I think I will spend the rest of my life hungry to know the full heart of Christ. Can we ever truly feel or understand the full depth of His love and His perfection? The more I know, the more I'm drawn in, and I'm frustrated with my own limited capacity for understanding.

I don't know what has happened over the past few years exactly, except that I have come to know deeply this one facet of His heart: His ache for unity in the body of Christ, His Church. I can't get through John 17 without feeling a shared ache for unity. Surely He felt unfinished and frustrated by the constraints of time and of human flesh. I don't understand why it's so hard to love and receive love from each other. I find myself failing all the time. I wish I could love harder and go lower. I wish I could receive more willingly. I think He's given me a portion of this calling for unity, and I suspect I will ache to see bits of unity-fruit for the rest of my life here.

A few days ago, I was praying with Him over John 17, and not feeling especially hopeful for the Body. That’s an understatement, actually. I was grieving over what we’ve done, and over my own contributions to division. I finally just confessed out loud to Him, “If I'm honest, I don't know if any restoration can happen. I think we killed it…in America at least, the church. I think we killed your body.” And I started picturing myself at the foot of the cross, grieving with the women over our failures to protect His physical body.

We did actually – literally – kill His body.

But the Spirit of God raised it to life. And what He has breathed on we cannot kill.

What He has breathed on we cannot kill.

I imagined following the grieving women to the tomb, and weeping over His body. “We killed it. I'm so sorry we couldn't save you.”

Then I watch as all the women leave to get supplies for anointing His body, and to grieve, but I stay in the tomb. Suddenly, I find myself so grateful to be born in the time and place that I was.

Those women left in grief because they didn't know His body would rise again. I get to know it! I have the completed story always before me. Oh, they never would have left the broken, dead body if they had known it would breathe again!

Now I find myself recommitting to love His broken body. Yes, I can stay in this tension for the rest of my life if I need to. I’m grieving. But I know what is true. He will make all of it right. It’s not my job to control and piece together all the broken pieces. It’s only my job to love and make myself lower, and lower still.

I will never leave this broken body. Because I KNOW it will breathe again.

What a gift to know that. I will stay right here with this broken body, weeping over it, tending to it, kissing it and asking it to breathe again.

Let it be said about me, I’m found among the lowly. I’ll tend this broken body until it breathes again.

I will BE HERE to witness the first breath. I am NOT going to miss that first breath. What a gift to abide with a broken body that you know will wake again.

I'm never leaving.