I know I can but I cannot find my way back to Him. I walked away from the heat to a place where it was warm instead and now it’s more tepid than remotely warm. I am not amazed that He merely looked on while I wandered far from Him. Maybe because He knows that His grasp matches His reach. My mind told me that I’d not be too far from where I’d left Him but my heart knew that only one step away is what it took. The rest followed like demon-possessed swine over the mountain.
I am here now. Not lost but close enough to the edge. Tears blind my eyes. Perhaps it’s the wind that harshly burns them as it blows in the places where I can no longer feel His heat, yet still surrounded by His undying love. Or it is the miserable anguish of my soul as I realise how far I have travelled when I intended only a short walk from where He still stands. And then I hear His voice.
It is not the one that called Adam from the secret of the garden at the moment that his eyes were open and he knew he was exposed. It was not the incessant call that woke Samuel from deep sleep, troubled and dishevelled, running to his master Eli’s room in despair. It was not the voice that broke heaven’s shield with its boom announcing Whom and Whose Jesus was in the wake of His baptism. It did not come in the fire, nor the wind, nor the earthquake but in the still small voice that He favours.
He says come. And in the darkness that envelopes me, I reach out and He is there, so close I believe He is holding me. And I belong.
