Letter #5: Dear Smoke Smells
Dear Smoke Smells,
You aren’t burnt.
As a daughter living in heavenly places, who has borne earthly scars, allow me to share this simple advice. Anything can heal you if you let it. Some need only the white man’s flesh as a patch to mend. While others need needles and scissors with thread. Yet some take to casts and elevation. And others require metallic and anesthesia. I heal with words. Others desire colours and hues and brownish tones. And some need couches and tissues and willing souls. Still others take to the bangs of breaking glass. And some require the fire from filled glass.
Would you be confounded if I said, they all find God?
I can comprehend, that to some these words may showcase the existence of an oxymoron. Perhaps simply moronic. The idea that a sinful life, a life devoid of the everlasting understanding of the omnipresence of an immaculate God, can have at its head that very omnipresence. For is not the very nature of the omnipresent state, to be both God in heaven and in Hades?
Am I therefore granting acquiescence for building dwellings in the midst of hell’s flames?
To do this would mean that Christianity is a mockery and I myself a fool, so this is undoubtedly not my enterprise. However, I am assured that the same spirit that hovered over the lamb also led it to be slaughtered. I know that the same lamb that used saliva in sludge to recover sight, also used prayer offerings to feed gatherings. I know that there were moments when only words were used, and there were moments of quivering silence. There were epochs when even temporal cloth dripped virtue but when the essence of virtue was wrapped in earthly linens, its decaying state caused it to be regarded with less honour than the tomb he had left.
It is this that compels me to never doubt the direction that the hand chooses. This assures me that all things, whether it is in my understanding or not, works together for good to those that love God and are called to his purpose. And are we not all called though some choose to discard the vocation? It is this that causes me to honour the path of any man, knowing that it is impossible to cease hearing His voice. Do we really consider that there are places on this earth where He cannot exist? To state He is omnipresent and then limit His presence is a mathematical equation that results in nothingness.
Can we trace the origins of pain before its manifestations? Can my earthly wisdom grant me permission to see its every horizon and choose, whether to beckon it near or erect fortress walls? Then why do we consider that we can direct the exit of pain? Why do we believe there to be only one perfect exit? Perhaps, we have grasped understanding that the purpose of pain, just like all of life, is to bring us closer to the image of the one who fully embodied pain. But not all pain nails itself to a cross. But all crosses brings us closer to His embodiment if we allow it.
I say all this to say, it is reasonable to search. It is reasonable to find yourself in the midst of brokenness, desiring answers. It is reasonable to search for those answers, not in a temple but on a street. And it is my humblest of opinions that this in itself is not sinful. For the Christ I serve, himself served in the streets though he now lives in the enthroned. Common journeys, without any sign of splendour can consist of more truth that any synagogue. Though temples are filled with law, streets can consist of gospel. Besides, the gospel can minister more on the street than it ever could in a temple.
Anything can heal you if you let it. That healing can allow for sanctification. This sanctification can produce maturity, to cease being a flower and develop into ripe fruit. But to begin this process, there must be a willingness to find virtue wherever thou goes.
I have dwelt in the fire too. I pray you see your salvation standing beside you in the flames.
Praying for you, Kat.
