“Lord, I have loved the habitation of Your house, and the place where Your glory dwells. Redeem me and be merciful to me.” Psalm 26:8,11**
Redemption answers. It is the place where all the broken pieces of me make sense. It’s Your light that fuses loud cacophonies — fragmented story lines — into one, symphonic epic.
Redemption is an offering of wholeness for those who are shells of what they were intended to be. (Redemption is for me.)
Redemption is the sigh of consummation because redemption is an end. One end. One God-Man. It’s the God who clothed all of His holiness in a skin we could touch and smell, whose body became a bridge by which the remnants of us might cross and taste the fulfillment we crave.
I adore You for being my end, for meeting my every need in Yourself.
When You show up with mercy, I am redeemed. Could it be that You allowed me to break open, so that Your mercy would heal me? My breaking incites Your mercy … and this is redemption. Once and everyday redemption — and by both I live.
How could I not love this house of Yours, inside of which all of this happens?
You allow Your people to boldly ask for a redemption that no man could contrive. You move at the sound of my asking. My weak plea has the ability to stir the heart of my Father.
I adore You, strong God who wraps mercy around my heart like a cord that binds up all which separates me from You. Your mercy makes me whole because in You I am whole. The glory of this moment, where my frailty is overshadowed by a God who wore a body like mine — perhaps so that I might know Him as one whose eyes I could search with my own eyes — makes Your house brilliant.
I don’t deserve brilliance, but You made me royalty and in Your house I am crowned with You.
I adore You, my Father and my King.
Your redemption and Your mercy, accessible to this pauper-no-longer, lift the ceiling off my life.
And we’ve only just begun.
Your house of glory is where my dreaming begins.
I love You, author of me.
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**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore and Morning Chai, Explained to give you a context for this little space on my blog.
If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration. (Showing Up gives you some practicals.)
Then practice praise.
I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.
You can see all of the Morning Chai posts with this link: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/ and you can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side.
And a note: Photos compliments of Mandie Joy. This girl has also set me up on instagram. Friends, it took several sittings for me to know exactly what that means and I still don’t quite get it …except, that you can now find updates and useful graphics on Instagram @everybitterthingissweet. Mandie keeps me in the 21st century.
