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As I mentioned earlier this week, my bible sat too close on my desk to my text books, and through a sort of ambiguous, sort of metamorphosis, became another of them. Sort of like the borg: Resistance is futile, prepare to assimilate.
God's spirit put it into my heart that if I valued Him, it would show by my cleaving to his words. I had memorized songs, passages of plays, political speeches, but did not even recognize the words that God speaks! I started to think that if God spoke to me, I'd probably not recognize his voice for lack of familiarity.
So I began investigating the audio bibles. And I think that was the first step in a new direction for me. Who'd a thunk it. Ned Flanders, eat your heart out.
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I have a remarkable difficult time accepting that I cannot work to earn my salvation. As time passes, and I prove it over and over again, I've gotten more at ease with the idea. I think that the role of the angry/disappointed Father sort of lolls about over me before the idea of the compassionate and understanding Father.
My dad was a good father. So I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea. But he was, I fear to say, a human, and thus, flawed. He was an academic (hey, I'm not pointing fingers or anything, I'm just sayin...) and as such, usually made his appeals to me rationally. And as human nature goes, much of what I did as a young boy wasn't, well, very rational. He wasn't heavy-handed---but he would tell me when I had disappointed him, and point out to me what he thought the more reasonable action might have been.
He told me he loved me plenty of times, and my sibs would quickly bear witness to his affectionate side. But somehow, we note the insults and rebukes more...
Anyway, my relationship to God has obviously been shaped largely, to this point, by my relationship to my Dad. But blessing abounds...I must also note that my relationship to God has been impacted tremendously by ... yep, MY being a father.
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My oldest son, Tigger, has for a couple of months been pretty consistently challenging the boundaries of my authority. He's been consistently testing my sincerity, as well as the strength and conviction of my word. In other words: He's been driving me crazy. Not just sometimes. Virtually every day is a struggle with the frayed end of a fragile rope.
But I can testify to the restorative power of sleep. Even 5 hours will wipe my memory clean, and I wake up, see his wide smile and scrunched up eyes and just fall further in love.
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If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
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It has been passages like the one above that have taken on a new meaning for me. I'm sure you can understand. Even as Tigger is challenging me, even as he is suggesting that I'm an idiot (he doesn't use those words, exactly), I look at him and he is my own heart. And believe me when I say that I am capable of evil. Evil thoughts, evil deeds, good deeds veneering over bad motives, and yet I am also capable of greater love than I had ever imagined possible.
Jesus' younger brother asked rhetorically, can fresh water come from a salt spring? He was speaking about our mouths, our language, and the fact that blessing and cursing come from the same mouth. But I think the analogy fits in this case as well. Evil and Love from the same place? Indeed. This is a grace-given, broken but still operable aspect of our being created in the image of God.
He made us to love. It was the fall to depravity, though, which distorted that love, twisting it around so that rather than loving God, self and others in right proportion and order, we simply loved ourselves above all else...
I digress slightly...
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But I've come to understand something greater. Something greater than the fact that love can surmount evil, or that mercy can be stronger than vengeance. Or even that grace can satisfy justice. I've come to understand that it actually makes God greater to bless me.
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I can remember being reprimanded and taught to "be the bigger boy." The idea being that being bigger was equitable to being more mature, and that if I were more mature, I would be above whatever vengeance I had in mind, above whatever bait was laid out before me, above...how pithy and cheap it sounded to my young ears.
But as an adult, I find it in scripture constantly.
Now, nowhere in the canonized scriptures does it say, "And God was the Bigger Boy." Or, "For God so loved the world, that He became the bigger boy."
But I've read "He leads me in paths of righteousness, for His name's sake," and I've read "This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."
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Father, when you bless me, it makes YOU greater...
Make Your kingdom come to pass on earth, through me, through us,
Your mission of healing, liberation, and reconciliation,
between man and man, man and earth, man and self, and man and You,
such that it causes the entire creation to know and say You are God alone.
Put it into my heart that Your blessing or favor on me is
not a reward for my behavior,
But is Your provision
for Your salvation army,
advancing Your kingdom against darkness, lies, and the tyranny of sin and alienation,
and is evidence of even more grace.
And that as children are born into a family, the love increases, rather than being split
into smaller
and smaller pieces,
That Your grace
grows
and abounds
and increases
with Your every gift to us.
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