...pass-through gifts

I then shall live as one who’s learned compassion;

I’ve been so loved that I’ll risk loving too.

I know how fear builds walls instead of bridges;

I dare to see another’s point of view.

And when relationships demand commitment,

then I’ll be there to care and follow through.

---Gloria Gaither, 1981

Pat Benatar sang it, and there are times I almost believe it.

            Love is a battlefield.

There are so many ways to get burned. To get let down. To fall short. To do the hurting. To walk away. To run.

Thank God. No, really…thank God, for being our teacher in love, as in all things. Because we learn compassion from the creator of compassion. Because we pattern commitment from our model of steadfast love. Because we have watched our brother-Savior tear down the walls of fear that divide, we’ve heard stories of bridges of understanding spanning deep chasms. We have read the stories, too, of God’s love offered to an indifferent world, and of the patience and kindness offered even in the face of that indifference.

Fear whispers, “There are so many ways for love to go wrong.”

Thank God for the pass-through gifts of such compassion and understanding

...out of our huts

Strengthened by this glimpse of glory, fearful lest our faith decline,

We, like Peter, find it tempting to remain and build a shrine.

But true worship gives us courage to proclaim what we profess,

That our daily lives may prove us people of the God we bless.

---Carl P. Daw, 1988

We look, in these days, for worship that ‘wows’ us, worship that impresses, that astounds. We want to be fed, enraptured, thunderstruck. We want to wish to stay forever, to keep coming back for more, to never ‘let this feeling end’. We want ‘this’, always.

We want, in some strange way, to build a hut, to pull God in through the doorway, to hide away this glittering holiness, this shimmering lightness, all for us, for all time.

But see here. Worship is no glittering destination, no rapturous ‘fix’ for the faithful. Worship, rather, is challenging, inspiring, transformative. And, once transformed, a worshiping people are a working people, compelled by our transformation to lift up what is fallen, to bind up what is broken, to lighten what is burdensome, to reconcile what is torn. 

Out of the huts with us. It is time to let transformation do its work. To live as people of God.

...to risk life

O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee;

I give Thee back the life I owe, that in Thine ocean depths

its flow may richer, fuller be.

---George Matheson, 1882

It’s hard to believe. Someone comes to you and says “Give up your riches to me. Blindly trust that I will take them and increase them.” And if this were an email solicitation, or a risky stock market offering, or a trench-coated fellow on a busy street corner, we know we’d be foolish to go along. No one wants to be scammed like that.

However, this is what God calls us to do. Here the hymnist imagines God as the personification of Love, a love that seeks us and pursues us, wraps us up and embraces us. This love calls to us, “Trust me. Turn over your life, which you may consider rich, full, and precious. In the depths of my life, your life becomes rich indeed. Entrust your life to me to achieve depth and meaning. You can rest here from your striving; here you are loved.”

This is a risk we can take, must take, if we are to live lives of meaning. Oh, to be found in the ocean of God’s love!