Honey in my cup

The half-moon hangs like a dollop of gold, the honey in the bottom of my tea cup.

It is late at night, past midnight really, and we are heading home from a night bathed in music.  Just me and my oldest girl.  She sleeps now, beside me in the front seat of our 1984 beater, bathed in the warm light of the dashboard lights.  I am surrounded by the glory of God in the nightscape, and my heart is at peace tonight.

It's been a few weeks since I felt His peace so deep.

My seven-year-old, with her delightfully still dimpled hands the only remnant of babyhood about this blossom of a girl - she lifts those hands into the dark haze of the arena as we worship, and sings aloud with all her heart, her two grown-up teeth glittering in the stage lights with two matching black gaps where the teeth haven't come in yet.  She smiles to the God she already knows so well, "Take me, take me as You find me, all my fears and failures, now I surrender...Savior, He can move the mountains, My God is mighty to save, He is mighty to save...Forever, Author of salvation, He rose and conquered the grave, rose and conquered the grave!"

And now, driving home under the last vestige of a yellow moon, my heart echoes the song, too.
Everyone needs compassion...love that's never failing...let mercy fall on me...
Everyone needs forgiveness...the kindness of a Savior - the Hope of nations...

It is so easy - so easy! - to forget that this is mine!  Compassion, love that's never failing, mercy, forgiveness, kindness, hope.  Has been mine, since I was five years old!  When the voices of this world crowd out the voice of your Savior, do you know the emptiness of loneliness and the dread that washes over you in the morning when you open your eyes?  He never intended you to feel this way.  It is unequivocally the consequences of the Fall.  It is so imperative that we find ways and places, as Christians, to constantly reconnect to our Source for love, mercy, forgiveness, and hope.  These days, I have been cracking my Bible open more than ever - but looking not for peace and comfort but for confirmation and reassurance that I am, indeed, on the path He desires for my feet.

But He is faithful.

The chords of the music pulled the cords of my heart, and I was bathed in His love as the hymns thundered around me last night.  Thank you, Lord, for finding a way to speak to me even when I find it hard to still my soul to listen.