Skimming through Ann's book, looking for the succint truths that I want to have before my spiritual eyes throughout my day, here is my list of "Greatest Hits" for chapters 7 & 8. God, help these truths to hit me in a way that gives You greatest glory.
Chapter 7:
"Christ incarnated in the parent is the only hope of incarnating Christ in the child..."
"Obvious and immediate transfigurations exhilirate the faith, but the faithful can forget transfigurations, faces that once changed appearances. We betray Who we know. Didn't Peter?"
"You would be very ashamed if you knew what experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are. You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies - though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet [God's] beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is. -Jean-Pierre de Caussade"
"[Do I believe] that Satan's way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling, in my daily life than Jesus' way? Why else get angry?"
"Who's the real sinner... with the stinking pig in temple?"
"Can I be so audacious? To expect to see God in these faces when I am the blasphemer who complains, who doesn't acknowlege this moment for Who it is?"
"I look for the ugly beautiful, count it as grace, transfigure the mess into joy with thanks and eucharisteo leaves the paper, finds way to the eyes, the lips."
"I am Hagar lost with boy... I want to step back, flee. Who can witness the dying, but how can I leave him? 'Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water' (Gen. 21:19 NIV)....What insanity compels me to shrivel up when there joy's water [is] to be had here?"
"You have to want to see the well before you can drink from it. You have to want to see joy, God in the moment."
"Love is not blind; love is the holy vision."
Chapter 8:
"Worry is the facade of taking action when prayer really is." - I love the idea here, but isn't this a hanging participle, or somthing of the sort?! :-)
"Anything less than gratitude and trust is practical atheism."
"...I know I can't experience deep joy in God until I deep trust in God."
"Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks. Remembering frames up gratitude. Gratitude lays out the planks of trust. I can walk the planks -from known to unknown- and know: He holds."
"...gratitude is not only the memories of our heart; gratitude is a memory of God's heart and to thank is to remember God."
"Jesus! [The Father] gave Him up for us all. If we have only one memory, isn't this one enough?"
"I either take the 'what is it' manna with thanks, eat the mystery of the moment with trust, and am nourished another day, -or refuse it . . . and die."
"I clutch soul bread and a Perfect Love that knows no end."
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Intercession
Our Seder table was full this year.
Three families: six adults and fifteen children.
So many interruptions, distractions, explanations and corrections, but it was worth it. There is something sacred about entering into holy rememberances with fellow saints. During the festival meal, seeing all the foreshadowing and types of Christ in the Passover, we marvelled that so many Jews do not see how Jesus fulfill the prophecies of the Messiah.
We see because because God has given our souls the vision. How many prayers and petitions were offered to God that we have that revelation? In my case, my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandmother all uttered appeals for my salvation, even before I had a congnitive awareness of my need for it.
It put me in mind of how in the past couple years I had knowlege intellectually of my need for refreshing and reviving from God, but I did not push hard for it. I did not press into what a refreshed person would have obviously seen, diagnosed, and acted upon... that I needed face-time with God. Revival begins with prayer. Often times it is
the prayer of one
that leads to
the revival of another.
Isn't this the definition of intercession; interposing or pleading on behalf of another person? Christ is THE Intercessor. Are we not to imitate Him? At this moment in my Christian walk, I see clearly, I am pushing hard into God, and pressing for the finish line. I see clearly. That places me in the perfect position to intercede for others. I know what they are missing. I have missed it before myself. I am experiencing the fullness, but can remember the feeling of empty. Can I now sit back, satisfied?
No, this is my time to plead on behalf of others who because of their weariness or emptiness or blindness are not pleading for themselves.
I was impressed with this thought after our Passover meal: to simply wonder at a person's lack without acting to help is the person James writes about (2:15-16), "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?"
I don't personally know any of my spiritual siblings that are lacking physical food, but I do know some who are not being nourished on the Word and withering from spiritual malnutrition. I may not know one who lacks physical clothing, but I know MANY who have not put on the spotless garment of Christ. These things that are so much more needful. Will I dismiss them with momentary thoughts and speculation, or will I give them those things which are needful: My pleas on their behalf to the One who satisfies completely.
Three families: six adults and fifteen children.
So many interruptions, distractions, explanations and corrections, but it was worth it. There is something sacred about entering into holy rememberances with fellow saints. During the festival meal, seeing all the foreshadowing and types of Christ in the Passover, we marvelled that so many Jews do not see how Jesus fulfill the prophecies of the Messiah.
We see because because God has given our souls the vision. How many prayers and petitions were offered to God that we have that revelation? In my case, my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandmother all uttered appeals for my salvation, even before I had a congnitive awareness of my need for it.
It put me in mind of how in the past couple years I had knowlege intellectually of my need for refreshing and reviving from God, but I did not push hard for it. I did not press into what a refreshed person would have obviously seen, diagnosed, and acted upon... that I needed face-time with God. Revival begins with prayer. Often times it is
the prayer of one
that leads to
the revival of another.
Isn't this the definition of intercession; interposing or pleading on behalf of another person? Christ is THE Intercessor. Are we not to imitate Him? At this moment in my Christian walk, I see clearly, I am pushing hard into God, and pressing for the finish line. I see clearly. That places me in the perfect position to intercede for others. I know what they are missing. I have missed it before myself. I am experiencing the fullness, but can remember the feeling of empty. Can I now sit back, satisfied?
No, this is my time to plead on behalf of others who because of their weariness or emptiness or blindness are not pleading for themselves.
I was impressed with this thought after our Passover meal: to simply wonder at a person's lack without acting to help is the person James writes about (2:15-16), "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?"
I don't personally know any of my spiritual siblings that are lacking physical food, but I do know some who are not being nourished on the Word and withering from spiritual malnutrition. I may not know one who lacks physical clothing, but I know MANY who have not put on the spotless garment of Christ. These things that are so much more needful. Will I dismiss them with momentary thoughts and speculation, or will I give them those things which are needful: My pleas on their behalf to the One who satisfies completely.
My faith work of the moment: I Timothy 2:1,3 - "Supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men...for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowlege of the truth."
Monday, April 25, 2011
Recounting Chapters 4-6
Count and recount -it reminds me about the joke of Pete and Repeat...
Remember, recall, remind, retell, relate, recollect and, of course, recount all the that God has done for us, both personally and colletively throughout time. It is the joy duty.
Well, One Thousand Gifts is certainly a gift from God that needs to be recounted. Here are my favorite quotes from chapters 4-6.
A Sanctuary of Time (4)- Here was my own practice and process of this chapter: Time Dayenu.
Now on to quotes...
"On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur." - Evelyn Underhill
"Hurry always empties a soul."
"Weigh down this moment in time with attention full..."
"This is where God is. In the present. I AM - His very name."
"...time is only of the essence, because time is the essence of God, I AM."
"Thanks makes now a sanctuary."
"When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God."
"Entering fully into the moment can overwhelm, a river running wild. I will forget, and again, and again, but today I do remember. I breathe and I reel and I hold my ground and my tongue in this torrent coming down. I've staked my claim to the miracle." (emphasis mine)
"How long does it take your soul to realize that your life is full?"
"I want to slow down and taste life, give thanks, and see God."
Chapter Five - The inspiration for Secret Garden.
"Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living."
"Eventually, I am guaranteed to lose every earthly thing I have ever possessed...I will lose every single person I have ever loved... You may suffer loss but in Me is anything ever lost, really? Isn't everything that belongs to Christ also yours?"
"And every moment is a message from the Word-God who can't stop writing his heart."
"To read His message in moments, I'll need to read His passion on the page; wear the lens of the Word, to read His writing in the world."
"...I know all our days are struggle and warfare (Job 14:14) and that the spirit-to-spirit combat I endlessly wage with Satan is this ferocious thrash for joy. He sneers at all things that seem to have gone hideously mad in this sin-drunk world, and I gasp to say God is good. The liar defiantly scrawls his graffiti across God's glory, and I heave to enjoy God . . . and Satan strangles, and I whiten knuckles to grasp real Truth and fix that beast to the floor." (emphasis mine)
"Without God's Word as a lens, the world warps."
"And it's the Word of God that turns the rocks in the mouth to the loaves on the tongue."
"Out of the darkness of the cross, the world transfigures into new life. And there is no other way... It is suffering that has the realest possibility to bear down and deliver grace."
"He became ugly that we might become beauty. The God of the Mount of Transfiguration cannot cease His work of transfiguring moments - making all that is dark, evil, empty into that which is all light, grace, full."
"And if all work of transfiguring the ugly into the beautiful pleases God, it is a work of beauty."
"...and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty."
"All is grace only because all can transfigure."
Chapter 6 - This chapter was not a one-day read for me. I didn't walk away with one neatly wrapped nugget, rather, echoes of this chapter permeated the days following the readings.
The White Load and Learning to Speak reverberated from this chapter.
"I am beset by chronic soul amnesia. I empty of truth and need the refilling."
"The only place we have to come to before we die is the place of seeing God. This is what I am famished for: more of the God-glory. I whisper with the blind beggar, "Lord, I want to see" (Luke 18:41)."
"Beauty is all that is glory and God is Beauty embodied, glory manifested. This is what I crave: I hunger for Beauty. Is that why I must keep up the hunt? When I cease the beauty hunt, is that why I begin to starve, waste away?"
"Eucharisteo is everywhere and I want to see eucharisteo everywhere and I want to remember how badly I really want to see. Here. How could I have forgotten how badly I wanted this? To bow down and rightly worship." (Bolding added.)
"How we behold determines if we hold joy. Behold glory and be held by God. How we look determines how we live... if we live."
"The only way to see God manifested in the world around is with the eyes of Jesus within. God within is the One seeing God without. God is both the object of my seeing and the subject who does the act of all real seeing, the Word lens the inner eye wears."
"It is strange, how joy pains... God expanding, widening and deepening my inner spaces. Is that why joy hurts - God stretching us open to receive more of Himself?"
"For God is happiest of all."
"How do you open the eyes to see how to take the daily, domestic, workday vortex and invert it into the dome of an everyday cathedral?"
"Praying with eyes wide open is the only way to pray without ceasing."
"I could live blind, either in black or in blaze. I'll be all eye, all blinded by glory."
Remember, recall, remind, retell, relate, recollect and, of course, recount all the that God has done for us, both personally and colletively throughout time. It is the joy duty.
Well, One Thousand Gifts is certainly a gift from God that needs to be recounted. Here are my favorite quotes from chapters 4-6.
A Sanctuary of Time (4)- Here was my own practice and process of this chapter: Time Dayenu.
Now on to quotes...
"On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur." - Evelyn Underhill
"Hurry always empties a soul."
"Weigh down this moment in time with attention full..."
"This is where God is. In the present. I AM - His very name."
"...time is only of the essence, because time is the essence of God, I AM."
"Thanks makes now a sanctuary."
"When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God."
"Entering fully into the moment can overwhelm, a river running wild. I will forget, and again, and again, but today I do remember. I breathe and I reel and I hold my ground and my tongue in this torrent coming down. I've staked my claim to the miracle." (emphasis mine)
"How long does it take your soul to realize that your life is full?"
"I want to slow down and taste life, give thanks, and see God."
Chapter Five - The inspiration for Secret Garden.
"Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living."
"Eventually, I am guaranteed to lose every earthly thing I have ever possessed...I will lose every single person I have ever loved... You may suffer loss but in Me is anything ever lost, really? Isn't everything that belongs to Christ also yours?"
"And every moment is a message from the Word-God who can't stop writing his heart."
"To read His message in moments, I'll need to read His passion on the page; wear the lens of the Word, to read His writing in the world."
"...I know all our days are struggle and warfare (Job 14:14) and that the spirit-to-spirit combat I endlessly wage with Satan is this ferocious thrash for joy. He sneers at all things that seem to have gone hideously mad in this sin-drunk world, and I gasp to say God is good. The liar defiantly scrawls his graffiti across God's glory, and I heave to enjoy God . . . and Satan strangles, and I whiten knuckles to grasp real Truth and fix that beast to the floor." (emphasis mine)
"Without God's Word as a lens, the world warps."
"And it's the Word of God that turns the rocks in the mouth to the loaves on the tongue."
"Out of the darkness of the cross, the world transfigures into new life. And there is no other way... It is suffering that has the realest possibility to bear down and deliver grace."
"He became ugly that we might become beauty. The God of the Mount of Transfiguration cannot cease His work of transfiguring moments - making all that is dark, evil, empty into that which is all light, grace, full."
"And if all work of transfiguring the ugly into the beautiful pleases God, it is a work of beauty."
"...and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty."
"All is grace only because all can transfigure."
Chapter 6 - This chapter was not a one-day read for me. I didn't walk away with one neatly wrapped nugget, rather, echoes of this chapter permeated the days following the readings.
The White Load and Learning to Speak reverberated from this chapter.
"I am beset by chronic soul amnesia. I empty of truth and need the refilling."
"The only place we have to come to before we die is the place of seeing God. This is what I am famished for: more of the God-glory. I whisper with the blind beggar, "Lord, I want to see" (Luke 18:41)."
"Beauty is all that is glory and God is Beauty embodied, glory manifested. This is what I crave: I hunger for Beauty. Is that why I must keep up the hunt? When I cease the beauty hunt, is that why I begin to starve, waste away?"
"Eucharisteo is everywhere and I want to see eucharisteo everywhere and I want to remember how badly I really want to see. Here. How could I have forgotten how badly I wanted this? To bow down and rightly worship." (Bolding added.)
"How we behold determines if we hold joy. Behold glory and be held by God. How we look determines how we live... if we live."
"The only way to see God manifested in the world around is with the eyes of Jesus within. God within is the One seeing God without. God is both the object of my seeing and the subject who does the act of all real seeing, the Word lens the inner eye wears."
"It is strange, how joy pains... God expanding, widening and deepening my inner spaces. Is that why joy hurts - God stretching us open to receive more of Himself?"
"For God is happiest of all."
"How do you open the eyes to see how to take the daily, domestic, workday vortex and invert it into the dome of an everyday cathedral?"
"Praying with eyes wide open is the only way to pray without ceasing."
"I could live blind, either in black or in blaze. I'll be all eye, all blinded by glory."
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Orthodox Paradox
Christianity is brimming with paradoxes.
What Webster termed "a tenet...contrary to received opinion, or seemingingly absurd, yet true in fact."
Ever-living God lying cold in a grave.
Justification- perfect in standing before God- joined at the hip with sanctification -working out salvation with fear and trembling.
A single God, in three persons.
Dying to self to truly live.
Finding greatest personal satisfaction outside of our person.
In light of today being Resurrection Sunday I read: "So I will sing praise to thy name forever, that I may daily perform my vows." Ps. 61:8
David rejoicing in praise always in order to complete required ceremonial ritual.
JOY: THE BACKBONE OF DUTY. How seemingly absurd...
But right there in the Psalm, the Hebrew for "sing praise" is zawmar: to celebrate, CELEBRATE with song and music. And the word for "perform" (shawlam) has all the implication of duty: to requite, to pay up, to make good, to make restitution.
Like John Piper said when he tweaked the Westminster Catechism, our chief end is "to glorify God by enjoying Him forever." To celebrate God in order to fulfill our duty. It is our joy -and the fulfilling of our charge -to be:
remembering
recalling
reminding ourselves
this day of that day... one of the most basic orthodoxical and paradoxical moments of our faith.
When Jesus defeated death with death and lived to tell about it. How seemingly absurd...
Have you done your duty by God today by celebrating? Are you a reveller? Has there been delight this holy day?
We have been at home all day, in sweats,
Resurrection Sunday outfits still neatly hung in closets, unused.
One child with a cold,
one with a fever,
one still undiagnosed.
Sickness and sleep, no gathering with the local Body.
Rain, no Easter egg hunt.
Chicken soup, not traditional hamballs and mashed potatoes.
Messy house, no beautifully-set dinner table.
Yet inspite of our best-laid plans being in ruin around our ankles
we have sung and read, remembered and REJOICED. How seemingly absurd...
That is our little, beautiful ORTHODOX PARADOX.
What Webster termed "a tenet...contrary to received opinion, or seemingingly absurd, yet true in fact."
Ever-living God lying cold in a grave.
Justification- perfect in standing before God- joined at the hip with sanctification -working out salvation with fear and trembling.
A single God, in three persons.
Dying to self to truly live.
Finding greatest personal satisfaction outside of our person.
In light of today being Resurrection Sunday I read: "So I will sing praise to thy name forever, that I may daily perform my vows." Ps. 61:8
David rejoicing in praise always in order to complete required ceremonial ritual.
JOY: THE BACKBONE OF DUTY. How seemingly absurd...
But right there in the Psalm, the Hebrew for "sing praise" is zawmar: to celebrate, CELEBRATE with song and music. And the word for "perform" (shawlam) has all the implication of duty: to requite, to pay up, to make good, to make restitution.
Like John Piper said when he tweaked the Westminster Catechism, our chief end is "to glorify God by enjoying Him forever." To celebrate God in order to fulfill our duty. It is our joy -and the fulfilling of our charge -to be:
remembering
recalling
reminding ourselves
this day of that day... one of the most basic orthodoxical and paradoxical moments of our faith.
When Jesus defeated death with death and lived to tell about it. How seemingly absurd...
Have you done your duty by God today by celebrating? Are you a reveller? Has there been delight this holy day?
We have been at home all day, in sweats,
Resurrection Sunday outfits still neatly hung in closets, unused.
One child with a cold,
one with a fever,
one still undiagnosed.
Sickness and sleep, no gathering with the local Body.
Rain, no Easter egg hunt.
Chicken soup, not traditional hamballs and mashed potatoes.
Messy house, no beautifully-set dinner table.
Yet inspite of our best-laid plans being in ruin around our ankles
we have sung and read, remembered and REJOICED. How seemingly absurd...
That is our little, beautiful ORTHODOX PARADOX.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The End of the Book
Between Sunday and Tuesday, between loads of laundry and a sick baby held between my arms, I finished One Thousand Gifts.
In the book Ann tells about recording the 1000th gift. As she gets close she says "it has seemed like it might be over all too soon... Come early winter [she] jotted haltlingly, not wanting it to end."
I relate. Except it's not the end of my list I am approaching, but the end of the book. And so, by way of prolonging the joy and challenge found in this book, here is a compilation of some of my favorites quotes from the first three chapters of One Thousand Gifts (favorite quotes from the other chapters will follow, too):
CHAPTER ONE
"We don't see the material world for what it is meant to be: as the means to communion with God."
"From the very beginning, that Eden beginning, that has always been and always is, to this day, His secret purpose, - our return to our full glory."
"For forty long years, God's people daily eat manna- a substance whose name literally means "What is it?" Hungry, they choose to gather up that which is baffling... More than 14,600 days they take their daily nourishment from that which they don't comprehend. They find soul-filling in the inexplicable... They eat the mystery."
CHAPTER TWO
"Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur?"
"The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning "grace." Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks."
"Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning "joy." Joy."
"The only place we need to see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now."
"Sozo means salvation. It means true wellness, complete wholeness. To live sozo is to live the full life. Jesus came that we might live life to the full; He came to give us sozo. And when did the leper receive sozo- the saving to the full, whole life? When he returned and gave thanks."
"And the miracle of eucharisteo never ends: thanksgiving is what precedes the miracle of that salvation being fully worked out in our lives. Thanksgiving - giving thanks in everything - is what prepares the way for salvation's whole restoration."
CHAPTER THREE
"Long, I am a woman who speaks but one language, the language of the fall - dicontentment and self-condemnation, the critical eye and the never satisfied."
"A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit." Erasmus
"Naming is Edenic...naming offers the gift of recognition."
"I am Adam and I discover my meaning and God's, and to name is to learn the language of Paradise."
"God is not in need of magnifying by us so small, but the reverse. It's our lives that are little and we have falsely inflated self, and in thanks we decrease and the world returns right."
"Prayer without ceasing is only possible in a life of continual thanks. How did I ever think there was another way to enter into His courts but with thanksgiving?"
In the book Ann tells about recording the 1000th gift. As she gets close she says "it has seemed like it might be over all too soon... Come early winter [she] jotted haltlingly, not wanting it to end."
I relate. Except it's not the end of my list I am approaching, but the end of the book. And so, by way of prolonging the joy and challenge found in this book, here is a compilation of some of my favorites quotes from the first three chapters of One Thousand Gifts (favorite quotes from the other chapters will follow, too):
CHAPTER ONE
"We don't see the material world for what it is meant to be: as the means to communion with God."
"From the very beginning, that Eden beginning, that has always been and always is, to this day, His secret purpose, - our return to our full glory."
"For forty long years, God's people daily eat manna- a substance whose name literally means "What is it?" Hungry, they choose to gather up that which is baffling... More than 14,600 days they take their daily nourishment from that which they don't comprehend. They find soul-filling in the inexplicable... They eat the mystery."
CHAPTER TWO
"Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur?"
"The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning "grace." Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks."
"Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning "joy." Joy."
"The only place we need to see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now."
"Sozo means salvation. It means true wellness, complete wholeness. To live sozo is to live the full life. Jesus came that we might live life to the full; He came to give us sozo. And when did the leper receive sozo- the saving to the full, whole life? When he returned and gave thanks."
"And the miracle of eucharisteo never ends: thanksgiving is what precedes the miracle of that salvation being fully worked out in our lives. Thanksgiving - giving thanks in everything - is what prepares the way for salvation's whole restoration."
CHAPTER THREE
"Long, I am a woman who speaks but one language, the language of the fall - dicontentment and self-condemnation, the critical eye and the never satisfied."
"A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit." Erasmus
"Naming is Edenic...naming offers the gift of recognition."
"I am Adam and I discover my meaning and God's, and to name is to learn the language of Paradise."
"God is not in need of magnifying by us so small, but the reverse. It's our lives that are little and we have falsely inflated self, and in thanks we decrease and the world returns right."
"Prayer without ceasing is only possible in a life of continual thanks. How did I ever think there was another way to enter into His courts but with thanksgiving?"
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Bathwater
***This post is a continuation of the posting Uncomfortable. I do not think it is suitable for young unmarried persons***
After taking some more time to mull over Ann's last chapter -mull has two meanings: to ponder, or to make a mess of- I think I know the bathwater. There is a big baby in that book, but I -hopefully humbly- submit that here is the bathwater:
There are two ways to interpret the Song of Solomon. I don't know if one is exclusively correct, but I don't think either supports Ann's analogy in the last chapter. SOS is either a practical handbook on sex - a gift from God- in the context of marriage, or it is a picture of God and his love for Israel and by extension Christ and his Bride, the church.
As far as my memory serves, I do not see that God ever uses, in His Word, the analogy of marriage or the marriage bed to describe the unity of God with an individual believer. The picture of the husband and wife, Bridegroom and Bride, is always reserved for God and the CHURCH. I think Ann erred in applying the analogy to God and the individual believer.
Not that there is not intimacy with God for the individual believer. Taking the cues from Scripture, though, and I find that the description of intimacy between the Trinity and an individual is that of platonic or non-sexual relationships: Father to Son, Brother to brother, adopted heirs, children, family. In the parable of the bridegroom we are likened -as individuals- to bridemaids, not the bride. There is an extreme connotation of closeness in these relationships. I think, based on David and Jonathan, that some brothers or close friends are considered closer in some respects than spouses.
So, YES, we can, as individuals, enter into close fellowship and communion and union, and co-habitation with God. We are called to abide. We are ingrafted into the vine as branches.
And, NO, we, as individuals, should not imagine ourselves as an individual bride to The Bridegroom.
The Baby: a call for me as an individual to dwell in gratitude with God. An inspiring personal challenge to go deeper in fellowship with God through thanksgiving.
The Bathwater: using an analogy of sexual love and marriage to convey the above-mentioned ideas.
This is my currently held position. I desire discussion. If you see a different perspective that is defensible from Scripture, I invite it. Please join me in processing these thoughts.
After taking some more time to mull over Ann's last chapter -mull has two meanings: to ponder, or to make a mess of- I think I know the bathwater. There is a big baby in that book, but I -hopefully humbly- submit that here is the bathwater:
There are two ways to interpret the Song of Solomon. I don't know if one is exclusively correct, but I don't think either supports Ann's analogy in the last chapter. SOS is either a practical handbook on sex - a gift from God- in the context of marriage, or it is a picture of God and his love for Israel and by extension Christ and his Bride, the church.
As far as my memory serves, I do not see that God ever uses, in His Word, the analogy of marriage or the marriage bed to describe the unity of God with an individual believer. The picture of the husband and wife, Bridegroom and Bride, is always reserved for God and the CHURCH. I think Ann erred in applying the analogy to God and the individual believer.
Not that there is not intimacy with God for the individual believer. Taking the cues from Scripture, though, and I find that the description of intimacy between the Trinity and an individual is that of platonic or non-sexual relationships: Father to Son, Brother to brother, adopted heirs, children, family. In the parable of the bridegroom we are likened -as individuals- to bridemaids, not the bride. There is an extreme connotation of closeness in these relationships. I think, based on David and Jonathan, that some brothers or close friends are considered closer in some respects than spouses.
So, YES, we can, as individuals, enter into close fellowship and communion and union, and co-habitation with God. We are called to abide. We are ingrafted into the vine as branches.
And, NO, we, as individuals, should not imagine ourselves as an individual bride to The Bridegroom.
The Baby: a call for me as an individual to dwell in gratitude with God. An inspiring personal challenge to go deeper in fellowship with God through thanksgiving.
The Bathwater: using an analogy of sexual love and marriage to convey the above-mentioned ideas.
This is my currently held position. I desire discussion. If you see a different perspective that is defensible from Scripture, I invite it. Please join me in processing these thoughts.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Uncomfortable
***This post is not suitable, in my opinion, for young unmarried persons.***
***Also this is a Spoiler Alert for One Thousand Gifts***
Reading Ann's last chapter was uncomfortable.
"It's our making love."
"To know Him the way Adam knew Eve. Spirit skin to spirit skin."
"The intercourse of soul with God is the very climax of joy."
Even Ann admits, "I feel this burn too, flush of embarrassment up the face."
Her writing here is very... ahem...sexual. Maybe it is the way I am reading it. I am conflicted.
I believe the picture of a marriage is not referencing God and a single believer, as it seems Ann is inferring here. Rather, it is referencing Christ and his Church. Yes, there is still an intensity and intimacy, but somehow it is one degree removed. There is less tension. I wonder how a man would read this chapter?
I would like to read Spurgeon's rendering of Song of Solomon. I know Matthew Henry interprets the book from an allegorical perspective. Is there crossover? Can it be about both human, sexual love and a love between Christ and a believer? I wonder what Ann thinks of it?
I know we, even in our current morality-free, anti- "absolute truth" culture, still hold vestiges of the "Victorian Prudishness." Is that the akwardness I am feeling? After all, Abram bedded Sarai's servant. David was a barbaric king who had multiple wives, who also danced exposed in public. Charlemagne was a great Christian king of the Middle Ages and his principal wife was only 13 when he married her and he too had concubines.
Is it simply a cultural norm that Ann insults in her last chapter, or has she unintentionally crossed a line because of an error in a theological analogy?
I don't know.
I know I am challenged to " live in God."
I know I want to be in closer communion with God as a result of reading this chapter.
I know I wouldn't want an unmmarried child of mine reading that chapter.
I know I won't recommend this last chapter to a few choice friends.
I JUST DON'T KNOW.
Is this a call not to throw out the baby with the bathwater?
God has used this book in my life. He has revived me, quickened my spirit, restored the joy of my salvation. And this book was a pathway, a gate, a means to that grace.
I have searched my Bible more, prayed more, seen more of God in this season that I have in the last couple of years -the dormant years.
I am still conflicted, but also, I am refreshed.
I'll keep the baby.
I have more time to figure out what's the bathwater.
***Also this is a Spoiler Alert for One Thousand Gifts***
Reading Ann's last chapter was uncomfortable.
"It's our making love."
"To know Him the way Adam knew Eve. Spirit skin to spirit skin."
"The intercourse of soul with God is the very climax of joy."
Even Ann admits, "I feel this burn too, flush of embarrassment up the face."
Her writing here is very... ahem...sexual. Maybe it is the way I am reading it. I am conflicted.
I believe the picture of a marriage is not referencing God and a single believer, as it seems Ann is inferring here. Rather, it is referencing Christ and his Church. Yes, there is still an intensity and intimacy, but somehow it is one degree removed. There is less tension. I wonder how a man would read this chapter?
I would like to read Spurgeon's rendering of Song of Solomon. I know Matthew Henry interprets the book from an allegorical perspective. Is there crossover? Can it be about both human, sexual love and a love between Christ and a believer? I wonder what Ann thinks of it?
I know we, even in our current morality-free, anti- "absolute truth" culture, still hold vestiges of the "Victorian Prudishness." Is that the akwardness I am feeling? After all, Abram bedded Sarai's servant. David was a barbaric king who had multiple wives, who also danced exposed in public. Charlemagne was a great Christian king of the Middle Ages and his principal wife was only 13 when he married her and he too had concubines.
Is it simply a cultural norm that Ann insults in her last chapter, or has she unintentionally crossed a line because of an error in a theological analogy?
I don't know.
I know I am challenged to " live in God."
I know I want to be in closer communion with God as a result of reading this chapter.
I know I wouldn't want an unmmarried child of mine reading that chapter.
I know I won't recommend this last chapter to a few choice friends.
I JUST DON'T KNOW.
Is this a call not to throw out the baby with the bathwater?
God has used this book in my life. He has revived me, quickened my spirit, restored the joy of my salvation. And this book was a pathway, a gate, a means to that grace.
I have searched my Bible more, prayed more, seen more of God in this season that I have in the last couple of years -the dormant years.
I am still conflicted, but also, I am refreshed.
I'll keep the baby.
I have more time to figure out what's the bathwater.
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