Is insanity required for following Christ?
 -Kenneth Stewart

You

I didn't leave looking for You.

I wanted slippers to rest in

to stroll quietly about the house.

You nuzzled in

as if I were insane to follow You.

I wasn't shopping for You

till You poked Your nose through Mars Hill

leaping in sight with questions and coal.

I perused the fated review

as You peeked through ink and page

and like Parker, O'Connor knows

bought You who'd been riding my back

Your eyes fixed upon my baptized flesh.

12 bucks and no slippers eased from my purse.

I wasn't looking for You

but you fingered me

thrusting Yourself before my face.

I noticed You

and couldn't turn away.

What do You want of me

more than of these?

I'm a coward, a frightened man.

Don't know if i can give You what You seek

if I trust myself to be crazy enough

to follow You through sink or swim.

So what was I to do

as You touched my iconed flesh

but say, "Yes!",

trusting my gut that You're here

no matter what?

*Thoughts of Frederick Buechner:

  -Is the human heart the only source of its own healing?  Is it the human conscience                 only that whispers to us that in bitterness and estrangement is death?

  -We must each of us answer for ourselves, remember for ourselves, preach to ourselves our own sermons.

  -There has never been a time past when God wasn't with us as the strength beyond our strength, the wisdom beyond our wisdom, as whatever it is in our heart -  whether we believe in God or not - that keeps us human enough at least to get by despite everything in our lives that tends to wither the heart and make us less than human.  To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift.