More Than I Can Manage Category:Misc Thoughts Views:
193
God wants my love…no, actually the word “want” is misleading – God demands my love, he commands that I give it. And, of course, this is no ordinary command; God does not allow this one to be engulfed by the sheer weight of numbers. It is foremost, it is number one, the greatest command, the law that precedes all others, it is to the Christian the foundation upon which the quest for holiness is built. “Love God.” We encounter those words so often in Christendom; we hear them from our pulpits, read them in our literature, sing them in our songs…and why shouldn’t we? Christ Himself made it abundantly clear how vital this is.* But for most of us they bounce off our heart like a drop of water on an over-soaked sponge. “Love God” is too big, too lofty an aspiration for most of us to even seriously consider most of the time. And when we do stop and allow it to sink in, when we give the concept even a portion of the attention it deserves, we collide head on with a wall of issues that are hard to ignore, pieces of the puzzle that won’t fit the hole, and real obstacles that hit all believers like a blow to the face.
The very fact that love should be commanded is problematic, for love as most of us understand it is fundamentally un-commandable. No man has ever loved another solely because they were told they must, in fact very few would even bother issuing such an order. We would speak to the neglectful parent of responsibility; to the bigot of tolerance and acceptance, and to the spouse with a wandering heart of faithfulness. In our counsel we might even suggest that love could well be found or reclaimed by obedience to these other tenets, but to cut to the chase and command love would seem foolish to most of us. Yet God demands not our obedience, faithfulness, or devotion alone, but our love. If God had made the second most commandment number one (to love our neighbour as ourselves) and had primarily required a love for the old woman sitting, cold and pitiful, on any given park bench, that would be easier. If he commanded that we love Desmond Tutu, Hilary Clinton or Britney Spears, then at least we might have a shot…but, no, we are to love Him who we cannot see, we cannot touch and all too often cannot hear. And God’s audacity doesn’t stop there. We are to love him more than the children in our arms, more than the family that sustains us, more than the friend with whom we would trust our lives, more than the spouses in our beds. It seems God will not play second fiddle.
And then, to top it all off, God demands that we love him with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength – something that we have never achieved even with those before our senses. Both within the church and outside her gates parents mistreat their children, families fall under the weight of bitterness, friendships crumble, marriages are dissolved for lack of interest. Yet the love we are supposed to have for God is to be more tangible, more real than the attempts at love we offer to others.
And yet, in spite of these obstacles there is hope, a faint candlelight in the dark caverns of our hearts. All Christians recognize it, but I know of none who have adequately defined it except to call it “Grace”. We can love God “because He first loved us”.** The Holy Spirit of God, given as a seal to all believers (even me, even you) loves through us. The earthbound state of the human heart absolutely prohibits it, yet God overcomes, and we slowly learn to love our Father even if we happen not to feel it. Our love for Him grows when we obey. Our love for Him grows when we fight the battle though we are wounded and there is no hope of victory in sight. Our love for Him grows when we make the choice to shift our focus from the world to the One who made it. Our love for Him grows when we feel alone and forsaken yet remain where God has placed us, even though it be a cross. The feeling of love is the reward, sometimes granted, often withheld, of acting out our love; it is not love itself, at least not of the sort God requires. What the Father commands is far deeper, far more solid than emotion. (Luv is a verb…where have I heard that before?)
God also grants his children something unexpected, something that has the flavour of emotion but a different substance. It is in that fleeting, wondrous moment when the worship service ceases to be emotion-charged fluff and our heart briefly senses the Glorious Unknowable. It is in those rare snatches of time when we recognize both our depravity and our worth simultaneously. We can smell it in the pages in the pages of Lewis, Lucado, Yancey and Buechner. Scripture reeks of it. We hear it’s whisper interwoven in the chords and melodies of the music we love. We start to feel it when making love transcends the physical and enters the spiritual. We catch a glimpse of it’s shadow in the beauty and terror of nature. It is God’s echo. It is the unmistakable fingerprint of I Am. It is His voice interwoven in the world He has made. And He who commands love does so because He is love, and no other offering has any meaning.
* (Matthew 22: 36, 37)
** (1 John 4: 19)
P.S. I scrawled this blog on piece of scrap paper last night during some quiet moments at work. Just thoughts spinning around my brain. If you’ve read this it will be clear that I am no theologian, merely a fellow pilgrim who is just beginning to grapple with the greatest commandment. Any thoughts, wisdom or criticism would be truly appreciated.
...And I Want It Now Category:Misc Thoughts Views:
164
I've been thinking about jealousy of late. As with all my thoughts, they are subject to change and certainly should be discarded when someone with actual wisdom challenges them. But, to me, the problem with jealousy is that it is never appropriate. Most sins are sins only in a certain context. Anger can be sin, but it can also be justified. Lust has it's proper marital context. Even killing can have it's proper context. Each of these are fraught with danger of course, and crossing the line between a holy anger at, say, social injustice, and flying into a rage when we feel personally wronged by an inattentive driver is all too easy. Jealousy though, seems to be an emotion only God can use. At it's heart, jealousy says: that which ought to be rightfully mine is possessed by another. When we are jealous of another's income, we are saying, "I deserve to make that much money," when we are jealous of another's talents or skills, we are saying, "I have the right to possess those too," when we are jealous because our partner is spending more time with someone else than we would like, we are saying, "I possess that person, and they are not conforming to my wishes." And the big flaw with all that is that only God has any right to actually lay claim to anything. All we have comes from Him, and at best it's all only on loan for 70 or 80 years. When we die, our talents, relationships, property, rights etc, all die with us (at least from an Earthly perspective). God however has a right to everything by virtue of the fact that it all flows from, and was created by, Him. Try as we might to lay claim to the temporal things around us, it is impossible, and serves only to accentuate our foolishness. - The challenge is very hard though, we by our nature, want to possess, we like the way it feels to own, especially if we feel like we are respected for a talent we have, or even for a thing we own....I'm guessing this will be a struggle for the rest of my life. - dribble over.
On my way home from work this morning, (I work nights) I was listening to "Unconditional Love" by the Altar boys. And one line of the chorus got me thinking: "Give me your unconditional love, the kind of love I deserve." That line's always kind of been a problem for me; everywhere I look I see people completely undeserving of love in any form, and when I look honestly into my own heart I see nothing but darkness, selfishness, rebellion against God and morality - certainly nothing deserving of love. But then as I walked along I allowed my mind to turn the idea around. What if we are deserving of love, not because of what we are, but because of who made us? If we deny love to ourselves or others because of the darkness that pervades our hearts, souls, minds and will, don't we also, by that very fact, tell God that he is a fool to love us? If God sees fit to love us simply because we are his creation, ought we not make every effort to do the same? It's hard for me because I , like so many others, carry around this constant nagging feeling of unworthiness. But I guess if God sees me as worthy of his love, aren't I being a little foolish not to just accept it joyfully? Arrogance wants me to work my way into God's good favour, to feel like I've earned it...but in the end there is nothing I can do to be worthy of God's love, there was nothing St. Paul, Martin Luther or Mother Teresa could do either. My head knows that, but my heart doesn't seem to want to play ball. Maybe that constant, nagging guilt isn't the result of God's conviction in my life, but a result of my own ego. Something for me to think about.
Waste Of Time?...Maybe Not So Much Category:Misc Thoughts Views:
170
About four years ago, I made a CD for K. Our relationship was still in the "friendship only" phase, but I was determined to impress her. It occurred to me that some of the lyrics of a few of the songs I included on her CD were a little hard to understand, and that (because to me lyrics are one of the most effective tool an artist has of getting their point across) I would provide her with a copy of the lyrics for each song on her CD. I scoured the internet for the lyrics I needed, was unable to find some, and the ones I was able to find were not exactly accurate. So, desiring to look good to K, I undertook the task of listening to each track on the CD and correctly transcribing the lyrics to each song. Four years later, I'm still at it, for some reason I went from that one-off event, to deciding I would do the same for all my favourite tracks, then all my favourite artists, and now every song on every album I own. Very odd hobby. One thing that has constantly gnawed at me was the pointlessness of what I was doing...and then, when I was minding my own business - Hallelujah! I have found an outlet for all my effort, not only can I make my work available to anyone else in the world that might care, but I am even being offered reward for my work! I have over 1200 CDs, and have currently transcribed 13407 lyrics and have 1165 to go, assuming I don't buy any more CDs. (yeah, right) Now, nearly half of them are mainstream, and a very good portion of the Christian songs have already had their lyrics added...but, let me tell you, this site is such a blessing to me. - ramble over.
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