You are small.

Does that scare you?

You are small, my dear,
and the sky is not everything.
Beyond it are stars
beyond that
the Love that holds it all
together.

You are small: you do not have to be big enough to hold everyone’s sorrow in a moment.

Let Love be enough.

You Do Not Have To Hold It All

Dear girl, I see you, there, trying not to cry because if you cry, you’ll fall apart, and someone needs you to comfort them.

I see you as you help them through all of their worries and all the doubts they are battling.

I see you pouring all of this love out, and I see you wondering if they really love you in return, or if they are just happy to always take and never give back.

I want you to know you don’t have to do it all.

More than that, I need you to know you can’t do it all.

You cannot hold all the world’s sorrow in your heart.

Go Out And See How Vast Is Our Sky

God could have made us blind.

I remember a Sunday School teacher, unconventional and gritty, when I was in perhaps fourth or fifth grade. He would talk about things the more staid parents would rather he avoided. He talked about the horrors of the Cross, angels and demons, and the wild love of God.

“God didn’t have to let us see color. Imagine if we couldn’t see the color red—what would life be like? Imagine if we couldn’t see. God gave us that just because He is good, just because He loves us,” he said.

Opening my eyes to the love of God, I began to see the color red everywhere. And then I beheld also the color green, how magnificent and thriving it was that summer. 

Love created a beautiful world, full of green and red, and gave us eyes to behold it. This is the only Love that can hold the world together.

This is the Love that made the sky.

Go out, my dear, and look at the sky. See it in its changing glories. Remember, God gave you eyes to see it because He loves you.

See how vast it is. You could never hold it together. But He does, and has done since He fashioned it by the breath of His voice.

Let Yourself Be Weak

Weakness is a curse in our culture that worships strength and power and those who can hustle faster than the rest.

God doesn’t ask that you become strong.

He asks that you become weak, like a frail little child, and come into His arms. 

My darling, you are wrong when you believe you only have to try a little harder and soon you will be strong enough.

You aren’t strong enough, and you never will be.

And that’s okay.

Let yourself be weak.

Pray, remind yourself each day that you are fully dependent on God. Trust, knowing that His love will sustain all through this terrible beautiful life, and that one day He will gather you into His arms forever.

For The Grieving He Grants Grace

Does knowledge of this Love change how we approach the hardest news and the worst moments?

For the grieving He grants grace.

For the afflicted, He does not despise.

“For He has not despised or abhorred

the affliction of the afflicted,

and he has not hidden his face from him,

but has heard, when he cried to him.” Psalm 22:24

His love still upholds the sorrowful, even while He knows that His ways are best.

Our Lover does not judge us for mourning. He comforts us. He sustains us. He hears us. He remains with us even when our grief is so great that we cannot feel His presence.

Oh Lord, be Thou near to the broken-hearted. Be near to the hearts weeping and knowing not if they will ever be whole again. Help them to trust in Thy goodness.

Never, No Never, No Not Ever Will He Forsake You

My dear one, He has always loved you, and He loves you still.

May you trust that the arms which bore the weight of sin out of Love, will never forsake you.

My mother used to marvel at the word for “never” in this verse: “Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” (Deuteronomy 31:6)

When it is translated into Greek and quoted in Hebrews 13:5, “for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” we realize that truest word, “never,” really means never, no never, no not ever will He leave us or forsake us.

For those He holds He will not let go. 

Darling, once you have repented and turned and confessed and believed that the work our Jesus did on the Cross is the only salvation from our sins, you are His, eternally.

Nothing can separate you from His hand, neither distress or grieving, illness or persecution, the evil below or the stars above.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:35-39

Remember The Cross

Remember the Cross.

Remember that He will always love you.

You do not have to hold the whole world in your hands, for the One who is holding you, who will never let go, He cradles the universe in the small of His hand. When your heart breaks over someone, remember He loves them more than you ever could, and darling, His heart is breaking, too.

He will give you the strength to keep loving them. 

So cry, and surrender, and trust, and love, always love.

His hands hold the world and they hold you, and not even the vast sky can separate you from His love.