Soft.

How do I stay soft in a dying world?

A lily in a valley of thorns, a golden steadfast candle in the darkness, a violin among the drums of war.

How do we become an Esther in a realm filled with the defiance of Vashti?

When faced with hell and taunts of death, oh that we could pull out our lyre; trampling the demonic with the chords of David.

The Spirit finds His tents among those who are soft. The ones whose hearts are flesh and tender to the whispers of Christ. For He was not in the wind, the fire, or the earthquake. No, He was found in intimacy.

The gentle whisper of a husband, longing to be good to His bride.

A Bridegroom so patient in His love story with us that He dare not quickly elope, but rather, takes His time to prepare her.

Like the dew of Mount Hermon and the roses of Sharon when they gently bloom; the Holy Spirit descends as a dove on the lambs of God.

This world, so hard and this age so dark. What would it be like for us to stay soft?

To refuse Saul’s armor because we won’t win with javelins and swords and spears. We cannot harvest the fields of the Judaic tribe with shields that mask old, but still bleeding wounds. It is our robes of righteousness and the Name of the Lord that causes streams to overtake the Negev.

May we take a lesson from the water that effortlessly flows through the stony and hard places in the earth; that is the only way we will make it through.

How glorious to be grafted into a family that can say our prophets called down fire, but they also wept.

If there was ever a time to be soft, beloved — it is now.

For it is said that they will know us by our love. And what is love but the most pure and vulnerable of things?

It isn’t the thorns the gardener goes to the bushes for, but the flowers that have the courage to grow in the midst of them, without becoming one of them.

All our lives, we have just tried to survive. Having to fight at the first break of light until it fades into night. It is all we have known. So to ask us to be soft now is a deeply terrifying thing.

But I am confident of this, all will be well.

Let us do it together. Let us tend to our brothers and sisters, gently peeling back the armor that has become like second skin. Let us bring our nakedness to Him. Laying down our identities that were built in these seasons of incessant survival.

Let Him whisper to you now the plans He has for you, as He bathes you in Gilead’s balm.

Do not be afraid.

His strength will shine like a diadem in our weakness.

We need not carry these weapons of hardness anymore. We have no use for them.

The Lord has come to trade our breastplates of steel for fine linen and silk.

And if it’s a wedding banquet we are destined for, this change of clothes is more fitting for a betrothal, don’t you think? And these soft hearts, more fitting for a bride.