Father God. Dangerously Near. (ThinkJump Journal #51 with Kim Gentes)
Monday, March 7, 2011 at 3:15PM 
Father God. Dangerously Near.
[This edition of ThinkJump includes an MP3 with audio narration with sound-bed attached to this entry. Click the mp3 below to hear this.]
A psalm of thanks.
A prayer to draw near. To my God.
I am watched1 by my Father, God2. No matter where I walk around the earth3, as a son, I am kept under the wings of the great King4. He is friend5 and father to me6. The air shivers with his nearness. His gaze is horizontal, when all things say it should be from above7. He treats me with grace, when I deserve shame8. I have no place to argue with him9, though I would surely ask Him when he will leave, and why he has put up with me. Yet, he contends that I am his10 child. It basks me in light and washes me in joy, when I think of his nearness11. Not just a knowledge of love, but the presence of it12, actually occupying the space near my heart, my mind and my very body. The vulnerability of the flesh of my beating heart, all my emotions wrapped in it, is at the touch of his surgeon hand13. The closeness of my thoughts he presses against his wisdom, inside, near the top of my head, where my thoughts collect to confer with one another14. The hairs on my arms and the twitching muscles surrounding my elbows and shoulders are reacting with minute pressure that comes from his closeness to the physicality of the air around my body extremities15. He is near16. Too near, yet delight is flowing from it being so17. Do not leave, oh God. But do not be so close18. Be near, please19. But heal me as you burn away the dross20. Be, please, comforting as you cut the sickness from my being21. Reveal yourself, and yet, shade me from being slain in the shadow of your holiness22.
[1]Exo 3:16; [2]Psalm 121:5; [3]Micah 5:4; [4]Psalm 91:4; [5]John 15:15; [6]Gal 4:6; [7]Job 16:19-21; [8]James 4:6; [9]Job 13:8; [10]John 1:12; [11]Psalm 16:11; [12]1 John 4:16; [13]Ezek 11:19; [14]Ecc 2:11-13; [15]Deut. 4:7; [16]Acts 17:27; [17]Psalm 36:8; [18]Luke 5:8; [19]Psalm 84:2; [20]Zech 13:9; [21]Ezek 36:26; [22]Zeph 2:3
Father God. Dangerously Near. (ThinkJump Journal #51 with Kim Gentes)
Reader Comments (1)
This is powerfully real, Kim. I have felt the presence of God a very few times so close that I trembled in fear and prayed he would not destroy me. In our desire to want God to be so personal and close and fatherly, we forget how dangerous he truly is. Thank you for this.