Faith

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I Write Because...

Daily, I receive inquiries in my writing mailbox from readers. Some write to share the blessing received from something I have penned. Others write with questions concerning my faith while offering objective technical review and commentary. I consider each response and cherish each note thankful for those thoughtful enough to respond. For weeks in various forms, many have posed the same question. Why do you believe in God?

My belief stokes the fires of my soul and sparks penned inspiration. To ask me why I believe in a higher power is to ask me why I write. At a recent worship service, a male soloist sang a gospel song called, I Sing Because. The verse was touching but when the chorus began, the strings of my heart cut loose, and my eyes began to leak. Without regard for running mascara, I lifted holy hands to heaven and praised my Father God for loving me enough to make provision for me. His love for me is so great; I cannot refrain from sharing it.

I sing because, there is an empty grave.
I sing because there is a power that saves.
I sing because of what He means to me.

I sing because I am not alone.
I sing because someday I’m going home.
I sing because of what He’s done for me.
(Benson Music)

It took me years to understand the ministry of music itself and the power it wields. Refrain after refrain, the tears flow in boundless gratitude for showers of blessing, rivers of living water, and peace that passes all understanding.

Tears are a language that God understands.
God sees the tears of a brokenhearted soul.
He sees your tears and hears them when they fall.
God weeps along with man and takes Him by the hand.
Tears are a language God understands.
(The O’Rells)

As…

I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses.
And He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own.
And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.
(Hymn)

For...

Amazing Grace shall always be my song of praise,
For it was grace that bought my liberty.
I do not know just why He came to love me so.
He looked beyond my fault and saw my need.
I shall forever lift mine eyes to Calvary.
To view the cross where Jesus died for me.
How marvelous the grace that caught my falling soul.
He looked beyond my fault and saw my need.
(Dottie Rambo)

Heaven is my home because…

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins.
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
(Hymn)

In Him, I have hope eternal because…

I serve a risen Savior; He’s in the world today.
I know that He is living whatever men may say.
I see His hand of mercy; I hear His voice of cheer.
And just the time I need Him, He’s always near.
He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today.
He walks with me and talks with me, along life’s narrow way.
He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart.
You ask me how I know He lives.
He lives…within my heart.
(Hymn)

It was not always this way though…

The gulf that separated me from Christ, my Lord
It was so vast the crossing I could never ford
From where I was to His command, it seemed so far
I cried, "Dear Lord, I cannot come to where you are."
And I’m so glad for the day that He came to me.
Yes, He came to me.
When I could not come to where He was,
He came to me.
That’s why He died, on Calvary
For when I could not come to where He was,
He came to me!
(Squire Parsons)

As the tears fall, my heart remembers and shall never forget the glorious gift of His love for me, and everyone that accepts Him as Savior and Lord of their lives. I thought today of how I could possibly explain my confidence that God is real. I prayed as I penned, "Father God, how do I tell others about us? How do I explain to those who find You a mystery just how sweet our communion is?" I am without words to express my love for Him. I lack the vocabulary and vernacular to provide an accurate rendering of the depths of His love and mine for Him in return. Can you express or define what falling in love feels like? The waves that wash over your soul, the way your heart skips a beat at the sound of your love’s voice, or the sweet surrender you enjoy sheltered safe within the arms of your beloved.

Can you catch a falling star or depict the gradations of a sunset? Can you capture the mist in the valley of a morning or a spirited fawn crossing the meadow? Can you rationalize the music a tree makes as the wind tickles its keys or the calming chorus of crickets at midnight? Love is just one of the many things for which we are without words to explain its depth, its breadth, its purpose, and its spirit as it comes to us and feeds our souls. To embrace it, we must feel it. Our senses must make vehicular provision and take us there – to the place where love abounds. Only in its presence, do we know it. Once gone from us, we are lost without it. In the crevices of our souls sprouts a yearning respondent of deep, instinctive emotion flowing from our hearts to the one who made us and gave us life. Mirroring Him as spiritual replicas of His depths, we extend our spirits beyond their limits and reach for that which is ineffable, scarcely known, yet far from nonexistent.

In my quest to harness its essence, seedlings called words line my path. As the strings of phrases become sentences, my spirit stays to the path where paragraphs, poems, and prose are born. In the land of the living, the path succumbs to its material likeness wrought from a craft using paper, pencils, and pens. As the pilgrim forges heavenward, her path is traceable following the stream of articles, journals, and essays strewn as petals before the King. Her quest takes her many places never before told, of castles and kings, and epics unknown. To scale the heights and tame the seas, making them home. The pilgrim pursues the truth and the business of God takes no rest. To pause is to ponder and to falter might cause her to wander. She stays; she seeks. And the pursuit of this love never makes her weak.

Many things mine eyes have seen. Many a night my soul went to glean in pursuit of a God unseen, yet felt and more powerful than any could dream. The indescribable pulse in my veins as the love flows from me comes from a source much higher than me. The pen moves as He calls and in my sweet hour, I surrender all to His unfathomable power. So, why do I believe, readers ask this of me? Ask me why I write and the same answer will come as the soloist sang to me.

I write because, there is an empty grave.
I write because there is a power that saves.
I write because of what He means to me.

I write because I am not alone.
I write because someday I’m going home.
I write because of what He’s done for me.

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All hail the power of Jesus’ name, let angels prostrate fall.
Bring forth the royal diadem and crown Him, Lord of All!
(Hymn)

© Copyright 2007 Tina Diane Mitchell for Wordlover Writing. All rights reserved.

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