God has brought something really affirming to me this morning. I can at times come so close to being taken out by the brokenness around me. I feel it like a tremor in my bones sometimes, particularly with those closest to me. I hold to redemption -- I'm alive by way of that great work of Jesus and for the sake of it for others is why I'm in counseling school now. I battle for others that the Kingdom may be won in their lives. But it still threatens me, the hurt of others. Over the last couple of weeks I've felt overwhelmed and exhausted. I'm not trying to "fix" anybody; I'm just desiring life in the deepest and most glorious sense for those I know (and for myself). But what Jesus brought to me is that I feel these quakes in my heart because of love. It is proof that my heart has been made and redeemed to love. It is the same suffering that Jesus experiences (Philippians 3:10).
But what I need to do with that now is to learn to stand in the face of it, to stand as a warrior even as I kneel as a servant. To desire life and freedom for others but continue to walk with Jesus wherever it is He's taking me. The offer and invitaiton for others is the same. "The direct experience of God is grace, indeed," said Ignatius of Loyola, "and basically, there is no one to whom it is refused." But the responsibility of following after Jesus rests on the shoulders of each person individually. I am to "seek life in the spirit of furious indifference to it," in the words of G.K. Chesterton, even for others. We each must "desire life like water and yet drink death like wine."
I have a close friend that's going through a profound change in his life -- or the possibility of change, at least. He is in a desperate place, a frightening one. Rock bottom, really. But, I don't think he's in such a foreign place as I would like him to be. I'd be comfortable if the seeming waste and debris of his life were because of a sin or God's wrath or Satan's strongholds. But I rather think he's where he is because of God's love, that the fierce love of God refuses to leave him where he is, and that He is even now unwraveling him from the thorns and brambles that he's got himself caught in. It's painful, and it's bloody, but it's also redemptive.
God waits to be wanted by us all. Having Him and having his Kingdom come through our lives and the ones we love will require all the violence of our "Viking" hearts in full-throttle (Matthew 11:12). To borrow from Robert Service in his poem The Law of the Yukon,
I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,
but by men with the hearts of Vikings, and the simple faith of a child.
Maybe the disillusioned ex-literary professor vagrant Harry Sagan in The Fisher King said it best in relating the story of the Fool and the Fisher King: "...One day, a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. Being a fool, he was simple-minded, he didn't see a king, he saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king: 'What ails you, friend?' The king replied: 'I'm thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat.' So the fool took a cup from beside the bed, filled it with water, handed it to the king. As the king began to drink he realized that his wound was healed. He looked at his hands, and there was the Holy Grail that which he sought all his life! And he turned to the fool and said in amazement: 'How could you find that which what my brightest and bravest could not?' And the fool replied: 'I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty."
May we find our hearts and follow the bloody and "foolish" Way of Love.
No comments:
Post a Comment