The Love of God is something that I feel I've never understood. It's not that I don't feel loved, and not that I don't know what it means to give love, but this different kind of Love, the kind with immeasurable depth, the kind that should (but so often doesn't) cause awe and quaking humility, confuses me. I feel as though I can never live up to an appropriate response of His love, stemming from an inadequate understanding of how much I take it for granted. I know... I'm getting extremely wordy. And even re-reading that, I know that this shouldn't be the way I seek to understand His love... it's the "free gift" of my childhood evangelism education, and yet still I struggle to understand and accept something that I both take for granted and can't grasp the weight of.
Charlie spoke on 1 Corinthians 13 today - the well-worn paragraph used to define Love the world over. But I really appreciated hearing more about why Paul said these words, why Love was described in this way to those people. Paul was speaking not in generalized statements, but specifically to the behavior and lack of true Love displayed by the Corinthians... hence, the reason this paragraph comes in the 13th chapter, after Paul has spoken to each of these areas previously. As I looked down the list in a new way, I easily saw a Corinthian reflection in my own life... this time, I didn't read through in the traditional practice, replacing "Love" with "Juliana" to check my behavioral status, but instead, reversed the list to see what Paul saw in the people he was *lovingly* calling out:
Am I... impatient? unkind? envious? boastful? arrogant? rude? selfish? irritable? resentful? proud of sin?
I know I could supply a very specific example to each one of these without difficulty. I read in a devotional today that what's more, all of these "adjectives" in the Love paragraph of 1 Corinthians 13 are actually verbs in Greek... Love is only Love when we see it in action.
And one more thought that really struck me - Paul was speaking to a church with many gifts, many talents, and a wealth of Biblical knowledge. The Lord spoke to them in visions and manifested himself in supernatural ways, and yet... they lacked Love. Though God can surely use us in our insufficiency, blindness, and arrogance (or, I should say, despite it) our doctrinal knowledge or spiritual commitment are not the gauge for our hearts - authentic Christianity flows out of a heart of Love.
God's love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, his purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks. Psalm 36:5-6 (Message)
How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in teh shadow of your wings. They feast on teh abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light. Psalm 36:7-9 (ESV)
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His only Son to win
His erring child He reconciled:
You and I pardoned from our sin.
When ancient time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall
When men here refuse to pray,
And rocks and hills and mountains call
God's love, so sure, shall still endure
All measureless and strong
Redeeming grace to Adam's race
Shall be the saints' and angels' song
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky
(listen to Ascend the Hill sing this here)
Sunday, September 30, 2012
שָׁלוֹם/Shalom
Apparently I wrote this 5 days into my senior year of college, and never published it. It's kind of achingly beautiful to see what the Lord has taught me, brought me through, said yes to, said no to, and still left unanswered in all of that time. Shalom.
Shalom, in the liturgy and in the transcendent message of the Christian scriptures, means more than a state of mind, of being or of affairs. Derived from the Hebrew root shalam – meaning to be safe or complete, and by implication, to be friendly or to reciprocate. Shalom, as term and message, seems to encapsulate a reality and hope of wholeness for the individual, within societal relations, and for the whole world. To say joy and peace, meaning a state of affairs where there is no dispute or war, does not begin to describe the sense of the term.
My mind is kindof exploding, so all this talk about peace is a really great thing to be dwelling on.
I'm in the library for the third night in a row. That's all normal, perhaps, for a typical college student, but let me just tell you: today was the FIFTH day of school. Why is my mind exploding? The most random combination of things. Maybe I can give you a picture of my mind's wanderings this evening:
Encouragement of tonight's Life Group-->The perfect Peace of my Savior in the midst of the busiest semester I think I'll ever have in my undergrad career--> Isaiah 26:3-4, a verse I memorized this summer with CHAIRS--> skipping any work on my Grant Proposal--> filling out parts of my online Fulbright Application--> stumped: a question that reads, "What do you plan to do upon your return to the U.S.?"--> Pondering grad schools. Beyond the idea of going to a school for an MA in TESOL... (because that doesn't sound prestigious enough for my application...)--> MFA in Dance?--> Hollins University MFA, Thaddeus' program...--> Why in the world would I get an MFA in Dance, and what in the heck would I do with it?--> Discovery that Hollins supports an International residency program for its MFA students, and that Anna Kisselgoff is part of the faculty--> Anna Kisselgoff's biography... the woman studied Russian, and I realized that she's my academic/artistic hero--> Hollins' MA in Liberal Studies program browsing--> Wait, how in the world (literally) does that connect with my purpose in life?--> What does God want me to do with all of this?--> Is there a graduate program in Dancer turned Social Justice Worker with a Concentration in Becoming Fluent in Russian in order to Share the Gospel, Travel the World, Participate/Critique the Dance Community and Work with Orphans from Russia and Ukraine? That's the master's program I'll be pursuing after returning to the U.S., Fulbright, thanks for asking.--> Wow, if it was just up to me, I'd be completely lost. I'd have an endless amount of options that would otherwise be meaningless.--> I serve a God who is in control when I am not (which is always). He stuns me in that, I can't seem to ever connect the different threads he has running throughout my life. I don't understand if they are just means to a singular pursuit, or if they are like a braid that actually works simultaneously.-->Not actually freaking out about this... but still quite perplexed at how complex my options could be, and how confusing this process is. What is most value in regards to the Kingdom? What uses the talents that God has given me for the greatest magnification of his glory above all else?-->The need for Peace. Recognition and Thanksgiving that HE IS YAHWEH SHALOM.--> Thank goodness - Amen.
How's that for a big long map of my thoughts over the past hour?
Shalom, in the liturgy and in the transcendent message of the Christian scriptures, means more than a state of mind, of being or of affairs. Derived from the Hebrew root shalam – meaning to be safe or complete, and by implication, to be friendly or to reciprocate. Shalom, as term and message, seems to encapsulate a reality and hope of wholeness for the individual, within societal relations, and for the whole world. To say joy and peace, meaning a state of affairs where there is no dispute or war, does not begin to describe the sense of the term.
My mind is kindof exploding, so all this talk about peace is a really great thing to be dwelling on.
I'm in the library for the third night in a row. That's all normal, perhaps, for a typical college student, but let me just tell you: today was the FIFTH day of school. Why is my mind exploding? The most random combination of things. Maybe I can give you a picture of my mind's wanderings this evening:
Encouragement of tonight's Life Group-->The perfect Peace of my Savior in the midst of the busiest semester I think I'll ever have in my undergrad career--> Isaiah 26:3-4, a verse I memorized this summer with CHAIRS--> skipping any work on my Grant Proposal--> filling out parts of my online Fulbright Application--> stumped: a question that reads, "What do you plan to do upon your return to the U.S.?"--> Pondering grad schools. Beyond the idea of going to a school for an MA in TESOL... (because that doesn't sound prestigious enough for my application...)--> MFA in Dance?--> Hollins University MFA, Thaddeus' program...--> Why in the world would I get an MFA in Dance, and what in the heck would I do with it?--> Discovery that Hollins supports an International residency program for its MFA students, and that Anna Kisselgoff is part of the faculty--> Anna Kisselgoff's biography... the woman studied Russian, and I realized that she's my academic/artistic hero--> Hollins' MA in Liberal Studies program browsing--> Wait, how in the world (literally) does that connect with my purpose in life?--> What does God want me to do with all of this?--> Is there a graduate program in Dancer turned Social Justice Worker with a Concentration in Becoming Fluent in Russian in order to Share the Gospel, Travel the World, Participate/Critique the Dance Community and Work with Orphans from Russia and Ukraine? That's the master's program I'll be pursuing after returning to the U.S., Fulbright, thanks for asking.--> Wow, if it was just up to me, I'd be completely lost. I'd have an endless amount of options that would otherwise be meaningless.--> I serve a God who is in control when I am not (which is always). He stuns me in that, I can't seem to ever connect the different threads he has running throughout my life. I don't understand if they are just means to a singular pursuit, or if they are like a braid that actually works simultaneously.-->Not actually freaking out about this... but still quite perplexed at how complex my options could be, and how confusing this process is. What is most value in regards to the Kingdom? What uses the talents that God has given me for the greatest magnification of his glory above all else?-->The need for Peace. Recognition and Thanksgiving that HE IS YAHWEH SHALOM.--> Thank goodness - Amen.
How's that for a big long map of my thoughts over the past hour?
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