering group of former slaves - seems like too much to bear.

I read today in Exodus about the thirsty cry of his people, groaning for water in the middle of a desert. God pulled Moses aside and told him the way the Almighty Provider would pour out His glory and make water spring from a rock. All Moses had to do was speak to the rock and hit it with his staff.

Moses walked out with his big stick, spoke to the people, and basked in the glory as the water flowed and the people drank. And that one moment, when Moses spoke to the people instead of the place God directed it, was enough to keep him out of the Promised Land.

I want the promises.

I don’t meet with God face to face, but spirit to spirit. And He gives words.

I get scared in the in-betweens… the waiting days and the wandering days.

My greatest fear is that I heard Him wrong, that I’m just getting swept up in holy romanticism.

I fill in details to answer your questions and mine.

I speak to the people instead of The Rock.

Forgive me Father, for being afraid.

Forgive me for chasing after the details, and for quenching myself in the glory-like emotion of being known. You tell me to build a house named Glory House. Let not one stone be laid if I receive any glory from it. I would rather walk circles around a desert for a lifetime than taste one drop of glory meant for my Father. The Promised Land is not a place human hands can build or blueprint, but a place where I’m going. You are my Rock. You carry me in the holy in-betweens, and you catch me when I stumble in confusion or drift the wrong way. Let me hear, look to, and speak to Your voice for the rest of my days. Amen.

I love you, dear friend reading this blog.

And I need you to know that I don’t know what I’m doing.

Or how to do it.

Sometimes I cry about it. Sometimes I cringe.

Sometimes I say words that are not appropriate to put on this blog.

Some days I don’t even know how to pray, and some days I feel too far away to.

But every day I’m thankful that you read. And that you pray.

And every day God comes and He catches.

So I’m recommitting to you today to take the big stick He’s given me and to speak to the Rock. Let all the glory that the people will drink up will come from the Rock and not from me.