I want more, Lord.  I don’t want a steak snack with a side of reluctant milk, I want the mammoth 40 ounce monster that people get their pictures on wood paneled walls for having knocked back.  There are these snapshots of fantastical dreams that play over the corners of my mind, seen almost as the color blind or the legally blind, traces of what’s there without really knowing much at all about what it is that is in front of me.  There are promises etched on my spirit.  

And life has crinkled the edges and splattered doubt and hurt over their surfaces.

I have relegated You to ‘Him who could start a fire in a bush if it were dry enough and He had matches,’ when the name You possess is so far greater:  Him who dwelt in the burning bush.  (Deuteronomy 33:16)

You planned greatness.  When long ago, before time was measured or planets swirled, you made me, you planned great fullness and fruit. You planned victories and growth, you planned work and emotion, you planned stories and influence, you planned a ministry-for my good and your glory.  Life and sin and Satan and sorrows put dents in the plan.  And at some points along the way, I have doubted that the plan would still fly.  

But thanks be to my great God, your plans don’t exist in our crumbling masses of flesh and heartbreak.  They exist in an eternity of grace and calling and love, hope, and opportunity.  They exist because your promises are lasting and true.  They exist because there once was a time when you wrote my name on the palm of your hand and spoke life into my soul.  They exist because by design and by purchase, you claimed the right to have your way.  

So life then is yours to make beautiful.

If I will but hand over the bumps and bruises, if I will but entrust this mass of flesh and sorrow into Your capable hands of love and grace, you will make me beautiful.  You will redeem that which life has worn out of me.  You will regrow that which I have allowed to die.  You will put onto course that which has been left abandoned by the wayside.  

Give me faith to dip my toes in the waters, Lord.  Give me the heart to dream that the God who parted the seas is the same God who sits perched, waiting, hoping that today is the day I take Him at His Word.  Let me encounter a lifetime of that which is not possible.  Let me walk in boldness right into the midst of all that simply can’t be done.  Teach me how to do that, Lord.  

Make me willing putty in the hands of Him who desires to mold me into greatness for His glory.