Rejoice

origin

Hope…floats.  It lifts and levitates.  Makes the weighted fetters of this too long and weary world buoyant.  Hope and joy inextricably tangled up in one another.  One cannot be separated, parsed out, and whittled down to the essence of just the one-without-the other. 

Hope is the smile blooming on lips lined from their pursing.

Joy is the expanding dawn over eyes too often searching the floor for answers that won’t come.

Their co-mingling, an arpeggio of voices raised in concordance.  The hymn of a resounding yes, becoming an answer for too much yearning; the opening of gates for what was designed.  Then lost, and then again restored.

A community of people, beautifully bound to hope, and resilient and courageous enough to push through doubts and barriers; a committed people who want to be the change.  To step it out.  Follow a different, new-old trajectory that points only to glory and leads each one home.  A church that isn’t…and at the same time is. 

Home, where hands and time and treasure are spent in pouring out a love so freely given.  Home, where each person is viewed through the lens of Him who made them, and He who saved them.  Home, where love grows and joy lives, and hope sustains.

I am found in this home.  

I delight greatly in the LORD;
my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the soil makes the sprout come up
and a garden causes seeds to grow,
so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness
and praise spring up before all nations.

~ Isaiah 61:10-11