God IS Love

We were sitting outside under the carport in the shade, our bare feet making little scuffs on the pavement as we rocked back and forth in the hammock and glider, the cold ice tea in our hands dripping condensation onto our sunburned legs.

The feeling was a momentary lightning of my heart as I rubbed each droplet into my parched skin.

“Did it make you feel bad”? My friend asked.

We had been talking about a comment someone made in a group online, to something I wrote. She was angry, just like I would have been, had I seen someone being disrespectful to her. I threw my head back and laughed, “not one little bit, anytime someone comments, that comment is about them, not about me or my words.” I replied, as I pulled open my suitcase sloshing with the flotsam and jetsam of my tangled theories.

We sipped our tea, tipped open the suitcase and started sifting through the pieces inside, carefully placing the puzzle together.

Everyone filters what they hear and read through their own personal bias and experience. This is a truth I discovered a while ago, and at the time I pulled it out and closely inspected it for the flaw I knew had to be there. However after ruminating over it from early in the morning, and closely inspecting my knee jerk reactions from the safety of my ocean floor, I discovered it is indeed true.

That should sink all the way to the bottom of your ocean and cause some change as you think back and read over old comments you have written, your gently approving warbles, as well as your rude, inconsiderate remarks. Sentences pecking out of your righteously angered fingers as they pound the keyboard with one end in sight. To lower the person at the other end. To let them know how very much they resembled a chewed piece of gum on the bottom side of the table at the local pizza joint. (Next time you eat out, look under the table)

Pain (can) brings perspective and growth. It (can) carves out deep wells of empathy and compassion for others that will spill out over everyone we come in contact with giving us a heavenly mindset. Rather than seeking the experience of The American Dream, we seek to bring honor and glory to our Father who made all things, and is in all things good and perfect. In doing so, we find a peace that passes all understanding, and a joy that cannot be explained.

The pain of death, having your loved one abruptly taken from you, leaving you standing beside a hole in the ground with your head spinning. Pain (can)in a Christians life brings honor and glory to God as the outside world watches in awe at the peace and grace that a Christian experiences in the face of overwhelming loss.

The pain of a relationship insidiously slipping sideways. The terrible grief of a husband or wife who have been dishonored with an extramarital affair. The heartbreak of a mother as she sees her children suffer. The pain that would not have to be, may be the worst pain of all. Pain that doesn’t feel God sanctioned, making it feel ‘worthless’.

Pain is never wasted. Even the pain that is mixed with shame and condemnation. Pain is an integral part of life, and our Lord is a genius about taking the worse thing that ever happened to you, and making it the best thing that ever happened to you.

After all, what was the worse thing that ever happened on this earth?

Jesus was crucified.

What was the best thing that ever happened on the face of the earth?

Jesus was crucified!

(Thank you for that thought, Zac Poonen)

Pain can also make someone angry and bitter, and much like an insidious disease, it crowds more and more triggers into their peripheral, until they cannot see anything except brokenness and abuse. Unforgiveness comes along behind carrying a torch of suspicion and accusation. The final nail in the coffin is the culmination of these, causing a person to treat others as they have been treated, forcing them to believe they attract negativity and pain. As they sink back into solitude, neutered and impotent, only emerging from their hole to strike out with words, terrible jealousy stoking the furnace of their broken and embittered life.

I want to love these people, I want to care for them on a soul shaking level. I want to see past their words, looking squarely at the brokenness, and allow perfect love to flow like a cleansing river and wash away the clutter. Perfect love is a manifestation of wholeness. Perfect love heals and cures what nothing else can even touch.

Imagine a house completely hoarded to the max, the person living there, scratching around in the filth and clutter, climbing high to get from one room to the next, slipping silently into the little hole where they sleep, a tiny spot carved out with a blanket and pillow nested high on the filth, mice running all around them. They are completely and utterly trapped. They cannot get out on their own.

When help finally arrives, they resist it, getting angry as the muck is cleared from their house, weeping over the tufts of their long dead dogs fur found in the edges of the staircase. Crying and screaming and holding tight to a tin of outdated food. Gentle, loving, patient, firm and a steely resolve in the helper will rescue them. Soon they will be weeping over the sight of their clean floor, and a couch they haven’t seen in years.

Christians, the world needs you to love.

Love hard.

Love firm.

Love tight

Love and do not give up.

“Be completely humble and gentle, bearing with one another in love”. Somewhere in 1 Corinthians 16

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins”.

“Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. Somewhere in John 4