Come up higher
Come up higher
He’s calling me
Every day
And I will answer
I will answer
My life is in…Your hands
– Unbroken Chain Church
I spent two mornings this week looking through the trees. Peering over the dashboard while waiting for legal parking on the street I call home, I sang this song. It’s one of the first songs I learned, one of the first songs I loved as new believer. That was 1989. He called then, He calls now. And the song is familiar and new and old, in a way that feels safe. Like the taste of beet juice (my fathers remedy for everything) or the way my mama taught me not to wander off alone. I can sit in “good for me” boundaries like that forever.
I set my gaze through a mix of green and worn leaves to find it. Justice, something to settle my spirit because the last few weeks have been hard. Holy hard. And sometimes I couldn’t see. But I’m determined to see beyond the filter and anything else that might divide us. Brushed and bruised by thorns, scrubbed clean by dew, my bare skin made new. I want to feel it – I want to be fully awakened by an encounter that transforms. I want to know more of His love. I want to go higher.
I’m the contemplative type, a thinker. But I also crave action. I want to know what I can do – how I can help make things better while I think about change, nirvana, epiphany…Jesus. I’m not afraid to do the hard work, to put my foot in, to get involved, but grace is gritty. And waiting isn’t easy.
Here’s the revelation. I have to come up higher to catch the vision of grace I pray for. The one I believe in. Maybe, instead of focusing on justice, I’ll come up higher and seek grace.
The trees tell me it’s a process. Watching them prepare for change reminds me to hang in, hold on…to shift and drift…to stay loose. Before the fall they’ll lose everything. Before the promise of a bud appears….all falls into grace.
I don’t have answers for the hurt and questions seeking enlightenment in this world presents. Except to do love. Do good.
I’ll come up higher with my belief in love. Love that looks different in every season but is identified by the dirty work we do in the ditch. God promises a holy outcome.
The do good kind of love is hard. And God breathed grace is a gift. In the end it won’t it matter if we agreed, only that we put into action the only answer that offers life. His love. His light.
While I wait I’ll be love and believe love. I’ll answer by hanging my hope on an altar of grace…a tabernacle of love I can take with me, wherever I go.
So come up a little higher, higher, higher, higher, higher
So come up a little higher, higher, higher, higher, higher – Mali Music
Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight…#GiveMeGrace
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