There's a balance, between our "duty" to God and receiving His free love and grace. If we become too focused on one, we forget about the other, yet each are equally important. I've recently found myself camped far out in the woods of each, too far gone in one direction, realizing it, and sprinting far too far in the other.
I've always been all about love and relationship. It's what I believed in, what I still believe in. Unfailing, undeserved, heartbreaking, tear-inducing, faultless, beautiful love. It's the driving force of my life. It's why I am who I am and where I am today.
My relationship with Jesus has always been more rooted in feelings, spirituality, and prayer than theology and and intellectual pursuit. My decisions made based on what I heard rather than rational (or irrational, depending on the situation), logical, well-planned points of action. My future is relatively up in the air, whatever God wants me to do.
And I'm happy with it like that, I really am. But in the past month or so I've read a few books, read through Acts, and felt rather convicted that maybe I was all thought and no action, all talk and no real doing. I learned more about our purpose, and glorifying God. I hadn't really thought about it before, that our purpose is to glorify God. He loves us, and we love Him, for His glory. He died for us, for His glory. We are to spread His gospel, for His glory.
The more I focused on this, the more I lost sight of the other part - His love. Unfailing, undeserved. Me seeking to glorify Him became, in my mind, more of a task to fulfill. Rather than something I sought out of joy, I started feeling like I need to glorify Him because I had to. Like that was all that mattered, like I didn't matter as a human being at all.
The meaning of the sparrow, of Matthew 6, when Jesus cares so much for each sparrow that He knows when every one falls, and if He cares so much for the sparrows must care so much more for us, was lost. I lost sight of the value each of us has in His sight, not because we deserve it or are anything special, but because He loves us, just because.
Everything was thrown out of wack. The thought of Jesus' love used to bring an automatic smile to my face, and suddenly I couldn't quite grasp it. That smile was just out of reach, like a work on the tip of your tongue, just begging to be spoken. It was there, truth, but my misdirected mind couldn't quite find it.
As I read through Acts I marveled at Paul's total surrender to God. Why? Why would he be so willing, so joyful, to suffer and die for the name of Jesus?
One could be willing to die out of duty, but one finds joy to die in the duty that accompanies love.
Love. It all goes back to love!
Think about it. Of all the religions in the world, the hundreds of different gods and rulers, what's the difference with Jesus? We don't serve and sacrifice for Jesus out of obligation. We aren't so afraid of a power that could turn us to a pile of dust at any second that we tremble and offer up sacrifices of gold and cattle and beg we won't be next. We aren't living in constant fear of not being good enough so we pray and pilgrimage and purge. That's not how it works with Jesus. Jesus loves us. For no reason we can ever comprehend because we don't deserve it. The truth is that we aren't good enough and never will be, and the beauty is we are loved still. And because we are loved so deeply and purely, we want to serve Him! We want to glorify His Holy Name, we want to sacrifice our lives. We want His desires to become our desires, His heart to become our heart. We want to be His because He first wanted us. He first loved us and we love Him in return.
And so there is a perfect balance. First we were loved, and so we respond, not out of obligation to give penance, but out of desire to give love in return, in whatever form He desires. For His glory, for His honor, for His beautiful name, because we will never receive a truer love than that of Jesus, and in that truth, in that beautiful love, is a smile.
No comments:
Post a Comment