Radical Love

   

  A still, small voice in the quiet of your soul says, "I love you all.  Out of all, each one of you, I love you the most.  There is nothing that stands between me and you but your own defenses.  When you drop your defenses, you will find me as I have always been - waiting for you to see.  Each individual one of you will see a different part of me. See with the eyes I gave you when you were born.  Eyes that don't see possible or impossible.  The eyes that only see love. Pure and true love, better than the love of your friends or your family or parents or your pet.  More complete. More life-changing, more life-reinventing."  You will be raised from the death that you do not know because you have only known it.

     Death, why?  That sounds so final.  The soul is like a seed, plucked from its home in eternity, it dies and knows no life. Sure, it can seem like life to exist.  But it is not living as it was intended: to be a great strong tree with green leaves that provides shade in the heat of day.  Provides roost for the beautiful birds in the long quiet hours of the night.  Provides shelter for them in the storm and nesting space in the cold winter.  The seed stays in that inactive state until a miracle happens;  when it is planted in the soil, watered, tended and loved by a master gardener.  The soul longs to live. To taste the spiritual, the divine.  To taste the love of your creator for his perfect creation - you. 

     It is a waking from a slumber.  Like when you realize that the girl or guy you long for in high school has been pining away for you since you were children.  Always waiting for the hint that you would respond.  I believe that God made lovers to show us something of himself: his radical love that is a dance in the original garden, with people that are slowly becoming free from the bondage of self.  The bondage of "I've got this."  "I can do this." "No-one else has got this." "No one on this planet really actually has my back - I am my only hope."

     It is a lie.  Let me say that again.  The narrative you were born into is a lie.  It says you have to provide for yourself. That there are only finite resources and we are living in a world of scarcity.  Whomever takes must be taking from another.  So we are in constant competition. There is another truth lying just beneath the surface: there is a kingdom that is here and not yet, a kingdom that you were meant to have a hand in bringing to Earth.  "The kingdom upside-down."  The kingdom of love, where the poorest are raised to the honored seats at the banquet.  Where love is freely given and freely received because it is infinite, coming from a source of infinite unquenchable eternal love in relationship with itself and wanting a relationship with you.  Where resources are provided just when you need them, no more, no less.  When I worry about my financial state, my wife and I give to charity.  When we get in a bind, we pray.  GOD ALWAYS PROVIDES - just enough to get what is needed, no more, no less.  If I have faith (and faith just means trust) I am immediately at peace. There will always be everything I need as long as I live and into eternity. Nothing will be handed to me that I cannot overcome, that will hurt me.  Because every bad thing you can think of in this world - relationships, terrorism, death, sickness, want, depression, can all be redeemed.  What does redeemed mean?

     I'll tell you my life-long illness that was thrust upon my shoulders when I was 17 has been redeemed.  It has turned me into a person who looks out and searches for others with the same struggles, and causes me to ache for them in such a way that I cannot help but do everything in my power to help them. It has become the deep well in my soul that I write from. Everything can be redeemed.  Every scratch, every blow, every failure, every attempt at the impossible. Even physical death. Because we are not merely physical beings, we are spiritual beings.  There is so much more to us than meets the eye.  I believe we are the very hands and feet of God on Earth: the Body of the living savior Christ.

     And the blood of this body, that which courses through its veins and animates every part, is love.  Jesus said "I am the vine, and you are the branches." If we attach to him, we will be filled with this life-blood of love.  And it will, over time when we walk the hard road of change, begin to pour out of every nook and cranny of our being.  Pouring the love out on everyone: those who are like us, those who are not like us, those who are against us, who strike our cheek.  Those who bomb our airports and trains.  The only lasting defense against rage is love.

     It is all about love.  And that is what He is saying to us.  Accept this love.  And pour it out on the world.  The world will never be the same.