May 26, 2010
In recent days life has changed in our household. Since my last post D and I have become the primary caregivers for her mom following a recent diagnosis of advanced stage four lung cancer. Everything else has taken back seat in our priorities to being with and taking care of her mom and that’s how it should be. We would have it no other way.
I’m sharing this bit from our personal lives with you to invite your prayers for my mother-in-law, my beloved wife, and all those fortunate enough to stand in the wide circle of relationships with this good woman, as well as to ask your understanding in what has been and will continue to be some rather sporadic posting on my part in the coming weeks. My intention nearly every day for the past few weeks has been to set aside time to blog but by the time night comes I find the hours have slip away without getting to what I had intended to do upon waking, either because there were too many things that needed to get done or because my concentration on anything beyond the immediate moment in our extended family is as productive as burnt toast.
While new posts may temporarily be infrequent in coming, my blog stats and the comments being left show that new (and no doubt incredibly cool to the point of being off the hook) readers continue to drop in here for a look around and so for that reason I’m going to be occasionally posting an encore post at the top of the blog. That’s right. I’m going to be a good little lesbian and do my part in reducing my digital footprint by going green and re-cycling a few posts from the past. I hope that in re-posting them it could stir up some fresh insights from you that you would then take the time to share with the rest of us in the comments section.
But before I raise the curtain for an encore, I’m thinking it’s time for a very special giveaway but first I need to put the giveaway post together so go busy yourselves for a few minutes. Update your status on Facebook, twitter your tweets, empty out your spam, or watch this and learn. Then come back and see what what’s under Box Number 1.
Posted in Blog Basics and Info 
6 Comments »
May 5, 2010
I don’t want to be a downer in your day but I’ve been thinking a lot about death, dying and what comes after in recent days. I’ve been spending more time than the average bear ruminating on the fragility of the fleshy package that houses the essence of who we really are, and our all too human mortality. What’s taken me to these thoughts is that there are two people I love who’ve learned not all that long ago that for different reasons neither has a life expectancy that will stretch beyond a very few years. They will die from diseases that even in this moment are quietly destroying healthy cells and short-circuiting the connections that keeps their bodies moving and fully functioning. People I love are dying, not today, not tomorrow but far sooner than they or I would ever have wanted to imagine. Far sooner than I want to go into such grief. Much sooner than I care to let either of them go.
So here I am, on a day where gray clouds fill the sky releasing occasional bone-soaking downpours of rain, blogging about death and dying on a blog purposed to encourage and support my GLBTQ brothers and sisters in their journey of faith. But this is where I am. Life on this earth and the life that follows occupies center stage in my thoughts these days with everything else fading into the background. I care what’s happening in the world to my GLBTQ family but for today I care even more about the impermanence and preciousness of being human and being alive.
I suppose it makes sense that after telling you in recent days what I don’t believe about the next life, I should tell you what it is that I do believe. After all my notions on the non-existence of hell indulge me one more time while I share a little about the vague imaginations I have about heaven.
As a young girl I’d look up into the black night sky and catch glimpses of heaven’s brilliant light breaking through tiny holes in heaven’s floor. The stars proved heaven’s existence to me because with my own eyes I could see the light of God bursting through the darkness. There it is. Heaven. Up there! A few decades have passed since then and I no longer cast my eyes to the sky as I did then as though heaven was a place beyond the clouds somewhere “up there.” I’ve shed my childish notions of a physical locale where wings and cloud jumping are the standard forms of transportation and choir rehearsal and harp lessons comprise the better part of every day in eternity.
I’ve let go of fluffy clouds and streets of gold but I haven’t shed by belief that heaven is reality; an un-mappable destination in the spiritual realm and that one day we will stand face to face before the Lamb. I don’t know the details of what heaven will be like nor do I care about the nuts and bolts and set design. All I know is that one day we will be there, all those who have loved us and that we have loved will be there, all those who have despised us and those we’ve despised will be there, and the One we worship and adore above all others will be there illuminating our souls and clearing away the blindness from our eyes and that, my dear friend, is heaven.
I want you to understand I don’t believe in heaven because it sounds like a nice idea. It’s not fear of death or fear of nothingness after death that makes heaven a “must have” in my heart and mind, but rather this: just as I’m no longer able to believe in hell because of the eternal love, boundless mercy, and extravagant grace of God, I’m led with equal resolve to believe in heaven for the same reasons. We are God’s creation, born out of the love of the Godhead. We were given life to be loved by God and to love God, and as there is no end to the eternal love of God, so there will be no end to those whom God loves. This is nothing more than common sense if you believe in a God of love.
There is no end to our relationship with God. No fierce or gentle parting of the way. God loved us while we were in our mother’s womb, has loved us every moment since and will continue to love us forever. Think on that. We will be loved forever and in a way we can’t begin to comprehend in the here and now because in the there and then all doubt will be erased. No longer will we struggle with our worth to be loved. No longer will we judge ourselves as too flawed or too fallen. We won’t shuffle our feet or shrug our shoulders at the very mention that God is crazy in love with us. No. Standing on the other side; standing where our spirits will be set free from their fleshy imprisonment; standing where we will see clearly with new vision; standing where we will be made completely, perfectly whole; we will know beyond a shred of a doubt that we are loved for we will be standing on the other side of hearing God said, “You are mine. You have always been mine. Enter in to all I have in store for you, for the mysteries and abundance I have prepared for you. I invite you in. My Son welcomes you in. My child, come.”
This is where my faith takes me when I consider the impermanence of life. It takes me to the foreverness of life in the presence of God even as it reminds me of the precious treasure of this one day. No matter what is happening today; no matter how painful the journey, how difficult the challenges, how great the losses, we are alive. We have this day. Yesterday is over. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. So it is today that matters. Eternal life is coming but abundant life has already begun.
This morning I woke to another day and I am so deeply grateful to be alive to see it and for the next 24 hours I want to come into the day with all of me, holding nothing back. I will take the heartache just as I will the heart’s delight. Until the sun falls tonight I want to take full advantage of this day and use it up to the last drop in the best way I know to do. I want to take note of what’s beautiful around me and seek ways to bring change to what is broken and in need of repair. I want to give God glory and praise, give love to those around me, ease someone’s suffering, celebrate someone’s joy, and say “thank you” as often as I can.
This life may not be our final home, but this life matters none the less and even while my heart is heavy over the thought of future losses and sorrows that are to come, I take joy in knowing that all suffering will one day end, all that is lost will be restored, and all that we mourn will be turned to joy. If not on this side, then on the other. This is where the love of God and faith in that love takes me. May your own heart say “Amen.”
Posted in Periodic Reflections on the Love of God 6 Comments »
April 28, 2010
Carol was married to Ray for 30 years. During all those years Ray loved his Carol and Carol loved Ray. At the same time Ray was also struggling with being gay and eventually told Carol. Ray and Carol did everything two people in love could do to find a solution, and the solution they came to was to end their marriage so they could travel their own personal journey with God to heal and rebuild their lives without forsaking their love and care for one another.
I regularly follow Carol Brammer Blotz’s blog My Heart Goes Out, and I continue to listen and be touched by the music of Ray Boltz. It’s been ten years since I heard Thank you the first time and dog gone if it still doesn’t get me. On her blog today, Carol explained why she’s willing to promote Ray’s new CD, True. Be sure to jump over to her blog and read what she has to say in her own words. Words spoken by a woman of honesty, compassion, and understanding.
After reading that Ray had released a new CD I fast tracked over to Amazon to order a copy, and upon arrival I found rather interesting and certainly amusing. At the top of the order page for True is this photo of the CD’s cover with a ruggedly handsome Ray Bear. Personally, I think he’s looking way more adorable than in his mustached and fuzzy perm days but then, aren’t we all? I’m referring of course to the fuzzy perms. The mustache, not so much.
Now this is where it gets both interesting and amusing. At the bottom of the Amazon page for True in the usual section highlighted “Customers Who Bought Related Item Also Bought…” were recommendations for 5 different fingernail polishes ranging in color from barbados blue to neon whimsical, and an easy dozen knitting books including Fairy Tale Knits: 32 Projects to Knit Happily Ever After and Son of Stitch ‘n Bitch: 45 Projects to Knit and Crochet for Men.
Okay, so I thought it was funny anyway.
Posted in Too Silly for Any Category 4 Comments »
April 23, 2010
Memo to Self:
Skip the witty lead-in.
Pass on the relevant but lengthy personal anecdote.
Don’t bother with an introduction that ends up longer than the actual post.
For once would you just get to the point. These people have other things to do, you know.
Memo back to Self:
I know I know I know.
Quit nagging me already!
Oh. Hi. I’m sorry you had to hear that.
I’ve been telling you for the last week that I don’t believe in the concept of eternal damnation, fire and brimstone, or that anyone will spend all eternity in perpetual time-out for their sins, so now seems a good time to take that a little further as to how believing all that impacts how I believe about sin, salvation, and Jesus as Savior.
Sin. Salvation. Savior.
Here is me stating the obvious: as long as children die of starvation in a world where others live in abundance, as long as anyone hates another, as long as even one living being is treated with indignity, until everyone is valued equally, and until all oppression and violence is wiped from the face of the earth, any arguments about our enormous capacity for sin seem unnecessary. Call it spiritual brokenness, the actions of a wounded soul, wrongdoing, transgression, sin, it makes no never mind. These things that we do, by whatever name we call them unleash injury on others, damage ourselves, and grieve the heart of a God who desires so much more for His creation.
Christian teaching refers to the presence of sin that covers our world as original sin, the idea being that the most holy, righteous and adorable among us are sinners to the core. Adam and Eve sunk their teeth into a crispy morsel of forbidden fruit and at that moment humanity was sunk, so that on all our human resumes were stamped the words, fallen being and the only means by which that label could ever be replaced with new creation would be through the salvific work of Jesus on the cross.
In Christ’s death on the cross, sin and salvation collided and in that moment something so extraordinary took place that we’ve spent our lives as the church trying to make sense of it all, yet despite the best formulated ruminations of theologians and doctrinal decrees, we’ve hardly scratched the surface of all the mystery held in that one eventful day that unfolded in the course of human history. Even so, we can’t leave it alone. We keep coming back and trying to unravel more and more of it because we’re drawn to the cross like moths to a flame. And what a radiant flame it is.
Christ’s atoning work on the cross, the way of salvation provided, is understood and described in a variety of ways within the Christian tradition, each providing a different angle on what salvation and Jesus’ role as our Savior means. Two of the more familiar theories, and ones that many of us in the church tend to overlap and meld together are the ransom theory and the theory of satisfaction.
Ransom Atonement
Mark 10:45 tells us that “Jesus came to be a ransom for many,” which I understand to mean that we were under the control of sin; in essence sin had taken us from God and now we were owned by sin. So that we might be returned and reconciled to God, Jesus paid the ultimate price as a ransom that bought us back. In this way we doubly belong to God; both in that we were born of God and were then bought back by God.
Satisfaction Atonement
In Romans 6:23 Paul warns that “the wages of sin are death.” In our sinful condition we have dishonored God as His creation, and having caused such damage to all humankind through our sin God requires that a penalty be paid. We owe a debt for the wrong we’ve done but the only way to satisfy such a debt must come through the offering of a perfect sacrifice. The irony and poignancy of the story is that it is God alone who can provide the debt that must be paid, that being through the gift of Jesus, who as fully God and fully man can be the only true and perfect sacrifice.
This is atonement as I understood it for much of my life but in time I found them to be problematic in that both of these theories portrayed God in a way that doesn’t ring true for me by offering the image of a God who demands human sacrifice and the literal shedding of blood to move him to forgive sin. The gods of mythology and religious cults predating Christianity demanded human sacrifice but then they were vindictive gods, temperamental, arbitrarily ticked off by humankind, cruel and at times little more than a ramped up version of the neighborhood bully. None of them were the God who is Love. None of these were the God of whom Jesus proclaimed; the God who is a loving shepherd, a widow searching for her lost coin, a mother hen who guards her children, a father rushing to the side of his wayward son, a creator who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the flowers of the field.
Let me be clear about something. At the moment of Jesus’ death, I unequivocally believe the earth and all creation were changed to the core in a way that best be described as supernatural mystery. Even though I don’t believe the spilling of blood was required by God, it’s still true for me to to say that Jesus brought salvation for all and everyone. The Savior of the world had come and through him God’s saving presence entered our dusty little planet and washed over it like a tsunami in an arid desert. I kid you not. The world the second after Jesus died was a completely different world than it had been only one second before. The veil was torn in half. The death of Jesus broke through the darkness and three days later Jesus’ resurrection brought forth new life and the end of all hopelessness and for this one stone in the wall of my faith I’d take a bullet.
I’m so failing here at saying what I want to say and never will be able to say. I have no words nor voice to speak of it. Not in a way that’s worthy of it. Okay, continuing on.
Listen, as much as I believe that something utterly glorious and mysteriously divine happened on the cross that altered this world as we know it and set us free from a destiny never meant for us, I no longer believe that God sent Jesus to die. God didn’t demand someone die for us. God purposed that someone live for us. The Son of God was sent to embody and reveal the true nature of God. Not the God of law and retribution. Not the God who slayed all who opposed the children of Israel. Not the God who demanded sacrifice. Jesus came to bring the Good News and the Good News was that we had it all wrong; God was loving, compassionate, and of tender mercy. A God of holiness who could be touched by the unclean and not be defiled. A sinless and pure God who could break bread at the table with the sinner and unclean. A God of judgment who was swift in bringing justice to the oppressed. A righteous God who was quick to humble the self-righteous. God sent Jesus to demonstrate his love for us and the demonstration of that love was so great, colliding so fiercely against the God who was portrayed by the religious leaders of the day that Jesus was killed for it. He was murdered on the cross for speaking and living out the love of God and refusing to back down, refusing to shut up, and refusing to stop rattling the temple doors.
So what does the cross mean to me? Oh, it means everything. Salvation entered the world that God knew from its very foundation was his intention to provide, not through Jesus’ death but through his living and his dying. In the cross Christ demonstrated the extent of God’s love for us, not that he was destined to die, but that he would choose regardless of the certainty of death to proclaim the Good News, eat with the sinner, touch the unclean, free the captive, and give sight to the blind even on the Sabbath. In this demonstration of giving up his life for us humankind responds and is transformed. We see there is a different way to live. There is another option for us beyond sin and self. In Jesus’ witness of forgiveness for what he suffered on the cross we have the model to forgive and be forgiven so we can be set free to love.
I realize I’m not inventing a new view of the cross. It’s an old one that’s been around for a really long time and a position in which many liberal theologians place themselves. Originally it was known as a healing view of the cross; by our witness to the events of the cross we are healed from the wounds and brokenness of humanity. Rene Girard called it the mimetic desire theory in that we are compelled by Christ’s example to imitate him. A more recent theological position knows it as the theory of moral influence, that Jesus’ example influences us toward moral living, but before I knew that others had boxed it up and labeled it something, I just knew that for me the cross was transforming, altering the world and re-shaping how I could live if left to my own devices.
Jesus is my Savior beyond one single great act of salvation two thousand years about but every single day of my life, hour by hour, minute by minute. God’s love spared me from an eternity in hell, and Jesus saves me from myself every time I’m confronted with a choice to hate or to love, to retaliate or to forgive, to grab or to give. Every time I look toward the life of Jesus I’m challenged to live in the way Jesus modeled empowered by the Holy Spirit. When I think of the cross and remember Jesus’ forgiveness for the robber at his side and the soldiers at his feet the way is set for me to receive God’s forgiveness and extend forgiveness to others, including myself. That is the power of the cross.
Jesus saved me and is saving me.
And I am and forever will be in his debt.
Thank you.
After all I’ve said I know that those who scratched their heads and flipped their Bibles over my view of hell (and the lack there of) are still scratching and flipping more than ever. And that’s okay. This is my faith. My relationship with God. My human understanding of the divine Creator, the loving Savior, and the eternal Spirit. I shoot, I score, and sometimes I miss. Like you I’m just trying the best I can to live as faithfully as I can to what I best understand. It works for me.
Posted in Engaging Conversation, Faith 22 Comments »
April 22, 2010
We make plans, and God laughs.
My intention to spend today blogging in the glow of my laptop with a Bible on one side and a cup of coffee on the other was superseded by happenings that were never in my plan book.
God must have been guffawing himself silly.
So here’s hoping for Friday, but shhhhhh….don’t tell you know who.
Posted in Anita, Just a Thought 1 Comment »
April 21, 2010
As mentioned in my last post, my initial experimentation at blogging on my new bright and shiny iPad was less than successful, at least in addressing the topic of “Sin, Salvation and A Savior” as I had originally intended. On the other hand, had my goal been to make my directorial debut in creating a based on a true-story movie premiere of “SisterFriends: The Lost Post Episode,” then row out the red carpet and don’t stand between me and my Oscar!
So to sum it up I’ve gone on record that I’ve come to a place in my life of faith, my relationship with God, and my deepening understanding of grace that I no longer am able to believe that anyone will ever be consigned to the suffering of eternal punishment and banishment from the presence of God. While it seems reasonable to me that there would be a time and place for divine purification and correction there must in my heart and mind ultimately come a time when the soul of every man, woman, and child will be re-united with their Creator.
I’m more than aware of the kind of objections and emotions that taking that position can bring up for those of us who are Christian and even more specifically for those of us grounded in a conservative or evangelical tradition. No one knows this more than I do because the Anita of ten years ago would have been horrified to know that one day she’d be believing what I believe today. But then, come to think about it the Anita of twenty years ago would still be rolling around on the floor and foaming at the mouth over the ever-so gay Anita of 2010 so what say we leave those girls in the past to resolve their issues while we continue to move forward, shall we?
Split personalities aside, I understand some will take issue with the conclusions I’ve come to but honestly, I’m come to a place in my life where I simply can’t believe any different. The grace of God as I understand it and have experienced it compels me in this direction. It presses me to reject a God of infinite love who could bear to be separated from even one of His children for the span of eternity. I’m unable to come up with any argument strong enough to be at peace with the idea that the will and desire of God that all would come to Him will ever be less than fully realized. I’ve tried. I didn’t leap over to this side of my beliefs. Grace dragged me here kicking and screaming the whole way and when new glimpses of human cruelty have filled me with a longing for a wrathful God to exact revenge on those who harm the innocent, grace has blocked my way to running back to the safety and certainty of my former beliefs where the fires of hell and an angry God settle the score. Even if everyone else thinks I’m pushing the envelope or standing on shaky theological ground. And if in the end I’m wrong about this or about being gay or anything else that I hold as true at the core of my being then being wrong is a risk I’m willing to make. I’m willing to put everything on the line because at this point in my life I refuse to put any limit on the reach of God’s love or the extent of God’s grace. To do so would be to live and speak in a way that denies the very essence of all that I have encountered and understood God to be. I would be lying to say any different…or to say nothing at all.
In case it hasn’t yet dawned on you, you just witnessed an unparalleled digression from where I was originally headed. That happens when I’m passionate about something and when it comes to these things I have enough passion to light a fire from a pile of soggy wood and used matchsticks.
Which is good because it’s now dinner time and I need to get the chops on the grill and the salad in the bowl before my wonderwife returns from a day in the trenches, which means my thoughts on “Sin, Salvation, and The Savior” will need to wait until tomorrow.
No, I’m not kidding. You just read what was meant to be an introductory paragraph that ended up turning into a lengthy post that never even got us to where we were headed in the first place. Dang, you sure put up with a lot from me. Personally speaking, I wouldn’t tolerate it, so how do you do it?!
Okay. For real. I promise. Tomorrow.
Posted in Engaging Conversation, Love and Grace 3 Comments »
April 15, 2010
Today I decided to take my bright and shiny iPad out for it’s first blogging test drive to see what this baby could do besides beat me beyond humiliation in Scrabble.
And so for the past two hours I’ve been contently sitting here at Starbucks tapping lightly on my glistening little tech toy on my post Sin, Salvation and a Savior when….taking a deep cleansing breathe….the internet connection dropped and everything was lost into the irretrievable abyss of thin air. Don’t ask for the details of how such a thing could have happened. Any answer I could give would be rated R for strong language and violence.
And here I was, blogging just the other day that I didn’t believe in hell. Sigh.
It seems apparent that iPaininthebutt and I need a little time of separation from each other for the ongoing health of our relationship which means today’s intended post probably won’t be happening. I apologize for that because I know the past two weeks have been a blog black hole around here while I’ve been catching back up on life (i.e. washing, dusting, scrubbing the toilet bowl, making undistracted eye contact with my wife…) following the joyful chaos of Lent and Easter.
Expect a new post on Monday however there’s a chance that if iPaddy behaves we could put our differences behind us and try again later today, and letting me win just one game of Scrabble would be a good start on the road to reconciliation. I’m just saying.
Posted in Anita, Techno Nothingness 5 Comments »
April 4, 2010
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
Christ is Risen, He is Risen Indeed!
Posted in Holidays and Special Times 1 Comment »
April 1, 2010
If there is no consequence or judgment then what is the purpose of right and wrong? Why defend the helpless and vulnerable? Why do good?
The answer seems so obvious to me that I wonder if I’m missing something. Is the question more complicated than I’m understanding it to be? I doubt it would be the first time.
We do good because God has been good to us. We forgive because we have been forgiven. We show mercy because mercy has been granted us. We clothe and feed the poor because as God has fed the birds of the air and clothed the flowers of the field, God has provided for us. Hell slips out of the equation when our actions flow from a place of awareness and gratitude for the good we have received from God.
If fear of hell is what motivates good action, if the only purpose of right behavior is to avoid hell, then the good being done would be tainted and cheap, done less for the sake of good and more as a means of self-preservation. Doing good would be nothing less than the most selfish of actions.
But no. We defend the helpless, feed the hungry, care for the orphan and the widow, stand up for the oppressed, and forgive our enemies because God has made it known to us that everyone who lives is a beloved child of God and deserves nothing less than to be treated with respect, compassion, and dignity. We feed the hungry because they are hungry. We feed the hungry because it lessens their suffering. We feed the hungry because given other circumstances in our own lives, we would be the ones with empty hands and stomach. We feed the hungry because God told us to feed them and because Jesus modeled it for us. We feed the hungry because we are so grateful for the love of God poured out in our lives that we need to release it into the world by giving of what we have received. If there is no reward for goodness at the end of our lives then isn’t the reward we receive in the moment in easing another’s suffering and adding to the goodness in this life, enough? Oh, I hope so.
And if there’s no punishment for wrongdoing what’s to prevent us from going and getting what we want no matter who it hurts or what the cost? If someone is driven by self-centeredness or lacks any magnetic integrity in their moral compass then I suppose there’s nothing to prevent it. In fact, the threat of hell and damnation has done nothing to hold sin in check, even in Christian communities where there’s a strong belief system centered around a final judgment and eternal consequences for sin. Look around. Examples abound. Priests sexually molest children. Religious leaders engage in infidelity and financial corruption. Churches build elaborate edifices to worship God in while the homeless and hungry are all around them. Denominations spend vast resources attempting to keep certain people out of their churches while doing far less to reach out and gather more people in. Scripture repeatedly makes it all too clear that it’s sin to not clothe the poor, shelter the homeless, or feed the hungry. It’s sinful for Christians to marginalize the oppressed and refuse the outcast when everything about Jesus life witnessed to the opposite, and adultery and child sexual abuse would seem to be no-brainers in the sin department. Final judgment. Consequences for sin. Existence of hell. And still, Christians do wrong.
So does removing the threat of eternal consequences change anything? Probably not and it shouldn’t because there would seem to be far more valuable reasons for avoiding wrong doing. How about these for an example?
- You want to be and be known as an honorable person of good character.
- You want to follow the wisdom and instruction of God and the example of God’s Son out of love for God.
- You want to honor the One who loves you by doing good and avoiding wrong.
- You wish to avoid doing anything that would bring harm and pain to another human being.
- You want to avoid the consequences in this life that come from wrong doing, whether those consequences are played out for the world to see or known only in the secret place of your own heart.
Again, I might be over-simplifying the question. I’m open to correction, comments, and more questions. I still have at least one more post in this spontaneous series…maybe two. Depends on where your comments lead us.
Posted in Engaging Conversation, Love and Grace, Theology 7 Comments »
March 30, 2010
Would it not be a violation of free will for God to include those who have deliberately chosen by their will to refuse or reject God?
I could take this question in a million directions but instead I’m going to give an answer that ends before everyone’s attention span does. It might be close.
I can choose to reject God but that doesn’t mean I have the power to make God reject me. In Matthew 23:37 Jesus’ said that those who had killed the prophets and stoned those God had sent to them that but instead of rejecting them for their actions, God “longed to gather them as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” To say that God will reject those who reject Him would be to say that human will has ultimate supremacy over God’s will. I can’t fathom that nor can I accept that the will of God could be held captive and bound to human will.
I am sure that nothing can separate us from God’s love–not life or death, not angels or spirits, not the present or the future, and not powers above or powers below. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord! Romans 8:38-39
If nothing can separate us from the love of God then it stands to reason that even with all my self-determining mojo unleashed even I can’t separate myself from the love of God. While it’s not possible for the person rejecting God to experience the comfort and assurance of God’s love at the same time, God’s love remains there all the same, as God remains ever near.
But no one who chooses to flee from God will have God’s embrace forced on them. Heaven won’t be bursting at the seams with the unrepentant. No one will be marching into the Kingdom of God bearing placards that denounce the existence of God. No will be held captive in God’s presence who wills to be elsewhere. God will not constrain anyone against their will, and no one will be coerced to surrender their will to the will of God.
Instead what God will do is go to any lengths, travel any distance, and take all the time necessary to pursue those who have yet to return to Him. God will not force them but rather God will woo them like the lover of our soul He is even if it takes beyond this life and mortal death. Yes, even after death will continue to pursue the one who runs from God because neither human will or death will have the final word but the final word will be spoken by God calling “you are mine, you are mine, return to me.“ This is the relentless pursuit of God’s grace the English poet Francis Thompson so powerfully described in The Hound of Heaven, a pursuit that in the end beckoned him to return to the arms of God. The language of the prose can make it bulky to shift through but this introduction to the poem portrays a bit of it’s passion and the relentlessness of God’s love.
The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit. – The Neumann Press Book of Verse, 1988.
Posted in Engaging Conversation, Theology 4 Comments »
Sweet Hope Cookies
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