God Is Love: The Family of Trinity

In an effort to understand how the spiritual disciplines of solitude and silence can overcome loneliness, I began to think about the Trinity. I began to see how being with God is not so much like being with another person, but in a family. I began to see that I long to know that God delights in me and enjoys me, but even more, that he delights in himself as Trinity, kind of like I delight in being with my family and watching them love each other as well as me.

Then as I read from one of the gospels this morning, I realized how much God the Father wants to have company for Jesus and looks for such people, who will enjoy "the family" of the Trinity. Jesus spent most if not all his time talking about how life is with his Father in the kingdom of heaven, sort of like saying, "Here's what my dad does at my house with the family." Perhaps the kingdom of heaven is above all the "family life" of Father, Son, and Spirit and those with them.

It also helped me see how I could believe in Jesus - admire him and follow him - but miss the boat on his Father. Unless I understand the goodness and love of God the Father, none of what Jesus says will make any sense. Perhaps this is what he meant by: "That is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him." (Jn. 6:65) The first step to understanding Jesus is admiring his Father and trusting him. Although I can and need to make a choice there, I cannot do it alone without God "enabling" me to see him for who he is. In order to understand Jesus as the "Beloved Son," I must accept and embrace God as his loving, all-powerful Father as well.

The reason I am so interested in this interaction is that I am suspecting that this trinitarian community is the only thing that can cure the loneliness and fear that drives human (my) sin. Jesus, knowing this, spent his time talking about the life of God in Trinity, and opened the door for my entry. He spent his time showing that the glory of God - his love, goodness, rightness, power, etc. - is what I can join him in trusting and worshiping. I can enjoy God through Jesus, but I can also enjoy the Father with Jesus.

This may me some more of the profound effect of The Shack on so many people. It was not only the truth that God can spend time with each of us, being "especially fond" of each of us, but also that we can spend time with a loving family of Father, Son, and Spirit, and enjoy their enjoyment of each other. As a father, I am pleased that my children love me, passionate about my kids loving their mom, and ecstatic when they love each other. I delight in seeing love displayed at least as much as I delight in receiving love directly. This may be what fends off loneliness and fear mostly: a shared love and admiration for each member of the family.

So I long to join the family and begin to read about how Jesus explains the goodness of being together with him and the Father and the Holy Spirit. "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." (Jn. 14:23) By following Jesus I come to find that the Father loves me because I love his Son. Where there is love for Jesus, the Father can make a home where mutual love can occur, where I receive the love of the Father and the Son and where I see the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father. God's love for me is that basis of my love for God, but even before that God's love within himself is what brings his love for me. So in 1 John, before the truth that "we love because he first loved us" comes "God is love" (4:16,19).

I can't say I understand this fully, but I feel hope that I might understand that "God is love" much better. I believe I can understand him better because that is what Jesus came to teach, and he is the only one who could teach about this "family life" since he came from it.

Father, you sent Jesus to me to show and teach me about your shared love and how you want me to be part of it. Jesus, you came in obedience and taught and received everyone who loved the Father. Spirit, you are the life and love that stays within my life forever, lifting me up to the place where Jesus left, pointed to, and returned: the Father's side, the Father's hearth, the Father's home. Let me be with you God, in all your love, receiving, sharing, and standing in awe of your amazing goodness. You are so good. Amen.

Jesus Loves Leftovers

Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted. (Jn. 6:12)

I've always been warned not to over-allegorize the Bible. Don't take little details and blow them up into central doctrines. But in John, I have been finding that he seems to pack a lot even in the details, like the Master. Also, I just couldn't resist here.

Last night we had some "Artisan" bread with our dinner. It was the second night in a row we had bought some from the store. My daughter said, "Is this homemade? It's wonderful!" What a pretty loaf it was. A nice oval with a cut down the middle. A shiny brown crust. It tasted pretty good too.

That's what I've always wanted to be in my Christian walk. A nice, pretty loaf that tastes good too. Not only do I look good, I actually do good as well. What a pleasant surprise that would be. Not what anyone expects at all. (I wonder why. . .)

Well, here's my reality. I'm a leftover. Partially chewed, a little stale. No perfect loaf here. There may be some good taste, but it is more a memory of a good meal rather than the real thing. Sometimes I feel downright moldy! So much for the perfect loaf dream.

Here's the good news. The new twelve tribes of Israel (and really this goes for the original as well), are like twelve baskets of left over bread pieces after a grand meal. The kingdom not only is a grand feast supplying all I need, it is also a place for the leftovers like myself. I am glad I can be part of the feast, even if it is as a left over.

Jesus said, "Gather the pieces that are left over." What a calling for these disciples! Looking at the crowds that Jesus loved and served, I can see he must really had a thing for leftovers. These were the people that had nothing to offer really. What an idea of "poor in spirit" - something almost forgotten in the back of the refrigerator! Yep, that's how I really am. The gathering of all these leftovers could only mean a future feast. Rather than say, "Throw it away and get something better," Jesus says, "Gather them for a new feast, one that comes from the power of my hands into the pieces of everyday people's lives."

Jesus said, "Let nothing be wasted." The leftovers from this feast are precious. Not because leftovers are precious, but because of the feast they come from. The kingdom of God has come in the hand of Jesus that broke the bread and multiplied it. My life may be chewed up and partially eaten, but it becomes precious when it is placed in the basket of life. To be left on the ground is to be lost, wasted. Jesus wants nothing wasted from his kingdom, even what is broken and gnawed on.

Lord, I find my desire to be a perfect loaf is constantly frustrated. Rather, let me be gathered into your life - a life that feeds and nourishes. Let me not be wasted because I have not been gathered. Truly, the gathering must be into the community of the Trinity. In that place there is not waste, but renewal and usefulness. Let me be gathered into that love and not left out because I am ashamed of being a leftover. Amen.

My Soul Is a Stream

My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own cisterns,

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

(Jer. 2:13)

I think the place where I was most influenced by this verse was in Larry Crabb's Connecting, when he wrote about the different strategies we have in trying to relate with people other than really connecting with them in Christ. I don't remember everything he said, but likely I will echo much of what is there.

I think of my soul. It is a living, moving thing, but I tempted to treat it like a bowl. I want my life to be a pool. I can dip in and draw from it when I want to. The problem is that, like a cistern, such a pool depends on rain and reuses the water. Also the water has to be cleaned somehow to remain drinkable.

The metaphor will break down, of course. But what I sense is that I long for my soul to find a stasis that I can control and hold. Unfortunately, like any stagnant pool, the water in my soul cannot remain fresh or even drinkable. Also, my soul leaks.

The fact that my soul "leaks" gives a clue to its true function. It is not meant to hold water, but to guide a stream. It is a stream-bed more than a cistern. It is meant to hold "living," flowing water. Too much pooling or damming does violence to its function: bringing life to and through all the aspects of my being, my heart, mind, and body.

The trouble with streams is that they flow where they will and not where I would have them go. So my soul acts almost independently of my desires. "Why so downcast, O my soul?" is the pained question of how I cannot hold and control the life that comes and goes through my soul. I cannot control my soul, but I can seek to restore it.

Jeremiah says in the same chapter: "Now why go to Egypt to drink from the Shihor? And why go to Assyria to drink water from the River?" Innately, I know my soul needs restoration, but I have a part of me that does not want to go to God. I want restoration to be quick and easy, not slow and difficult. This is one way of sin, forsaking the way of God and seeking something else that seems easier or better. As Dallas Willard says, "Temptation is the thought that you're missing out on something." The irony is that Jesus' way may seem more difficult, but really it is easier than than what I often try to do: grab and hold water.

But the fact remains that God is the only spring and everything else leaks out and provides not living water, but sitting water that seems fresh, but quickly becomes stagnant and leaks out. I find that the most disturbing part of God's restoration of my soul is that it flows. I cannot keep it or control it, I must receive it from moment to moment. It involves continual interaction, that is, real relationship with him. Only then is my soul restored.

One picture of such a restoration and its cost as well as joy is the picture in the Two Towers of the Ents restoring the flow if the river (Entwash?) through Saruman's domain, washing away the dams and the war machines and the orcs and bringing life back to that whole region, through the defeat of evil and the return of the river to its God-given purpose, watering and bringing life, rather than powering machines for war and domination.

God bringing living water through my soul is hard in how it washes away my dams that seek to contain and hold it for my own purposes. I must also allow it to flow through me. Love is not merely something I receive, it is (more importantly) something that I give. It is not so important because my love accomplishes so much, but because it is what I am made to do and, really, what I long to do. The soul is made to facilitate such giving, so that it springs from God and returns to him, in worship, wonder, awe, service to others, and welcoming them. I cannot truly receive love from the Lord without returning it to him. That is the nature of Trinity, a community I am called to be a part of. As Trinity, love flows in, through, and out of God.

Lord, let me live in the flow of your love. Let me clear the path for this stream of living water rather than try to dam and keep it. Bathe and wash my whole life with your beauty, goodness, and love flowing through my soul. Amen.