You are so very old, your face so scarred, wearing the marks of leprosy, so disfigured from years of disease.... but that doesn't hide the beauty that emanates from your eyes.... i've not seen such haunting beauty for a long time...... those eyes of yours pierce to my soul and carry such gentleness and emotion than i can't put it into words.... i can't imagine what pain you've known, or what stories you could tell...... you look so sad and it just weighs me down, yet it makes me see what a shallow fool i've been.... i think, if you'd let me spend a day with you, then i'd be the one to change...... i can't look at you without re-evaluating my whole world view.... i can't gaze into your haunting eyes without wanting to just love you..... i don't even know you, but your face speaks and i hear..... and i'd like to spend my life with people like you..... not because i think i have much to offer you (though i wish i did), poor and sick though you may be, but i think you have much to offer me....... you make me love and all my heartless stupid thoughts fade away..... if only it could stay that way...... you break my heart and mend it in one joint go..... don't think i just value you for the way you challenge my thoughts though.... you make something altogether different happen, you make me want to love you just for you, and for His sake... and i know that love can't come from me, my love is poor and shallow and not love at all.... but it's like you make His love come alive in me and give me eyes to really see. Thank you. Though i see your face only in a picture and i know you'll never read this, though i only feel love and can't actually show it to you, still thank you.
The only sad thing is, as quickly as his face breathes life and love into me, that fades when i look away because i am quick to forget. But maybe that's because love is a real, not abstract thing. Maybe that's because it's only possible to love individuals in a real way... not just in your mind... so there has to be a situation for it to flow through. Maybe this is why it's so hard to live as a hermit. To say you love certain types of people, for example, is in some ways just an abstract idea.... love isn't just an abstract idea.... love isn't a concept... love is God.... and God works in a literal and real way, through relationships and individuals..... i guess love responds to specific situations as and when it is presented with them... and you can only love in each moment so much as you let Him, who is love, live in you in that moment, and love through you. And it says that God is near to the lowly and the humble in heart... that He resides with the broken... that when you see someone who is sick or in need and help them, then you are really helping Him... so maybe that's why i see Jesus more in those who are so poor and weak, than in those that appear strong.... maybe that's why this broken old man makes the love of Jesus come alive in me... because Jesus loves to reside with men like him.
(N.B. I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago, but i didn't publish it, because it was more just my spontaneous thoughts in that moment & i know it sounds a little silly, cos i addressed it to a man in a photo... i don't know why i'm posting it now, except i have nothing new to write at the moment....)
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