The Highway Man

It’s been quiet in the land of paper bag princesses as of late. And perhaps, it’s partly due to a new found addiction to online scrabble, or maybe it's that paper for school I’ve been polishing up. The distractions, like yours, have been endless. And I’ll save you the dog ate my homework schpiel and cut right to the chase.

2012 has come in like a lion and devoured and mangled and shook some of my loved ones to pieces.  The carnage has been bloody. The wounds so raw and fierce.  Bodies left on the side of the road on a highway that seems endless.  Barren.  Dusty. Vacant. And hot.

I came by it quite unexpectedly; the battle scene. I recognized the clothing.  In tatters; ripped and shredded; much to my horror.  And then I saw their faces.  My eyes locking to theirs. Immediately my feet hit the pavement running.  The tears in my throat already rising. A pace set in panic.  To find them. To heal them. And just to bring them home.

It kept unfolding.  The plot on the highway.  I fell to my knees to embrace one. And then another.  And then another. I knew it was too late to turn back, to erase the images. To again be slated clean.

As I wiped their brows and kissed their cheeks, the tears in my own eyes reflected, to see in the distance, the lion pacing. 

And then it was silent for a very long time. On the highway.  And in the healing. Moans and wailings over injuries came in chasms never quite allowing peace. So painful and visceral that I didn’t have the strength to pray.

But even still, He entered. I thought at first, slowly. The emergency so raw and acute, afforded no time for my eyes  to look to Him. To seek His face.  To call His name. At least I thought. Because sometimes, sometimes, the hurt is too deep, and the blood shed too ugly, to call on Beauty.  To come and be in this place.

But He still enters. And calms the storm. And feeds with fish. And sponges with water. In the dust and in the grime He got down on hands and knees, kissing wounds, wiping brows, and bandaging scars. Tenderly.  Perfectly.  Fatherly. Differently and personally; to each and everyone.  Mending, and stitching; cleaning, and comforting. And I sat and watched the highway man. On the side of the road. Love on my loved ones in 2012.

~He heals the brokenhearted, binding up their wounds~

Psalm 147:3