Wings

The details of Michelangelo’s painting (the one we looked at together on Sunday) were so interesting to me. The picture of Adam’s laid-back posture and limp wrist and the thought of such a lackadaisical response to the Creator of the entire universe, the One who sustains him breath by breath….!

I’ve had my own rather more torturous approach-avoidance thing going on in my relationship to God for most of my life. That’s a very long story, too long and complicated to tell here. What matters is that now, finally, I’m beginning to understand that God really is good (how inadequate words are!). Even now, in September 2007, I’m in the thick of this process of re-perceiving God’s character and His will. Now that I’ve got eyes to see, I’m seeing this truth everywhere in Scripture and everywhere in my life: God’s will is brilliantly good, comprehensively right for every single person and for the whole human race. God’s will is loving and wise in intricate, mysterious ways that I’ve only begun to discover and that I intend to explore with relish forever and ever and ever. Beginning to understand and believe this one thing has changed my life: God’s will is good.

Very good. But not easy.  (And not boring or irrelevent or optional, either.)

Jesus said that if we love him, we’ll obey his commands.  The big command he gave us is “Love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Is there any command that could be more demanding that that?! E. Stanley Jones writes, “Note that it’s all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength. Not a demand for a portion of your heart, a portion of your mind, a portion of your soul, a portion of your strength — the demand is for all. And yet John quietly and decisively says: ’His commands are not burdensome.’”

How can it be both the most demanding and the least burdensome? This love that we’re commanded to live is exactly our highest good and our deepest need. Anyone who has tried to obey this greatest command finds it to be the most satisfying experience of all. God’s will is not only good, it is good for us. To refuse to love goes against the grain of the whole cosmos and against the grain of our own deepest self, which is made in the image of God.  It helps to understand that the most comprehensively true thing that has ever been said about God, is that God is love.

If we give ourselves in wholehearted obedience to God’s will as spelled out in this command to love, we find that we can live with ourselves freely, joyfully.

Lots of BRC people have been reading Red Moon Rising by Pete Greig. In chapter 11, in his explosive exuberant poem “The Vision,” he talks about people who “lay down their rights and their precious little wrongs” so that nothing can stop them from loving. It is so freeing to let go of resentments and ‘rights’ and self-protective measures! God’s will is GOOD. It’s best for us and for everyone. We were made for it. His commands are not burdensome.  As E. Stanley Jones says, “Jesus’ burden is the same burden that wings are to a bird.”

Let’s fly.

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