Holy and dearly loved

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”

-Colossians 3:12

You know what I love about that verse? I love that it takes “holy and dearly loved” for granted.

The author is saying, “I don’t want to focus on who you are. We know who you are. That has already been established through Jesus Christ. You are holy and dearly loved. I want to focus on what you should do now.”

Maybe we can dwell on that passage a little bit today. We are holy and dearly loved. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done or what we do. Because of Jesus, we are holy and dearly loved, despite what we’ve done and in spite of what we do. Nothing we do can make us more, nor make us less, than holy and dearly loved. We just need to believe and declare that truth.

I believe that, because of Jesus, I am holy and dearly loved.

And it is beautiful.

I used to look at marriage as a very selfish thing. I mean, I knew it wouldn’t just be about me. You had someone to support and be supported by, someone to work with in all of your labours, etc. But somehow I came to see it as, compared to singlehood, selfish.

I wanted marriage and was single, and wanting marriage felt like a selfish desire. I didn’t desire it for the sake of my God or my future spouse directly. I was aware of those factors, but was thinking primarily of myself. Maybe in that context, it was a selfish desire.

But as I am approaching my own marriage, an entirely new world  has opened up before me.

A lot of my own emotional struggles that I’ve been facing (ones that most people probably discover and struggle with in the weeks, rather than months, leading up to the wedding, or even not until after they are married), have had to do with “losing myself”. For an independent young woman, the idea of marriage began to hold fear for me.

But I am suddenly arrested by the beauty of this relationship.

Marriage is used in the Bible as a metaphor for the way Christ loves us and it is incredible. I am not entirely certain how to express it, but God willing, I will be able to convey at least part of the wonder that has been opened up to me.

There is a lot of baggage when it comes to the Bible and marriage. One verse in particular has been viciously abused and causes many women, and men, too, to immediately recoil against it.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

~Ephesians 5:22 (NIV)

But this isn’t a verse that sits on its own. It is paired with the instruction to husbands, an instruction that is often missed in the debates against this verse.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

~Ephesians 5:25 (NIV)

Both verses are followed by further instruction, but it is the instruction to the husbands that receives the most explanation, almost as if Paul somehow knew how desperately we would need the clarification.*

I would encourage you to read the entire passage here. Don’t skip past the instruction to wives in anger or frustration. Try to read it and compare it with the instruction to husbands. Both have an equal level of severity and both, I think, are equally difficult.

They are difficult because of what they are each asking: complete and total surrender of the self for the good of the other.

I imagined, when I thought of marriage, that it would feel to me like it was about me and my own fulfillment (and to him like it was about his).

But it isn’t. It is so much more than that. And it is so much more beautiful.

A relationship that is primarily about my own fulfillment is colourless. I know what is going to happen next, I know how to get what I want. There is no mystery, no beauty, no depth in such a relationship.

But marriage is possibly the least selfish relationship there is, second only to parenthood. There is a selfish component to nearly every other relationship. You are friends with people who make you laugh, who make you feel good. You’re friends with people who agree with your perspectives and build you up. You’re friends with people who are the same as you, and you tend to steer clear of those areas where you differ, at least while you’re together. And nearly every other interpersonal communication involves some sort of trade-off where you are benefited as much or more than you are inconvenienced.

What is it about marriage that draws us so deeply into it? It requires this submission of yourself, this sacrifice of your will, laying your life down for the good of the other, and, as it should be, both of you laying down your individual lives for the sake of building one anew, glorious and glorifying to God.

Marriage is not selfish. I felt that way because I did not know what it would require of me. I still don’t know, not fully, and will probably never fully know (though more will be revealed over time).

It is beautiful, too, because I don’t pour myself out and find it spilled and wasted. I am pouring myself into him, and he into me. The source of these springs of ours rests in Jesus Christ– the pouring out is replenished. And eventually it becomes such a beautiful flowing exchange of love and mercy and grace and creation and instruction and growing and nourishing and building and peace and joy and hope and faith and trust and no longer can we tell what is mine, what is his and what is from God above.

I’m not sure what this has communicated. But marriage is beautiful. And… beautiful. I don’t know how else to describe it. We haven’t got there yet, but as we have tastes of heaven here on earth, so, too, can you have tastes of marriage while waiting for its approach.

And it is beautiful.

* Ladies, I hope that the command to submit tastes a little sweeter after reading this explanation of the instruction given to husbands: “Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies… For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and carefully protects and cherishes it, as Christ does the church.” Ephesians 5:29 (AMP).

Good News

Christians are always talking about the Good News, and about preaching it and sharing it. But as with anything, eventually terms wear out and names start to become meaningless. The “Good News” may be a term that many of my readers are familiar with but one that has perhaps lost the excitement it once had. And it may be a term that many of my readers have never heard before. So I am attempting to reframe—What is the Good News? What is being celebrated? What is God telling us?

He is telling us that finally, finally, the work He began at the creation of the world can continue. Finally, the gap between us and Him can be closed. Finally, He can redeem us and we can be part of His plan to make the world as it should be.

There are many things in this world that we look at and think, “This isn’t the way things should be.” There are wars and famines and floods, people dying, old and young alike, children sick, families going hungry, people living without shelter. Our thoughts are true: This isn’t how the world should be.

But this is what we choose, unwittingly or otherwise. We choose our way instead of God’s, demand our right to do what we want. We decide that we want to go our own way and be responsible to ourselves alone. And we’ve walked away from God. But there’s this “Good News”. What’s changed?

Jesus lived and died. That is a historical fact, but Christians differ from the rest of the world because we believe He didn’t stay dead. What an amazing thought that is. For someone to die and come back to life? Impossible. But what if we were to accept that this is true? What does that mean?

Jesus defeated death.

The biggest thing that feels wrong and wasteful to us has been reversed.

“The wages of sin is death,” so says the Bible. We have all done wrong things and therefore, we all die. “But,” it continues, “the gift of God is eternal life.” Jesus did nothing wrong. But He chose to die and to use His purity to take on the sins of the world. He had no debt to pay, so His death paid for the debts of us all. And now we are the good news. We are redeemed to God. We are now a part of His work to redeem the world and make it the way it is supposed to be.

It isn’t an easy step to take, I admit, for He asks us to give up everything that we have taken. He asks us to submit once again to Him, to again do things the way that He wants and to again live our lives according to His plan.

But through this, even though we may not see it in this lifetime, we can see and live in the world God intended for us to live in, with things the way God intended for them to be.

Following Jesus is difficult. But there is joy and hope and renewal. Redemption is the process of remaking. Something old made new again, something broken made whole. He asks all, He gives all.

This truly is Good News.

Faithfulness

I had a conversation several nights ago about something that has come up many times in the past. Divorce is a tricky issue. I’m not writing about that specifically, but it has led me on to another series of thoughts.

In Matthew 5:31-32, Jesus says,

It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”

I find it interesting that Jesus doesn’t go on to specify what marital unfaithfulness is. But I think the definition of marital unfaithfulness has probably changed so much across culture and time. Back then, physical faithfulness would have been strictly maintained. Now, marrieds give away hugs, touches, dances, even occasionally kisses, but can still be considered maritally faithful. I think in our society today, there is a greater feeling of betrayal when it comes to emotional unfaithfulness.

But I think marital faithfulness is all-encompassing: physical, emotional, mental, verbal. Every way — every way — in which a couple interacts requires faithfulness to the other and faithfulness to the vows that were taken (i.e., to love, honour and protect). Is a woman being faithful, for example, when she belittles her husband in front of others or vice versa? There’s a difference between belittlement and teasing, make no mistake. Teasing is gently done and done in such a way so that husband and wife are (and know they are) on the same side and is quickly amended and repented of when either side feels wounded. Belittling, on the other hand, is when one party presents the other as insignificant, silly, ridiculous, foolish, detestable, et cetera, either directly to that person, or in front of others, with or without the presence of the person in question.

It is worth feeling convicted about this. Marriage is the single most powerful relationship a person can experience, outside of their relationship with God. You are never more vulnerable with another person than you are in the context of that relationship. Pretending for a moment that the audience I am addressing all believe as I do, in a marriage relationship, that person is the only one who will ever see you completely naked, physically and emotionally. Stripped of your masks, flaws and insecurities laid bare, you are trusting that the other person will embrace you and build you up, that they will encourage and love and be enthusiastic for you and the things you love and will be your trusted companion in working on those things you wish could be better about yourself. This requires truth and honesty from both partners, and more, faithfulness.

What I am trying to suggest is that marital unfaithfulness is not just the big, “I cheated” things. It is also the little digs at each other, chipping away at respect, jumping too easily to offense, carrying a joke too far, etc. Part of the vow of marriage is to protect. While it is protection of each other from the ways of the world, it is more than that. Your spouse or significant other wears armour when facing the world. They do not wear armour when facing you. Do you take advantage of their vulnerability in that circumstance? Or do you protect them? Are you being faithful to the partner you chose in the little things as well as the big?

Washed clean

My brother made a mistake.

It’s interesting, because he made a mistake the way most of us make mistakes: early and oft-repeated. He was working on a math sheet, and in the very first question, he made a multiplication mistake due to an error in carrying the decimal place. All of the questions that followed were similar, and so, because he was so confident he had completed the first question correctly, he carried that same mistake through the rest of the worksheet.

At first, he didn’t understand the error I was pointing out to him. I took a separate sheet of paper and did the question while he watched, and I saw the realization slowly dawn on him.

“Does that make sense?” I asked him.

“Okay, but I’m still confused,” he said.

“What are you confused about?” I asked.

“Well, that means I have to do the whole thing again.”

“Ah,” I said, understanding dawning in my own mind. “So you aren’t confused, but rather frustrated.”

Yes, he was sincerely frustrated.

I told him to take a break — to take ten minutes of not doing homework before he came and tackled it again — and in these ten minutes, I’ve been sitting here trying to determine how to make this a positive learning experience. I am so unbelievably struck by the strong analogy that this situation is for how God deals with our mistakes, but it is an analogy that I don’t think he will be able to see at this point.

As much as he was frustrated that he had to re-do the worksheet, I think sometimes the hardest part about correcting a mistake is taking apart the work that’s already been done. His worksheet was entirely covered in pencil. Granted, pencil can be erased, and often, quite cleanly. But a pencil-covered sheet of paper represents work. And erasing it represents destruction, even if it is of work that is poorly or incorrectly done. He had begun erasing it, but it was in anger and frustration. The paper has a crinkle or two that is evidence of this. So I suggested that he take a break and remove himself from the situation.

From my perspective, mistakes in a math sheet are not earth-shattering. I do remember what it was like to be in his shoes. Having to do a math worksheet in the first place was an arduous and lengthy process, not to mention re-doing it. But years have passed and I have grown a little wiser. My state of mind was significantly calmer and so, while he was gone, I erased the page.

And it was during this erasing that I was struck with the analogy. Our sins of scarlet will be made white as snow, I thought, as I watched clean, white paper emerge from underneath the pencil markings. For this is what God does.

“Everything in your life that you learn,” I told the young one, “you will learn in one of two ways: either because someone tells you how to do it and you listen or because you make mistakes and then learn how to fix them. This is that second way. You’ve made a mistake and now you’re learning how to fix it.”

I didn’t do his homework for him. In fact, I didn’t even help him correct it. In fact, aside from the above, I haven’t said much more than encouragement since he’s come back out to try again. All that I did was I gave him a clean slate from which to start.

The interesting thing about that slate is that he did do two of the questions correctly. I looked at his work and debated for a moment before I erased the sheet completely.

And that is the part that frustrates us about God.

“This part was fine,” we say. “We did it correctly. The answer was right. This was fine. Why did you erase it?”

Because the truth is, even though his method and answers were correct for those few questions, his knowledge and understanding of why they were correct was incomplete. I wanted his new understanding to affect every part of the worksheet.

The situation this evening does not make for a perfect analogy, because I am not perfect and the young one is not perfect. But for just a moment, imagine that I was simply an observer, and that the stakes were higher than merely a math sheet, and instead of me helping my little brother correct his homework, we have God Incarnate cleansing the world of all the mistaken pencil lines, smudges, and blackened sheets.

I’ve written before (though maybe not here) about this world being an echo of the eternal. Our longings are for things that last, for that is how we have been designed. And tonight, the shadows of our interaction painted for me images of incredible colour and vibrancy. While I cleaned penciled errors from a sheet of paper, Jesus Christ cleans the indelible mark of sin from our lives.

Much risk

What is love without much risk?

So says the artist of song I am quite enjoying. For the curious few (or many, whichever way it is), I am sorry that I don’t know either the name of the artist or the song. I shall find it after I post this and perhaps place it in the comments. It is on a CD in our car, thus I listen to it quite often while driving without knowing what it is.

Anyhow, it got me thinking. She was singing of God and His love for us. It runs back to the old question of “why didn’t God just create us good and in love with Him and avoid all of this sin nonsense?” But I think the quote above really captures the essence of the answer to that question.

When you love someone — truly love them — and when you ask them to love you back, it is only love when they can say ‘no’. Imagine if this person didn’t have the option. It wouldn’t be very satisfying, would it, to know that they loved you only because they had to. When the person you love has the option to say ‘no’, it is a huge risk, for… what if they say ‘no’? Yet it is truly most satisfying this way, for imagine if they have the option to say ‘no’… but they say ‘yes’?

God risks so much everyday in loving us and asking us to love Him. But He does so because that is the kind of love He wants. He wants true love. He wants us to have the option to say ‘no’, but to tell Him ‘yes’ instead.

There is risk on our side, by telling Him ‘yes’, but I’ll get into that at another time (or perhaps in the comments?). For now, I just want to dwell on the beauty of that idea.

What is love without much risk?

God loves us so much and He has taken great risks to show us that He does. How beautiful and how deep is His love.

because He has always loved me

The stories that resonate most strongly with me are those of transformation, specifically, of rebuilding. But it makes sense, since that seems to be a primary narrative in life. Every significant change in my own life has come through rebuilding. Every significant change in myself has come through rebuilding.

This morning in church, the pastor said,

God’s salvation is not about renovation.

Renovation projects are always based on the assumption that the overall structure of the building is sound. General improvements and modifications are made to the appearance of the building, updating it or simply changing it. But as soon as the structure is touched, it is no longer about renovation. It becomes a question of rebuilding.

God is not interested in renovation, because He knows something that we would choose not to, if we could. He knows that it isn’t just a facelift, a tidy-up, a superficial improvement that needs to be made; He knows that it is the very thing we have built our lives upon that needs to be dealt with.

I have written about this before here. God doesn’t come in to fix cracked tiles or to replace a water-damaged ceiling. He comes in to level the foundation that is causing the tiles to crack, or to fix the structural imperfections that are causing water to leak through.

The entire course of my life has been, and will continue to be, about rebuilding.

It’s actually really cool. Looking back on certain situations and certain times in my life, I can see where God has come in and completely demolished something. At the time, I would be really annoyed or really hurt by it, but after much stubbornness on my part, He would finally convince me to trust Him. And what He put in its place was always amazing. It is always amazing to see Him rebuild. For me, anyway, I usually can’t tell that He is rebuilding until He has almost finished, and it is incredible to see the difference.

There are also times where He knows the heart and soul I have put into building something of my own. I can’t build very well, unfortunately, so He still has to come and make changes, but in those times, He is so gentle with me. Knowing how much of myself I have poured into it, He does not come with a bulldozer. He comes with just Himself (and more often than not, with a brother or sister in Christ), makes Himself comfortable and spends the afternoon talking with me, about everything and anything, and in among that, about why the wall I’ve built needs to come down. And He spends as long as it takes (days, weeks, months) for me to trust Him yet again, but in this case, I have to trust Him enough that I remove the first brick.

In the first scenario, with the bulldozer, it is a construction that should be there but has been built improperly. In the second, it is usually a building that shouldn’t be there at all. In the first, the lesson is in construction, thus the destruction happens quickly, and most time is spent on learning how to rebuild. In the second, the lesson is a lot harder, for it is learning how to take apart something and to let it go. It is a lesson in deconstruction, thus the destruction is what takes the most time. The same amount of self and effort is put into both buildings, but since the second won’t be coming back, there is a great deal of gentleness in the removal of it.

“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.”

Isaiah 43:18-19

related post at StuffChristiansLike

Random thoughts on love

We have made an idol of love. Love can never fill the place of God, but it feels like it can because God is love. Love, however, is not God and that is where the issue lies. And our disappointment with love (because it doesn’t do in our lives what we need God to do) is the cause of so much pain. Love is not an active agent. It is a product of the combination of feeling, familiarity, attraction, dedication, choice, commitment, etc., but it cannot act. It is not independent or in possession of a self. Without something to experience, create or be love (ie, without God), it cannot exist. And yet we are turning to it, begging it to be active in our lives the way only God can.

What do you think?

More audience participation

I know that not everyone who reads this blog is a Christian. But for those who are, in your prayers tonight, think of the Owens family and others struggling in the same way they are. Obviously I don’t know what this little guy and his family are going through, but they could use the prayer. Obviously God has been with them so far, and obviously God will continue to be. I don’t know what God’s plans are, but I read something really interesting awhile ago. An old friend once wrote that prayer was for us to surrender, to surrender whatever it was we were concerned about into God’s hands, to trust Him with it. I would say that is what is important. To trust God with Gavin and his family and to offer them our support through prayer. Even though they probably won’t know about it Secret prayer warriors… I like it

“Why get married?”

Because I have a lot of friends who are married or who soon will be, an answer to the question why.

I follow a lot of blogs. All of them amuse, interest and, in most cases , educate me. They make me think and on many occasions, I have wanted to share what I’ve read, but it doesn’t always happen. Either I forget, or I have something else in mind I want to blog about. I also don’t want the total number of posts I write about other blogs to exceed the number of original posts I have .

This blog isn’t one that I follow all that closely, but I subscribed to it, mostly because of the way Hayden Tompkins, the author, uses language. So while I don’t follow this blog closely, there are some posts that just reach out and grab me. Like the one I linked to above.

Obviously, I don’t necessarily agree with or subscribe to all of what is written in the article, but I think that some wonderful points are made. It is certainly worth reading and considering what the application for your own life might be (single or married, because, after all, the call to love is a universal one, not just reserved for those doe-eyed, soon-to-be-married or already-there types).

Tell me what you think! Or drop a line over at Persistent Illusion. Actually, no, no “or”. It has to be “and”. If you leave a comment there, then you should be thinking, “And I’ll leave one at Faith, Hope and Love as well, because I know how much Tara wants to read what I have to say.”