It has been a few weeks since I have had the urge to write, I made a promise to my self to not write unless I felt like I should. I’ve heard it time and time again, writing is a discipline. That’s all well and good when writing is your focus, but for me in this season of life, it just isn’t.
For this session I think I just want to process what my recent weeks have been like. As the legend John Mark McMillan said “I process things through music, that’s just how I do”, to be fair I process many different ways. Music is one, others include things like walks, prayer, focused thought, conversation, and even a dram of whisky. I am realizing my deepest of revelations come from the creative process of writing. Donald Miller talks about being “lost” in this process. I can relate to that in more ways than the obvious.
The question of what to write about dawns on me before I write, I know, shocker. But one thing I’ve learned is the practice of ambiguity. In Randall Worley’s Brush Strokes of Grace (highly recommend picking this up) he writes about one of his personal frustrations with the modern sermon framework. He stakes the claim that we have been force-fed truth about God but as we know, information doesn’t mean understanding. Similar to the idea that I can read loads of books about marriage, I could even give a sermon on what the meaning of it is, but I don’t have a bloody clue do I? Experience teaches deeply. Interaction causesu perception. There is a difference in knowing God and knowing God isn’t there? I’ve come to learn that there is a process for truth. Even the basics of life must be learned by process. This leaves me with a lot of questions. Do I really know what I think I know? My answer to that is, I guess we’ll find out. Daunting. All this being said. I will write whatever I want, I will give as much or little detail as I want, and I’ll leave things open ended more so now then I have. Why?
See what I did there? Ambiguous, I know.
I’ve learned the closer I draw to God, the more I realize I may be more shake-able then I once perceived. Luckily, God does not leave us in our lacking. Sometimes we are lacking and want to leave God, and if that’s the case, lacking we will stay. Love does not insist on its own way, love does not impose.
I can’t afford to leave God. After writing that I laugh, the cost of discipleship is high. My bank account hasn’t been this empty since I worked 2 days a week taking out poopy diapers and cutting out shapes for my old preschool, shout out to Tiny Treasures. But I stand by my first statement. I cannot afford to walk away from God, I cannot afford to say no, I cannot afford to say maybe another time. The more I draw near to God, the more I realize that I am more like the beggar being dropped through the roof, than the friends dropping him in. I am learning how desperate I really am. I am going to take liberties with the word desperate. Despair-et. I despair for more of God. I am the cripple. I am the beggar. I am the blind. I am the bleeding. I am the one in need.
How much truth is found in the tension of two realities? Often I find, when I look at where my heart should be, in lies between beggar and prince. Life is found truly when you realize that you aren’t just one or the other, but you are fully both. The more you become a true friend of God, the more you see that you can be a true enemy. Theologically, I think that this is part of us dealing with what the original us did. How easy it is to point blame. We are a compromised creation. We are a soiled perfection. Luckily, or rather, fortunately, God is not the God of comprise, but rather, The Steadfast. He is truth. He is furiously in love with us, no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it.
This is the beginning and end of our story. God is love.
Isn’t life simple? John Mark McMillan stakes a very familiar claim about life in his most recent release Live at the Knight. When talking about his personal loves, it’s like he’s reiterating my inner thought life. When talking about accomplishments he says,
“In the end, none of that stuff feels as good as sitting across the table from somebody telling a story, laughing a little, crying a little, raising a glass and hearing that little thing go ‘ting’. I’ve decided that all of life is inside that sound. ‘Ting’. Fellowship and love and laughter and all of the things that we live our life for and are alive for and are saved for and are healed for includes sitting down at the table and looking at a person and going ‘tiiiiing’.”
Well John, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Life is a lot like the picture below. It’s messy, blurry, but full of smiles. Sometimes you’re lucky enough to be on the dance floor and others you are just as happy to be watching. It ain’t perfect but it sure as hell isn’t as complicated as we make it out to be.
God is relational. He is relationship oriented. Why else do you think some of our most telling metaphors for heaven include a huge feasting table where we all have a seat near him, and the most explosive wedding ever experienced. God is a romantic who doesn’t just say things to make us feel good. He doesn’t say “you’re the prettiest girl in the world” so we feel warm and fuzzy. He means it because he knows it. His word is never empty or void. He bowed down on his knee, with spikes in his wrists, flesh falling off of his body, a crown of torturous humiliation, and a spear in his side. Why? So that once and for all, we would be his. Just like my future wife to be will be mine. It’s not possessive or selfish, it isn’t about being right, or manipulating us. It’s about love. An unconditional love. By the way, a conditional love is not love, it is smoke and mirrors. It is an illusion of devastating consequence. God is not like that, and he has proven it time and time again.
Randall Worley stakes the claim that Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about us, but to change our mind about God. How true is that. God is like a father who has laid out a feast of all of your hearts desires, and simply says “My darling, my world, my precious love, please come and eat.” He always has been and always will be. At first we indulged without question, then we saw a lie as questionable truth, and took a bite. Because of that, we figured that he wouldn’t want us anymore. That our mess repulsed him. That if we washed our hands enough we were welcome at his table. But we kept playing with dirt. What we didn’t realize is that he has been asking to wash our hands ever since we got them dirty, but we never let him do it. So he took action, he chose love and plunged his hands into the filth to pull ours out. He cleaned them by his own accord and decreed us clean. Now, most of us are at the table, and instead of feasting, we are taking the bread roll, and after every nibble, we look up at him as if we may have overstepped our bounds. Sooner or later, we will realize that he is not as conditional as we are. He’s not as obsessed with social norms as we are. That he doesn’t believe in awkward and that not having elbows on the table and not chewing with our mouths open and not wearing our food and not laughing to boisterously is a human invention. He is more that inviting us to eat, but he wants us to get up on top of the table, barefooted in all, and dance with him with the best food in one hand and the finest wine spilling out of our chalice the more we spin round and round. But we are too caught up in holding back our burps to realize. Though he desperately wants to dance, he is patient, he is kind. He is hoping for more, and he is sharing stories with us. He speaks in parables and this parable is called life, the more he tells, the more we understand the simple truth. The beginning and the end are the same, God is love
Oh yes, God is love.
Scott Sotomayor
All the King's Men 