Thursday, September 1, 2011

Never been unloved

Like many persons I've met, I've been good and bad, rich and poor, funny and sad. My moods have been as frequent as full moons in a 12-month span. I've been as compartmentalized as a good set of luggage on a bad set of traveling days.

I've been there and done it, whatever "it" might be.

I've struggled with love, having gained and lost loved as much as an old, scuffed quarter. I've fought with pain, emotional and physical, as if it was a wedge of cornbread, light, fluffy and flavorful. I've scrapped with money, watching it flow in and out like the nightly tide off Long Island.

I'm as consistent as a politician is sincere during primary season. I'm all the things you'd like your son to be, except all the things your son might be. I'm who I am, not who I was and God willing not who I'm going to be. Some mornings I feel as if I've been as punched as a movie theater ticket.

I'm me, for better, for worse. But when I look in the mirror, I notice something besides ruts under my eyes.

Songwriter Rich Mullins described me, as well as you, like this:

I have been unfaithful
I have been unworthy
I have been unrighteous
And I have been unmerciful

I have been unreachable
I have been unteachable
I have been unwilling
And I have been undesirable

And sometimes I have been unwise
I've been undone by what I'm unsure of
But because of You and all that You went through
I know that I have never been unloved.


The Apostle Paul described that process this way: "Who will separate us from Christ's love? Will we be separated by trouble, or distress, or harassment, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ... I'm convinced that nothing can separate us from God's love in Jesus Christ our Lord; not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers, or heights or depth, or anything other thing that is created."

It's more than mildly interesting to me that Paul goes from WHO to WHAT in that passage. Who can separate us? No ONE. That means God's love is as close to me as my shadow on a very sunny day.

What can separate us? No THING. The things that rear up and try to shake me off the horse can't. God and I are clinging together like clothes on a wire-hanger.

And Paul closes thissection of life-pondering with the phrase no THING THAT IS CREATED. Since, it seems to me, one of the distinguishing characteristics of man, animal, plant, object and God himself is all but God was created. That is forenics of the highest order.

Christ's love, then, endures all things. We are loved. We have been loved. We will be loved. Water flow down the throne room's steps right on out of heaven right on into our lives. We are drenched, soaked in the living water of which we've had no bearing on its direction, it's path, it's depth or it's quality.

The point, I think, is that when trouble, distress, harassment, famine, nakedness, danger and sword seem to be overwhelming us (as they often do; I think they call that a Thursday in my life), still God loves. He loves through the trouble. He loves despite the distress. He loves even while we are harassed.

He loves. Not that he heals or stops the sun or changes my foot to a hand or whatever the miracle of the moment might be.

The point, I think, is that He will overcome our famine, overcome the nakedness of our circumstances, overcome the danger that seems to be everywhere, overcome the physicality of the swords in our worlds. He will overcome it all.

How? The straightness of love,not the crookness of power.

In other words, when it seems as if God is gone for good, when we are sure we've done something that has run the universe's most amazing weapon-force-quality out of our lives, when it appears all our dire circumstances point to a hollow life to come, God still is there, doing what God does... loving us.

We are never unloved. Never. Not on a cold, cold Tuesday. Not on hump day Wednesday when we are wandering meaninglessly.

Maybe we don't have things, clothes, a roof over our head, a job that supplies all of the above. But through it all (as Andre' Couch would say), we have Him. He (his mercy, his grace, his love) is enough.

No band of angels, no path of righteousness, nothing but the wild, furious love of God. Inseparable. Unstoppable. Unchanging. Joy and sorrow as tied together as a dog and a leash. The reckless, raging fury of the love of God.

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