Memorandum: I just woke up and typed this straight through, not going back to reread or edit. I’m a bit tired of all that to be honest. I look back on the entries from a couple months ago, when this little monster began, and see a very guarded account of my life. Of course I’ll never reach a point of unadulterated writing here, but I’m trying to become more sincere and transparent, and think I am, albeit slowly.
And for those of you who have helped me with all of these things I’m about to discuss, I thank you and love you from the bottom of my heart. I can’t tell you how much your patience and kindness means. I hope to be able to, like yourselves, offer it to others in my life as well. More specifically, although not exclusively, all of you from CRU have been awesome. You know who you are. So before I get all sentimental I’ll just stop here, and give a simple thanks.
So long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about--He is looking for us.
-Simon Tugwell
So it was chapter six of the Sacred Romance, which outlines the story told in the gospel of John about not the beginning of the earth but a story that takes place even farther back. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” We’re talking about the powerful love of the trinity, a love of perfection. A love that we are born of and seek with every breath. A love that we are made in the image of.
But this love was love in itself and God wanted more. He wanted a love that despite His supreme power could only be afforded to Him by free will. A love that He would seek from every man, woman, and child. A love He would be patient for. A love He could not give to Himself.
Then the story of the tragic betrayal, in which Lucifer led legions of Angels in war against God. Unable to stand the selfless love the Father grants the Son, Lucifer wages his rebellion based on one idea: “God doesn’t have a good heart.” Lucifer brings God into question. Up until now, I must admit I’ve been in the Devil’s corner, questioning God’s heart, too blind to see His grace and His plan. I’ve been foolish. I called God’s heart into question, and while mine grew harder and falsely felt safer, His broke and broke. But I know that He remained patient. He watched over me as a father watches over his sleeping children. He sent people into my life to show me what I was too blind to see.
While I hate to say this, because it implicitly implies that others are perhaps not so lucky, I have been incredibly blessed. On one hand it makes me feel undeservingly sick, and on the other hand I feel grateful. Somewhere in the midst of that ambivalence, I feel one thing for certain: God loves me.
Then came the creation of the world, an act of supreme love and beauty. I’ve always questioned why God, in all his omniscience, would continue with the process of creation if He already knew what was to happen. If He knew the fate of our lives, in fact knew if He would see our love returned, why let our human affairs play themselves out? The answer is so clear finally: The difference between knowing how it feels to embrace someone is worlds apart from feeling their embrace. Knowing is not feeling. It makes so much sense. Like the best things in life, it’s simple, honest, and true.
The point of why God gives us our freedom is an important one. Our freedom, our ability to destroy and create, to commit murder and help others, is the only way our love for God can be real. It’s a fact that can be a bit troublesome, but love out of free choice is in fact the only valid and pure love.
“Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love... In a concentration camp, the guards possess almost unlimited power. By applying force, they can make you renounce your God, curse your family work without pay, eat human excrement, ill and then bury your closes friend or even your own mother. All this is within their power. Only one thing is not: they cannot force you to love them. This fact may help explain why God sometimes seems shy to use his power. He created us to love him, but his most impressive displays of miracle--the kind we may secretly long for--do nothing to foster that love. As Douglas John Hall has put it, “God’s problem is not that God is not able to o certain things. God’s problem is that God loves. Love complicates the life of God as it complicates every life.”
-Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God
These words ring true. The concept is incredibly simple and even more true. Our love comes of our own free will. God, in His omniscience, knows who will come to love him, who will come to accept His love, but once again, knowing is not the same as feeling. It’s so clear.
And it’s not about reason, or logic, or philosophy, or deduction. It’s about accepting love. Love is an emotion, and you can not reason someone into love and you can not reason someone out of love. It’s the most simple and beautiful of things. Accepting God is about uncoiling your heart, not your mind.
So I realized these things last night and just laid there for the longest time, telling God I accept Him and love Him. I was sorry for all the doubt, all the criticism, all the hatred I felt towards those I see I was only jealous of. And knowing all the sin and darkness in my heart, I just thanked Him and thanked Him, unable to understand His grace and enduring love. I felt as though I’d not only found someone, but I’d been found. For me, it all came from the fact that I don’t have to search for Him. That’s not what it’s about. I’m not the pursuer. God is. He has been pursuing me, loving me, waiting for me, giving me chance after chance, all the while not becoming angry or resentful despite my transgressions, since before I was born.
Our story began with Him, and it seems that life is merely a point when we become aware of the story. Just because we are not aware of something does not mean that it does not exist, that it is not happening. The story of our lives, of love, of God’s grace, is the only story. It began before our birth into this world and will last eternally. It’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever heard.
So long as we imagine that it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about; He is looking for us. And so we can afford to recognize that very often we are not looking for God; far from it, we are in full flight from Him, in high rebellion against Him. Now He knows that and has take it into account. He has followed us into our own darkness; there where we thought finally to escape Him, we run straight into his arms. So we do not have to erect a false piety for ourselves, to give us the hope of salvation. Our hope is in his determination to save us, and He will not give in.
-Simon Tugwell
And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
but love is not a victory march,
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
And it’s not a cry that you hear at night,
it’s somebody who’s seen the light,
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
-Jeff Buckley
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