Alphabet of Love – The Epilogue

Of course I had no idea what I was getting myself into as I started out the Alphabet of Love.  As much as I hate predictability and formulistic approach to life, including writing,  I wanted to do something simple.  Easy. Basic.

I felt like I needed Simple. 

Easy. 

Basic. Back to the things that we know that we know.  The things that I know that I know…

The Kindergarten life of faith.

I even thought I knew ahead of time at least some of the words I would pick for certain letters.  Just fill in the blanks. (As much as I hate 'fill-in-the-blanks'!)

To my surprise, the Alphabet took a life of its own.  It picked its own words, its own stories with little if any consultation from me, its writer!

Wait!  This is my blog! My alphabet.  I objected.

It turns out, regardless of how much I want to be in control, how much I want to own my story, at the end of the day I realize I am grasped much more than I am grasping.  This story, this alphabet - it’s not about me.  It’s not my story.

For, in reality, the story that I am trying to tell is so so much larger, so so much bigger and more beautiful and horrible and glorious and terrifying that anything I could ever express using all the alphabets of the world.

My little story seems so pitifully inadequate. So desperately insufficient.

For how does one pick a single note to play the intricate symphony of an A? For A is for Abba, but A is also for Atonement, and Adversary and Abandoned and….Amen?

How does one choose just one word to represent a living, breathing universe of the S which is the Son, but it is also the Spirit, and Suffering, and Surrender and Silence and….S..t!

How do you catch the wind with your broken butterfly net?

And so I go through these sounds, these letters that tell our story – His story – like a child walking along the beach, picking up scattered shells in the palm of her hand.

How does a child contain an ocean inside a tiny cracked shell nestled inside a palm of her hand?

And I gasp a prayer that

The God of the Wind and 
The Ocean and

The Sand and

Every seashell on all the beaches of this world would

Pour His life-giving Spirit 

Into these broken shells of our lives…  

Breathing His very own story into our hearts

Writing what is inexpressible

With the living alphabet of His Son...
Who is The Word
Who Became Flesh -  

Until all our stories –

insufficient,

incomplete and

inadequate as they may be  -

Flow together into one

– His Story –

to the praise of His 
Incomprehensible 
Uncontainable 
Grace
He freely gives and

We freely receive 
In the Beloved.