Chapped Lips

Praise God for this week, spiritual rest, teaching me about unity in Christ, making me aware of my sin, for bearing with me, and for loving me even when my heart can't seem to focus completely on Him.

I love prayer furnace. While I was there, God showed me how He doesn't just communicate solely through prayer or Scripture. He speaks in song, in art, in poetry, in silence. He even speaks through our flesh. When I was sitting in the corporate prayer area, I realized that my lips were really chapped and I was thirsty. I thought about whether I should leave to get water, ask someone for water, or go buy some and then come back, but then I started thinking about thirst and Living Water. My chapped lips made me think about spiritual thirst. At that point in the week, I was veryy tired from the past two weeks of little sleep and little time with God...I was sooo thirsty for God.

The poem (i don't know if you can call it that) that resulted really affirms how God uses EVERYTHING as a means to speak to us. So this poem doesn't really rhyme and it's very choppy because I basically let the lines build off each other through word association [I'll bold the words that made me jump to the new line]

Chapped lips remind me that I need--
Living Water come and renew
Charge the paddles. Yell, "Clear!"
because You call us to come alive
A life lived for You
A heart set on You
A hope firm and true

Chapped lips tell me my body is decaying
Dying from the sins; the poison that I don't know is in my hands
Hands hold me, hands touch & heal me.
I am a leper. I am the bleeding woman,
suffering for seven years afflicted.
Somehow I know if I just touch His robe
I can be freed; I can silently be restored.

But He calls me out--out from the crowd
He asks who I am; He wants to know me
He wants a relationship
You want more than empty healing

Chapped lips. I lick them
I lick them and they're still chapped
This is temporary. This is empty healing
This is all I can do.
This is all the world can offer.

Offer, you offer this gift I can not comprehend
A gift no thank you note can encompass
Compass, can I trust this earthly guide
that tells me north is right in front of me?
'Trust that I am the way, the truth, and the life,' You say
'Know that I am with you and fear not this world for I have over come it.'

Chapped lips to match a chapped life
Dry, cracking, not the way they should be,
perverted from their natural state
wanting something to take away the pain.

A pane of glass to see the Son through
We are the window to view Christ
From here it looks hopeless and dark
We stumble and feel for the light switch
God, turn on Your grace and illuminate the world

Aluminum cans tossed and scatterd go to waste,
but when taken up to be reused...
Melted. Molded. Formed.
They no longer serve the same purpose

Survey says, 'You aren't God,'
but how can you explain what was accomplished on the cross?
We rationalize and explain Him away
but He is unchanged
Constant. No slope. His derivative is zero
There is none like Him.

Chapped lips speak of His love for me.