My Love Letter to the Lord

Have you ever written a love letter to the Lord? I used to keep a journal that was all about me. Now I have a “God’s Notebook” to listen to the Lord and to tell Him how much I love Him. Yesterday, as I spent my early portion of the Sabbath day on the beach, I shared my heart with Him. I pray this blesses you, also, and encourages and inspires you to worship the Lord in spirit and in Truth (John 4:24).

This beach is so glorious, God. It reminds me of you. You created it. Even when I weep, which inside my heart I do now, the ocean never stops. Your love goes on forever. The water keeps coming to the shore. You do this with the shore of my life. 

My heart you know so well. It gets so dry. Parched. Your living waters (John 7:38) are there all along. And I find once again I have turned away, to life’s little matters, only to hear the sound of you beckoning. Come, daughter, return (Malachi 3:7).

And I look back to you and let your waters descend upon me. Not a mere lap, teasing like the ocean that always comes and goes with its tides. But you are always there, ever ready. I need only say Yes! 

Oh Lord, forgive me for turning away once more. Because of your sovereignty, your mercy, because of your Son, your grace wraps around me and holds me. You do not tell the tears to go away. You catch them in your hands for you know the joy I might reap for I have sown countless tears through the years (Psalm 126:5).

And all along you knew the joy I would reap is in you regardless of this life. I look back at the waters, the ocean. You again I see. The light that even through the clouds comes down and rests upon the ocean. I reach out my hand, and I wonder, how long will you go on forever?

And I already know the answer. Forever. I could go to sleep listening to the sound of the ocean. But I know instead I will go back to my life, the one that has brought so many tears. Knowing my joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5). Knowing no matter what this life still brings, as thought it has not already brought enough to make a soul weep, I can rest in you (Psalm 37:7). You are my peace (Ephesians 2:14).

You are my salvation. My hope. My Truth. My eternal well-being. My forever. 

All that I have lost, and still shall lose, all I desired that is no more, that lies in pieces and shards and slivers of broken dreams and broken people, it is nothing what I have lost. For I have gained you (Philippians 3:8). “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the Gospel…” (Romans 10: 15).

When I get up from here, from these moments resting along the shore watching the ocean and remembering you, may you take these feet and this heart you have filled with you, to people and places to declare you.

What a Sabbath day this is, my God, looking out upon the waters and being still in you (Psalm 46:6). And though my soul doth weep for what I have seen and what I have experienced and what is no more, I know everything is yours and rests in your hands (1 Corinthians 10:26). Like I do, breathing your majesty in.

Oh Lord. My love for you only grows. You are mighty. And once I thought the ocean was in its countless ways of waves and foam and life inside its seemingly endlessness. But this is nothing compared with you. 

You, my forever.