Monday October 13, 2014 Evening reflection The table is set. The food is prepared, to exacting standards. The right wine is chosen. Expectations are high, as the Thanksgiving holiday dictates. Hugs all round. Laughter, at the same old jokes. Conversations that start fresh, but forever veer dangerously close to crossing the neutral zone, where old baggage, old arguments lie in wait. Pretense in a choreographed tradition: happy to be spending time together; but equally relieved when the visit is done and we all emerge unscathed. It’s the push and pull of the family gathering. So it is for me and my faith: the push and pull of a Love so freely given. It’s the foreknowledge, the expectation, the unsettling allure of the call. It’s the relational pull of the Creator, the yearning to accept, and to remain close as the Spirit weaves in, around and through. But to accept is to release control, and that would be a loss of personal power, of self-justification. It’s about the threat of accepting; and the equal threat of pushing away. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39 NIV) “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19 NIV) The appropriate response to a gift is ‘thank you.’ Is that when you first know that there is a gift? When you want it? When you receive it? When you unpack it? Accept it? Own it? Thank you. For gifting a Love that is unconditional, all-encompassing, all-surrounding, in and around and through. Thank you. Even though fear, denial, anger, rebellion, baggage get in the way of knowing, wanting, receiving, unpacking, accepting, owning. Thank you for never letting go; for relentless insistence.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 22:05:33 +0000
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