Inexpressible

Everything in me wants to sit down at my computer tonight and account for my tempestuous emotions over the past few days. Exhaustion and distress have always been, for me, the contractions that give birth to self-expression. So, why the reluctance now? Labor pains signify…labor. Shouldn’t I be crying and thrashing and pushing out the words that produce new life?

Ahh…but my life is no longer found in those words. This heart has changed so much in the past year. I can finally say that I count even the “gift” of writing and the self-knowledge that this gift brings—I can count it as loss in comparison to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. And if this weren’t shocking enough, I’ve discovered a new reticence to talk about my heart in terms of its is unless I can also assert its oughts. This is more than just the shift from descriptive to prescriptive; this is a shift from reflective to redemptive.

The tension was almost unbearable today. Within a few hours of being offered a public forum in which to write redemptively about one of my sin struggles, I was pressed hard into the clutches of that exacting master again. I sink into my chair tonight feeling utterly defeated, and I will go to bed with a heavy heart unless I can lay my burden at the cross. So, what do I know to be true? What comfort can I take; what can I give?

Just from Colossians, where I happen to be tonight, I can testify that “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (1:13-14). My sins—even those willful ones tonight—are forgiven! Or, later in the same chapter, that I will be presented holy, blameless, and above reproach before the Lord if I do not shift from the hope of the Gospel(1:22?). This tells me that not only am I declared righteous but I am also being made righteous. I have been redeemed and am being sanctified. And, hearing this, I find courage to put away these “earthly things”—the ways in which I once walked (but now stray).

I have hope, today, that I can put them away in victory. Death, where is your sting? Sin, where is your power? Defeated. All defeated! The writer in me must cling to the fullness of the word 'inexpressible' and cry aloud, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”