in the fury of the moment

I choose to love

I just got back from lunch. Lunch today = going to visit friends of mine at a rest home. I took my guitar and a light heart. Something is stirring up within me, and I can't identify what it is.

Today as I sat with this beautiful couple and watched them fight sleep, my heart HURT -- not because it was sad, but because it was bursting. I feel like God is bringing to life Matthew 9:17 in me. It's like my life is a wineskin, and He is giving me new sweet, satisfying wine ... so He will not use the old wineskin, because that would just be silly and it would leak out of the beat-up, cracked, weathered wineskin that I used to live in. Instead, he is giving me a totally new wineskin, and pouring that wonderful new wine into IT. Of course, it hurts a bit and I don't really want to give up my cherished, faithful old ways ... they are comfortable and I like them and I would like to keep them, thank you very much. But the funny thing is -- God's not giving me that option. Of course, He will not force the new on me ... He freely offers it ... but first I have to give up the old. Ouch.

But oh, what joy and refreshment I am finding already in this season. This morning as I prayed, I sensed a challenge to consider what my life is really about. Lately I have been focused on setting goals and on being disciplined. Good things, yes. Wonderful things. What better way to glorify God than to be the best steward possible of all the things with which He has blessed me?!?!? The only problem is that I have been focused on setting goalS. I determined today that I need to be setting secondary goals, but my primary goal -- the goal that overrides all that I do in my life ... that is to give myself to God with a VIOLENCE. Total and absolute surrender to Him.

At the end of the day, at the end of my life, what have I learned? I have no desire to be great in this world ... my heart's cry is to be great in eternity. I long to build my wealth in eternity, where it can't ever fade or dwindle. And the way to do that? The way to grow in the knowledge of God? It's in loving. I want my life to scream out love. I want my words and my actions and even my thoughts to be shouting out "I love you because God loves you." I saw that funky Christian movie "The Cross and the Switchblade" YEARS ago, and I will never forget that part where David Wilkerson tells the tough gang member guy, "you can cut me into a thousand pieces, and every piece will still say 'God loves you'". I want that to be true in my life. Can you imagine if Christians actually LIVED that way?????

I heard something recently that said that voluntary love is a violent reaction to our culture of lovelessness. I think there is so much truth in that! We cannot love passively. We cannot love neatly. It's not something we can manage easily, or keep from being messy. It's rarely ever safe, and quite often it hurts a whole lot. But there is no alternative. For all of us, death is a sure thing. We will all die, and we will all leave behind possessions, some more than others. None of that matters. What we do with our hearts, our responses, and our love ... those are the only things that matter.

The centrality of the Gospel message is about loving. It is about God loving us so much that He sent His Son to die for us. It is about us loving Him so much that we die to ourselves for Him. It is about us loving Him so much that we choose to serve our brothers and sisters and make them higher than ourselves. The greatest expression of love is servanthood -- it's what Christ modeled for us. If we want to really know God and to love Him, there is no place for floating along and dipping our toes in the water once in a while to see if the temperature is to our liking. We must dive in, and dive deep, and swim hard against the currents of this world. IT IS THE ONLY WAY.

The battle cry has sounded. What will you do now? You have read this and either you think I'm crazy or you think maybe I'm making some sense. Either way, what will you do about it? There are wars waging all around us. Each of us has a warring spirit, whether we recognize it or not. I choose to be violent and dangerous with my love. It is the purpose for which I was created.

posted by Krista @ 3:01 PM