Love and the Morning Glories
We lost an hour of sleep last night, but this morning still broke with its characteristic beauty. I was up at 6:00 a.m., read Song of Solomon as my daily book of scripture (part of this new project of reading the Bible one book a day), and then headed out the door for what has become my new Sunday morning routine. I headed down to Javasti's, the local coffee shop, and picked up a still warm scone and the once a week cup of coffee I'm allowing myself during Lent. Then I walked and talked to God.
Yesterday, I asked, "What does God want?"
My friend Jason responded by referencing the work of Philip Yancey, who claims that all God really wants from us is our love. Yes, Jason (and here, I'm not disagreeing or trying to belittle that truth)...and yet, there is that niggle in my mind that says "so simple, so bland, so easy to say."
Okay, so I'm inside the head of God, inside His mind, looking over creation, and my very nature is love. One writer says of Me (I'm ruminating in God's voice now), "God is love." But these people of Mine, these creations of Mine are confused with this history I've given them, these writings I've kept for them. Some reject them out of hand, their rationality making them far more suited, they think, to the ways of secularism and science-real knowledge. Others sort through My scripture, sifting out the outrageous, the impossible, the miraculous. Some screen out the anger of the earliest days, those wild days of chasing after My chosen people, the ones who broke My heart with the predictabilty of the coming of winter. These days, this anger indicts me, my jealousy for their love thrown back in My face as unworthy of Me. 'Any god worth his salt,' they say, 'should be above anger, should be eternally forgiving, asking nothing of humanity, requiring nothing in return for the very gift of life, seeing that it is this god who has made us as weak and sinful as this.'
What does God want?
There was a time before sin, when humanity walked in the cool of the evening with the Creator they had waked to find hovering over them. Who was this maker, whose gifts were so magnificent? Can you imagine waking to the earth, the existence, to all it means to be a human being, for the very first time? (Try sometime.) Genesis recored that Enoch was taken to God in some unusual fashion because he "walked with God." Jacob fought with God. Abraham bargained with God for the lives of Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses complained to God, and fought with Him to remain with a people God thought to abandon. Joshua trusted that trumpets and marching were the only weapons he needed to destroy a city's walls. David wrote God a hundred songs, and wept over the consequences of his adultery. Solomon asked for wisdom, and received wealth and a thousand women who eventually stole his heart. The prophets railed and wept and cried "horror."
Relationship.
Have you ever been in a relationship where someone made you feel as if you weren't even there? They said they loved you, said they cared, said they were interested, but the truth was, they rarely called, rarely listened, and in the end, left you, remembering you with a nostalgia that made them feel warm inside. Easier to remember a person fondly than to keep the whole messy thing going.
I treat God that way sometimes.
Sad to say, I've treated lots of folks that way over the years.
The Holy Spirit is challenging me these days, asking me again and again not only if I believe in Him, but more to the point, am I ever going to trust Him? Trust Him the way I might trust a real person, trust Him to functionally break into my world in ways that bend my perception to Him, trust Him the way I trust my wife to pick up my son when driver's ed is over at 6:00 p.m.
When you love someone, what do you want from them?
...He woos me with these morning colors, these bursting yellows...
8:27:25 AM
