[todaysdate]
By Christi Ortiz
You come not to take away suffering and evil,
but to redeem it,
not to take away our humanity, but to redeem us.
You take on our humanity, our pain,
our sins, our suffering,
and you transform and sanctify them
Help us not to run from our humanness
but to embrace it as you have,
to offer ourselves to you,
as you have offered yourself to us.
The keys to your Divine Kingdom are buried
in the soil of our humanity.
You are the Vine that only grows when we allow the seed of Your Word to take root
in the dark soil of our beings as human beings.
The Spirit works in the deep dark secret
of the shadows of the earth,
and from the surface can’t be seen
or felt or given words to.
It is only in this surrendered stance, this silent contemplation, this vulnerable self-giving, that growth, healing, and transformation begin
to spring forth into New Life.
For even the most experienced Gardener knows
there is nothing more
she can do but plant the seed and wait.
Wait in Patience, Stillness, and in Faith
for grace to build on nature,
to work in the nitty, gritty earth
to nourish new life.
When You said, “I am a worm, not a man” you crawled into the very filth and dirt of our lives and took on the very darkness of our world
and transformed it from within.
You didn’t take away sin and death,
but You conquered and redeemed them
in us and in our world.
You do not throw away humanity and the earth,
but draw the Resurrection from their very core.
You descend into the very pit of our being
and meet us there
if we but invite You into our darkness
