The town far far away

My whole way of thinking has been dumped out like the contents of a cardboard box on moving day.  I have gone from one mental dwelling to a town far far away.  I have seen God take my incapability and infuse it with himself.  Several years ago I realized how I was destitute in the department of loving anyone.  I was unlovely and selfish.  I saw my shortcomings with candid truth and I hated what I saw.  Unfortunately my glimpse into my humanness was not tapered with biblical truth.  I was seeing the universal person when I saw myself, but I didn't realize it then.  Rather I wondered what was wrong with me and why I was so ugly.  Ah, the beauty of being broken and without answers.  The wild desperation that leads to finding answers where they have always been - in Christ and Christ alone.  From my personal experience when you are wrecked against the Rock, and yet find yourself one piece in grace, that is supernatural. 

Being driven from safety and compelled to the town far far away, God permitted my thinking to be emptied.   I realized how the ability to love wasn't in me.  I was the empty box.  God was the contents.  Love is not humanly natural.  It is all God-driven. It is all divine.  I was not unlike the rest of the world.  I was an object of grace, and because of that, any love I showed would have to be the outworking of the Holy Spirit in my life.  What a resurrection day. 

C.S. Lewis wrote so well, "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one... Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

God was vulnerable.   He gave his very self.   His love was costly.  His love was willingly nailed to the cross and his love was willingly entombed in the grave.  But on the third day his love was fulfilled.   His resurrection brought me to life.  His resurrection reshapes my heart for the things that matter to him.  The Lover of my Soul opened my eyes to my inadequacy to enable me to love recklessly through his power.

Now, "We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19