I Know Your Very Heart
The little violin plays the smallest tune amidst the grey rubble, beneath the covering of ebony darkness, prolonged. A song that she once played full throttle and unabashed, how timidly now she moves the bow across quivering strings. A tune that once rang through the streets with confidence, now quietly, like smallest light of hope unquenched, like memory of beauty where only death and condemnation have been pronounced, like flickering candle of faith and clinging believing in the unseen Creator who spends His days in darkest places, pulling melodies from rubble and beauty from ashes (Is. 42:3). I know who You are, says the movement of her melody, even when You are silent.
I know Your very heart.
It is a tune she used to play, before the tumult thundered. Before the dark night came so fiercely, shutting out the lights and silencing the sounds of hope. And her faintest melody had nearly gone silent beneath the blackness, beneath the tides of sorrows, fainting wick snuffed out in the coldness and the darkness — if not for the remembrance of His very heart.
Abundant lovingkindness flows like billowing fountains from Your very heart. Great love and tender compassions that do not fail are the pulsating center of Your Person. You do not delight in grieving the children of men. You do not afflict from Your heart (Lam. 3:22 - 33). I know who You are. And this darkness, this silence, does not speak for Your very heart.
And I am not alone in this believing. I have ten thousand witnesses all around me in the choirs of Your created order. Day unto day pours forth speech (Psalm. 19:1). Every smallest flower of the field lifts the light of her face to join the chorus. Every sparrow sings with her whole heart on the line. Every sunset explodes with orchestral grandeur. Every starry night tells a thousand tales of ancient goodness, everlasting mercy, and age-old kindness. I know who You are.
Will I go silent into the chokehold of circumstantial evidence that tells a different narrative of Your heart toward me? In the prison of Your silence, will I let the Devourer’s unrelenting taunting in my ear at last prevail? Perhaps such a deathgrip would have been the final blow to this little song, had not my ear been to the door of this prison, had not my eyes scanned the horizon to behold untold throngs of witnesses to the truth of Your very heart.
How can I bury a song still alive while these choirs of creation never stop their calling to me? In the deafening silence, they are Your voice to me. They outnumber even the numerous throngs that seem to be set on stamping out my melody.
It would seem every flower and every towering tree, every singing sparrow, every painted horizon, and every starlit night, teems together to call to me, to compel my heart to yet believe who He is. They bid me to break free from the stranglehold of accusing, stifling sentiments, and to let loose my song once again. They remind me of where He always finds the beauty. Where He always calls forth the melodies. He spends His days opening prison doors where captives huddle in the darkness (Is. 61:1). He searches out the rubble of burned stones and ashes, finding the treasure of beauty yet alive, yet singing.
He finds me.
It’s who He is to do so. That is His very heart.
And so the little violin lifts her song, lifts her voice. The song of the lovesick heart (Song. 5:8). Believing with a quivering flame of faith that He who receives the faces of the flowers and the songs of sparrows, receives, too, my face lifted and this song of faith and love ascending in this blackest night. I lift my song as a melody of trust to the One who spills the story of His excessive goodness and kindness in the painting of the heavens each morning and each evening, and in the planting of ten thousand flowers arraying my every path. If I go silent, they will still cry out (Lk. 19:40). Shall I not lift my voice along with theirs, risking it all as they do, in this covenant of trust that He is who He says He is? And that His very heart is unfailing love and compassion, and mercy reaching to the skies (Ps. 36:5-10)?
The flowers do not lie. The sparrows do not distort the story. The sunset and the stars do not exaggerate the truth. These heralders can be trusted as true messengers and wise counselors. Their witness holds up when examined and their testimony will endure long after the darkness breaks and morning at last comes. Long after ashes are no more, and beauty alone remains. So, find me numbered among them in their assembly. Find me singing once again, that song that moved His heart in my youth and moves His heart yet still - perhaps more - in these later days. Find me singing the songs that will have no end, so true is their message that endures (Is. 40:8).
Find me singing to the One who came and found me. Found me in the silence. Found me in the darkness. Found me as a captive. Found me alone and almost gone silent. Called my name by the flowers. Summoned my heart through the symphony of the sunset. Kept alive my hope by the chorus of the ancient stars. I had almost believed that He shared in the heart that wanted me silenced, until the hand that pulled me from the rubble was none other than His, scarred from his death upon the ancient tree. He is the One who hovers over flickering flames and fans to life fainting songs (Is. 42:3). He is the One who silences every charge and condemnation against me, and even now intercedes (Rom. 8:33, 34). Commander of the morning and Conductor of the symphony of every living, breathing day, wrapped around me. That is His very heart.
And He does not just keep alive. He commands resurrection power into the heart of fainting song. The beauty that He brings forth from ashes is not just of the former kind. It is a beauty made new, a song of everlasting nature, a fire ablaze with the eternal burnings of His very heart (Song. 8:6, 7). The songs He pulls from rubble and the beauty He gives in exchange for ashes live before His eyes. They never die. Along with the choirs of creation, they sing the ancient tellings of His truest heart. Until at last the One who sends forth the witness of sun and moon each day, the One who bids the flower to lift her face, the One who summons the sparrow to compose her song, finally Himself COMES —the One to whom all the witnesses were pointing—and takes His place.
In that day, the sun will no more be our light, nor the brightness of the moon shine in the night. For He Himself will be the everlasting light and glory that every day and night witness since the beginning of creation was displaying and revealing (Is. 60: 19, 20). And at last we will see fully, our faith made sight, the heaving heart of abundant mercy and kindness behind it all. And in that day, the flowers and birds of the air and trees of the field will laugh with joy when the wearied eyes of men finally see at last what they were giving witness to all along: the Eternal Fount Himself, from whose very heart all the beauty came from.
Until then, until day breaks and shadows at last flee away, I will keep on singing with my heart on the line, full throttle, along with the flowers and the sparrows (Song. 4:6). For along with them, I know Your very heart.