Passion

Father, I want those you gave me to be with me, right where I am…I have made your very being known to them – who you are and what you do – and continue to make it known, so that your love for me might be in them exactly as I am in them.   

John 17:24, 26 MSG 

As writers, we are very familiar with the idea of passion, aren’t we?  Something stirs up our hearts, often at the most inconvenient time, and we have to get it down on paper before it flies away.  I love the fact that God has made me a passionate person – it’s the spice of life!  It’s our passion in life that keeps us going, even when the miles stretch ahead into seeming oblivion.  Passion is the drive for our creativity and the only thing that will drag us out of bed at 3 am to write with a fury.  And if I know I am made in the image of God, why is it sometimes a stretch to remember that His capacity for passion far exceeds my own? 

These verses likely came from a prayer so passionate that it brought great drops of blood from the brow of Jesus.  Stop for a moment and use your imagination – you’re pretty good at that, right?  Imagine the emotions flowing through the Son of God that night in Gethsemane as He took in all that was before Him and all that lay behind.  In light of the miracles, the wonders, the fulfilled prophesies that His life had been about, seeing the climax of the plot rise before Him as the plan of the ages came to fruition, Jesus’ mind was centered on you.  All He thought about, up until His last breath, was glorifying the Father and displaying His love for mankind.  Yes, we serve a passionate God.  May that prayer of Jesus bloom in our hearts today as His passion burns through us into this world!