Kio Stark

Don't have clue how I found and started reading Kio. Two blogs and a website. But I know why. She talks to strangers. and better, she listens to them. Then later she writes about it.

Kio talks to strangers, and strange people. She talks to scared people and she talks to scary people. My best take is that she values what they bring. They are never fodder for a writer.

Evidently she teaches college kids to do the same. And so this thing is perpetuated. Something happens when there is a connection. Without the daring to connect, there is no hope of the power of connecting.

The daring is love. The listening without interrupting is love. The permission to get past "news, sports, weather" is love.

Yup. I wrote about this last night. And now I understand my love for Kio. She is a lover. And the King of Love keeps her supplied with the desire and ability to pull back the curtain and help us see people.

Having read her and browsed her "life-on-display" I am pretty sure she does not go through the curtain that was rent from the top down, and sit on Daddy's lap. I am pretty sure she does not do this daring under the Blood. Yet she is clearly supplied. The life produced is clearly extra-ordinary.

Daddy, please help me to find more lovers and to understand more of how you touch the world through them. Please continue to bless Kio.

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Yesterday I did not want to go to the house after work. I wanted to be among people. So I had a restaurant meal, and then a cup of coffee at a coffee shop. At the restaurant I introduced my self to the manager, a more than superficial encounter. At the coffee shop I openly listened to a nearby conversation.

Tonight I wanted to come straight home. There was an immediate activity planned, and then a specific home cooked meal anticipated. Oh, yeah. And a new acquisition, a tool.

In neither case was there anyone else in the house, nor the ready prospect of it. Well, no flesh and bones.

I think that there are days when I want the Holy Ghost, and other times I want the Holy Ghost in men and women. I am amazed at watching love worked out in people. I think maybe men and women want to love like God loves. It is not just that they want to be with Him, to be reconnected, but that they know they were made to be lovers. They ache when they are empty and have nothing to offer except themselves.

I have to look for people who have made themselves available to Love. Help me in this, Father.

Agape

The God whose name is Love, infinite. There is no end to the Agape that He is. He is not eros or phileo. He is the Love that loves the lost and broken, the frightened and hurt, the sick and the poor.

I was really challenged this morning, listening to Morning Edition talk about the people who have found their home with Harry Potter. They came around to mentioning an anthem that credited their victory to love. I had to think about that.

See, I thought that agape only belongs to the Redeemed of Christ. and that the love that the lost had was not from the supernatural fountain, from the cleft rock in the wilderness. Now I am wondering. Certainly, no one is harmed by true love. And this love through lost humanity is always manifest as selflessly as possible in the ways Love manifest in Jesus.

So, Father, help me. Cleanse my vision. Forgive me for judging and despising those who long to love with pure supernatural love without surrendering their vessels for cleansing with Your Blood. Help me to acknowledge Your Love in lost children. Help me to receive Your Love and pour it out into every life I encounter.

I am tempted in this process to respond to the world around me. Not what the Spirit reveals of the Kingdom advancing, but just the things that happen around me in the name of anyone but Christ.

I am in training here in the Holy Wild to be entirely about gazing into the face of Love. Life apart from love just serves as contrast, part of the darkness that calls for more light. Whatever happens in the darkness is simply a result of Lovelessness.

I do not need to leave Love to pour Love out where He is needed. In fact, I have to stay leaning on my Beloved so that I am able to pour Love out. Love never fails. Love Wins.

Father, I am your vessel. Fill me or don't fill me. Pour me or don't pour me. Break me or leave me as I am. I do not want to touch what you are doing with any part of my pride. It has to be you. I will cling to you and you will lead me where you want me to be.