There is good inside of me.

I am not bad.

These things are forced out of me like the last efforts of the spent tube of toothpaste — it’s not pretty, but it’s there.

There is good inside of me.

I aspire to good things: friends healed, laughter echoing off the walls of a comfortable (and comfortING) sanctuary (so what if I have to mow the lawn?), creative mining and communicating, forming and shaping God’s people to find, display, and inhabit the Kingdom.

It’s all there, hand-in-hand with the broken tools of life, warped, rusted and a little misshapen from inheritance, neglect, and misuse, but at least it’s there.

I am cast in the image of

– carpenter

– father

– sovereign

– servant

– eternity

– Cross.

I am part of the “Adam Project”:  flawed, but restored (and restoring), hair messed up and eyes heavy with lack of sleep. All of these things are there. Sometimes they bubble up from deep wells of faith and joy, and other times they lay deep within the cold earth, dead and buried like coal in the mountain.

Sometimes it’s easy to find: “found art” and treasure that bursts into your lap with no effort; other times you have to dig, and even strip mine your life, destroying the landscape to find what will fuel and nourish you.

There is good inside of me; I am not all bad.

Not ALL good, of course, but better than this.

Even as I know that it’s not about me, that I am part of a collective country and kingdom, I also believe that my name is whispered in the pages of writings 2000 years old. I am hinted at in redemptive poetry, thought about in letters to churches, and anticipated in good news.  I have a place in this Good Country, in this Kingdom-Come-and-Coming, in this secret dominion that is visible to “Those who have ears and eyes to see.”

That’s me.

Put on my boots.