Eternity Still Beats on a Losing Heart

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eternity This morning it's all losing heart and laundry. I pull the clean fabric from the dryer and stare at it for five minutes. We are not a home brimming with children, but I know I just washed all these towels and cloth napkins five days ago. The door is always open and our table is too. It's a choice to live this way, open-doored and open-handed, and it's a choice that turns more away than brings them in. Hospitality is my great joy, it is not hard at all. But an open door brings in broken people, and oh, how my joy is wrapped up in their hope. The gospel "is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60)

I'm reading a book and this morning's chapter is about hearing—and how hard of it we are. There's no excuse, at least no good one. We can waylay the phones and screens and noises if we make small attempts, but there's no cure for the way eternity is on our hearts, beating louder and louder the dissatisfaction with the world and all her baubles. We are not, as C.S. Lewis said, content with mudpies, else we wouldn't be looking for newer, shinier, and faster mudpies every year.

We are so hard of hearing and eternity beats so very loudly.

II Corinthians 4 says we have this ministry by the mercy of God so we don't lose heart. I read over those words five times, six times, seven times this morning. It's because of his mercy we have the gift of ministry—and that mercy ministry is the only reason we don't lose heart.

But my heart feels like it is losing.

What then?

I fold the napkins and I count the blessing of ministry. I fold the towels and I count the blessing of mercy. I put them away and I do not lose heart.

This is a hard saying and nobody said the gospel would be easy. Some days I feel it more than others. Some days I am searching for the highest mountain to shout His goodness. Some days I am standing in the valley, forcibly lifting my eyes up to the hills, where my sweet, sweet help comes from. What great mercy it is that brings the hard work of the ministry, and what a great help He is to a heart that feels lost.