Leave no stone unturned

I’m in a desert season.  You know the kind where all around you feels dry, dusty, parched. It’s desolate - a wasteland for miles.  The sun overhead is insufferable.  The only water for miles is that of the salty tears that frequently flow downward from dry and weary eyes.  Legs ache.  Hearts ache even more.  Hope set long ago at dusk and hasn’t risen since.  Dreams lay broken in a million parts like the sand.  I long for God but all I can see around me looks Godforsaken.  The road ahead is blurry as heat waves rise from the ground before me.  My compass of promises in His Word are all I cling to, straining to make sense, to make headway.

I’m searching for Him, all around. I can’t afford to go through life looking for billboards and banners that blast brilliantly of Him.  No. I’ve taken to turning over every rock, searching for Him. Desperate for Him to show up.  Looking high and low. Although mostly low. Searching in insignificant places and unlikely spaces.  I want to find Him.  I need to find Him. He shows up when we need Him most, right?  In our broken-heartedness? Scaffolding up crushed spirits?

Tonight I found Him. Or rather I heard Him. In the midst of the mundane muscling of laundry into loaded drawers, I heard a sound carried on the wind.  Melodious music whose rhythmic cadence and familiar tune lilted into my ears. It took a moment for my mind to pause, to really hear.  But at last when I’d taken time for the tune - back hunching over, ear pressing into the cool window screen, mind turning over this unlikely stone - my heart opened up to what my ears were hearing.  The language was unfamiliar but I knew the tune by heart.  “What can wash away my sin?  Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”  This song for me is a soul song - one of those hymns which the Holy Spirit has so impressed upon my soul, using it at pivotal and paramount times to speak peace, comfort, and grace to me.  It’s a song that no matter how much air time it gets, moves me to lift hands and voice to Him in praise.

Neighbors on the street behind must have been holding a study or service of some kind in their home, and “nothing but the blood” would do.  As their foreign tongues belted out all the verses of this beloved hymn, my heart and mind sang with them.  This blood that cleanses all my sins, that makes me whole again, that is all my hope and peace, that is all my righteousness - is not only personal but powerful. This blood has spoken into every tongue of its wonder-working power. I am not the only one rejoicing, searching, clinging.  This blood is beloved the world over and its praises sung in all the four corners.  There is no other fount we know. Let it’s praises ring eternal, carried on the evening backyard air.