Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


6.22.2006  

A Little Lovin'

The following is an excerpt from a recent journal entry. As such, it is raw in its form, particularly since that which is written into my journal flows forth in a rather fluid and unstructured manner. Paths of thought are left inexplicably untrodden, while others are traversed methodically, if languorously. At least, they are in my mind. Who knows what you'll see as you read...

Ephesians 3:14 - 19
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with all power through His spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend together with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

We are "rooted and grounded in love." In love we are predestined (1:4, 5), and because of the great love with which God loved us, even while yet sinners, He made us alive together with Christ (2:4). There is a sense in which God's love, both in type and deminsion, becomes completely "other than." I cannot grasp what causes God to predestine us; in many ways, it seems to be a very cold and arbitrary thing, for I myself do not love that which is not already lovely. But we did not give God any reason to love us, or to have mercy on us. There is no loveliness, nor any worth within us that we should be saved. He gave that which is most precious and lovely to Him to save that which is most unlovely and without worth, worthy of wrath. We are, in our sinful state, unable to truly comprehend and love that which is lovely and loveable, particularly that which is most lovely and most loveable, and infinitely and deservedly so.

Therefore, to be rooted and grounded in love is to be essentially and fundamentally changed, but not by ourselves! It is God who has foreknown and orchestrated and carried out this change, having predestined us to be united with Christ. Having been made alive, then, we live as those who are alive. And what does life grant us? For our physical beings are still perishing, and are to be considered in light of our new lives in Christ. Very central to our new lives is the ability to love and love truly, for love outside of Christ, while possibly mirroring or shadowing the greater majesty of God's own perfect and infinite and eternal love that has been and is being communicated to us in Christ with breathtaking intimacy, applied and sealed by the Holy Spirit, is a love that must and will fail. In other words, love that is not from and in and to Christ's glory is not a love worthy of pursuit, for it simply falls short of the free and merciful offer of salvation that brings us into perfect commune with God, He who is infinitely loving and lovely. Part of the change He renders within us is the ability to love even that which is unlovely, for we now love for His sake, that others might be changed to know the love of our great and holy God.

posted by Bolo | 11:24 AM
0 speakage
Free Hit
Counters
Dell Coupons
Daily
Read
Listen
Visualize
Blogging Buddies
Old School
Me
Bug Me
Yore
Factuality
Quotatious