Soup

There is a battle that I can not see
Of course there is a battle,
Laid out for me
That I am walking through
Emotions flair and do I dare
to see reality?
God's reality
Not my own
It is so hard to care for something
more than the other person cares for it,
or to care more that it feels the other person cares.
Have you ever wanted Christ to be formed in someone more than they wanted Him for themselves?
Have you ever felt alone
mocked, sitting there with your cup of inadequate soup?
"No, I'll get my own food, make my own way,
and thanks for praying, but I'm fine the way I am
and I know no other fountain
no other place of relief
no other hope except myself
on whom I rely.
But I do not hold inadequate soup
It's not thin broth with a tiny slice of mushroom
in a tin cup
cold and weak, though you may think that it is.
It is the living and breathing and totally adequate WORD of LIFE
that I prayed for you
that you may know Him completely
so that you would no longer be alone
or relying on your own way.
You see broth and I have life.
Oh God, Oh God
the problem is that I am such a little baby
and I am the inadequate one who is personified as a cup of rejected cold broth
and I have emotional problems.
In my enthusiasm I jump and shout and think 18 miles ahead.
Oh, the nature of dreams
The nature of human love
and of God's love
and of hopes and prayers and dreams and life.
And I am poured out because I have not considered this life as necessary to hold dear to myself.
What is my life anyway?
Is it not a vapor,
a mist over the old sea
a weed sprouting forth in a desert?
What is my life but nothing except that Christ has chosen me
And so though I know not what He is doing today,
all I know is Whom I have known
and who is with me today.
And there is a battle and it is draped in words and images that I do not know
and I am confused
and I butt up against a fortress of a thousand years of daily thoughts of corruptible things that rectify itself as being adequate to qwell the storms of life.
I come up to that wall and dare to speak to it, to the person behind it and ask if that person would like to come out
and "yes" is said,
but "no" is there also and
"I don't know," and
"Go on, I'm okay."
And I am hurting too and that hurt is worse than anything that is going on right now and that hurt is ill-timed becuase I am one ill-timed of birth and fortune.
And so I sit at the corner with my soup and I am the soup and I am left along side the road and it is nothing that I have not ever known before because it is all that I have ever known. And though I have made friends and have friends, I am alone everytime there is the feeling again. And there is the feeling again. And when I have the feeling again, I hurt and sit there and remember God who is my life.
He is my Healer and Helper and Holder of my right hand. He is the one who comforts me in all of my distress.
Dear Father,
Thank You for hearing me and my prayer. Today I come to You and sit here and ask that You would please meet me and help me through this day. I need you to help meet my obligations. I need You to comfort me in my distresses. I had hopes that are not coming to pass this day, though I do think that they will come to pass in the future and I need to wait and demonstrate that I am able to stand here in this cold spot and act like I am not dying inside, because other people are not dying and it is not the time to cry out and moan. But Jesus, You do know that I am broken. I am so very deeply ashamed and little and I do have poverty of spirit. I am so ashamed that I love and have loved and have hoped and have dreampt. I do not like the fact that I need. I have needs. Those needs are currently aroused beccause I have loved and hoped and desired and wanted and dreamed and now I sit here with my cold soup and I am the soup.
"Love not this world nor the things in the world." God has overcome the world. This world is not my home. "Your life is hid in Christ, and when Christ comes your life shall be revealed in Him."