While in the heights of the Colorado mountains last week, I wrote…

It was the smallest little aspen tree that just rebuked me, and took my heart by surprise by its soft scolding. As I watched it avail itself to the breeze, leaves whipping to and fro so vulnerably, the message came so clearly to me. It was a pleading, a reaching, a beseeching as this tree did for me the one thing it was fashioned to do—awaken a heart to love Him. Without words and without speech, its voice came so clearly, as though shaking me awake to say, “Please, please, remember Him. Please, please, love Him. Please, adore Him and please do not forget Him. Please do not walk about your days as though He was far or distant or removed when every tree and every flower, every breeze and every stream was love offered to draw you” (Ps. 19:3, 4).

It was then I remembered what He wrote upon my heart so long ago. Back when I first believed, back when I had nothing else to tell me otherwise, no argument to sway me, and no ‘better judgment’ to persuade me. It was then that He told me this secret, and then that I believed. He told me that every flower was for love, every rain drop was out of desire. Every tree and every breeze had no higher purpose than the drawing of the human heart, the warming of the cold soul, the awakening of the sleeping person. And I believed. It was then that every flower became for me a messenger and every rainfall a heralder of His love. I knew no indifference in those days when these messengers crossed my path. As though they were kissed by the Creator before being planted or poured upon my path, like arrows they would pierce me.

And now today, this little aspen tree, sitting well beneath the strong and towering pines above, aroused me with its pleading. As though using all its might to awaken me, every leaf spun ‘round at the stirring of the wind, softly rebuking me for my indifference to such extravagance. Its beseeching finally stirred me to the remembrance  of His pursuing love and brought me again to the place of communion, of responding, of the holy: “I love You too.” For surely the voice of my Beloved Jesus does not grow more silent over time but my heart, so prone to dullness, grows less willing to heed His every means of conveying His voice to me. And today I remember what I had forgotten and lovingly return once more to the childlike heart that so readily receives.

Today I am indebted to a little aspen tree, who for joy of its Creator, reached its limbs and spun its leaves to stir up love in me.

For those who take this love of His, so potent, to their hearts as their utmost treasure, it will be the sustaining solace amidst suffering for His namesake, even unto giving up their lives. There is no richer consolation, no higher contemplation than the burning and sacrificial love of the holy Husband to whom we, the church, are now betrothed and will marry (Eph. 5:27; Rev. 19:7). Such forceful fragrance grips the heart incessantly and pervasively and becomes the love-infused atmosphere in which sacrifice knows no effort and loss knows no cost (Song. 1:3,12-13; 8:7; Rom. 8:17, 18; Phil. 3:7,8). Thus, He has opened up the deep and tender affections of His heart to us, He has revealed the beauty of His identity as Bridegroom and drawn us by the cords of His jealous love.  To drink from this well is to fill up the heart with reserves of sweet consolations for the times of testing and suffering that we will surely know if we are in Christ (Matt. 5:11-12, 24:9; Rom. 8:17-18; 2 Tim. 3:12).

As the Father was pleased to crush His Son, that the piercing fragrance of God’s love might be shed abroad and wafted high and low throughout all the regions of heart and history, so too, will the witness to His longsuffering love and His transcendent worth ascend from our lives in the time of testing (Col. 1:24).

He has given us something so holy in intimacy with Himself and this revelation of His heart as Bridegroom. It is to be grasped to the heart as rarest treasure and reverenced for its inestimable worth. Let us be careful with our treatment of it, cautious with our attitude toward it and generous in our pursuit of it. Let it be the seal upon our hearts, this love as strong as death and jealous as the grave. And may this holy and costly love of the Bridegroom – faithful and true -  so consume our hearts that counting all else as rubbish, we will love not our lives even unto death (Song. 8:6; Phil. 3:8; Rev. 12:11).

What is so good about poverty? What is so good about seeing myself as poor? Well, to state it plain, it’s the truth. It’s the level ground that all of humanity stands upon but so few rarely claim. When Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” He did not somehow acknowledge a special group of really humble people and call them blessed. Rather, He invited all of humanity to experience the blessing of living in the truth of their poorness rather than sinking in the delusion of  false strength. We are but dust (Ps. 103:14). And if poverty is the truth than what is the deception? The deception is to live far from it, to forget about it and begin to imagine even subconsciously that somehow my lack of suffering, my lack of weakness or inability in some way proves my strength. That is not strength. That’s just the absence of a thousand possible upheavals that could swipe my legs out from under me at any given moment. The true strength of our living is actually directly related to the degree of our embracing our poorness. For the heartbeat of real living is when we, dust that we are, reach from our nitty-gritty poverty and cleave to Christ. Now that is the beginnings of some true strength. It is here in this cleaving that His strength is perfected in my weakness and iron is worked into my soul (2 Cor. 12:9).

Oh for grace then, to live in such brokenness and poorness of spirit that the heartbeat of my living is a continual, reckless cleaving to Christ. Only someone utterly convinced of their poverty can cleave to Him with such vehemence. And oh, they surely are the blessed ones. They get Him like no others do. They drink of His everlasting water and eat of His true bread like kings around a banqueting table. Yes, blessed are the poor in spirit, for as those who cleave closest to Christ, they are the wealthiest of all.