The face I see in the mirror…

Looks back over years of joy and pain, triumph and loss, life, and death…

In my countenance, I can read from my heart as though its pages were blazing with words of fire before me… Telling a story of true grace and mercy.

What was once built as a great facade of strength and worldly beauty like a castle… Like a great city of strength…

Now stands not…but is crumbled.

Stones and rubble lay scattered, pagan monoliths lay toppled by their bases…

Fountains of frivolity and waste are dried in dust.

My city is gone… its decorated chambers and guarded watchtowers are no more.

My worldly citizens fled to the forests at the first sign of destruction.

My senators and counselors turned their backs on me and plotted my demise once the end neared…

To the other kings of the land, I am regarded as stricken and marked as lost…

But in these eyes and in this heart, there is a truth they do not know….yet!

For in the rubble and tattered remains of the city of my heart, grows the seed of rebirth… the grace… the forgiven purity of the man God has created through the blood of his Son and by grace.

My halls are at once rebuilt… this time not to keep out… but to invite in… the many.

The streets of my soul are not lined with vendors of greed, but with faces of love and sharing.

By His hand this is so…

By His love I grow…

And for those kings with whom I once shared the cup of self…

They too are invited to dine in my… that is… my Father’s new city.

The warmth of his presence in my windows may draw them in from their own weary existence.

That the grace extended to me… may be taken by them as unexpected spoils…

Back to their castles of war that they may be entered by His presence, invaded and ultimately destroyed…

…to be rebuilt by the love of the great “I AM”.

As I turn away from the glass one tear falls to the ground… Simply… A tear of joy.

Not… for what I.. or my city.. or my family has become in Christ…

But… for what His Kingdom may be as a result of our gratefulness!