wild (but not uncultivated) musings of a Canadian unschool mom
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1:43 PM - Jul. 31, 2006 -
Believe it or not, I don't tend to be
particularly personal on my blogs -- even less so on the other one,
which is just a skim of our surface environment. I suspect we all have
a filter -- that's part of what makes us bloggers. It's nice to look at
life that way and sift out the portions we don't like about ourselves
or our lives.
But it's also not always useful. On that note, let me share from my personal journal, something I never do.
July 27, 2006
Even if You bring drought, I love You.
Even if You put me through hugely frustrating circumstances, I love You.
Even if You send people to hurt me, I love You.
Even if You won't ever let me see a real, living, growing church, I love You.
But I'm not sure I can love You when you condemn my loved ones to hell.
July 30, 2006
All Christian life consists in love. The Spirit indwelling us
communicates the (agape, hesed) love to us, so that we are then
possessed of it towards God and fellow man.
I have what I don't have, in spite of my current inner bankruptcy,
because I have the Holy Spirit. The love of Christ isn't mine to
muster, steward or dispense. My focus doesn't need to be on my
lovingness or lack of it. It needs to be on Jesus Christ, the One who
provides the love in my life.
Two nights ago I wept terribly over the possibility that God could have
sent my grandfather to hell. Even to write it puts a cold shiver and an
ache in my inward being. I had no love left for God or for anyone else, family or otherwise.
I asked God for something more than mere feelings of peace or pat terms of His goodness. Something more than experience. I asked Him for Scripture that would give me peace with Grandy's death.
He answered quickly, through a Jonathan Edwards sermon on Christian love.
...True love is an ingredient in true
and living faith, and is what is most essential and distinguishing in
it. Love is no ingredient in a merely speculative faith, but it is the
life and soul of a practical faith. A truly practical or saving faith,
is light and heat together, or rather light and love, while that which
is only a speculative faith, is only light without heat... A
speculative faith consists only in the assent of the understanding; but
in saving faith there is also the consent of the heart; and that faith
which is only of the former kind, is no better than the faith of the
devils, for they have faith so far as it can exist without love,
believing while they tremble....
He whose heart consent to Christ as a Saviour, has true love to him as
such. For the heart sincerely to consent to the way of salvation by
Christ, cannot be distinguished from loving that way of salvation, and
resting in it. There is an act of choice or election in true saving
faith, whereby the soul chooses Christ for its Saviour and portion, and
accepts of and embraces him as such; but as was observed before, an
elecation or choice whereby it so chooses God and Christ, is an act of
love -- the love of a soul embracing him as its dearest friend and
portion.
I wept to realize that however empty I may be, I'm not out of
love. I will never be. I chose Him. To think that He counts just that
choice, if that's all the choice I can make today, as love -- this is
water in a droughted land.
...The
working, active and acting nature of anything, is the life of it; and
that which makes us call a thing alive, is, that we observe an active
nature in it.... And if we would know what the working active thing in
true faith is, the apostle tells us in Galatians 5:6, "Faith works by love."
So that it is love which is the active working spirit in all true
faith. This is its very soul, without which it is dead, as, in another
form, he tells in the text, saying that faith without charity or love,
is nothing, though it be to such a degree that it can move mountains.
And when he says, in the seventh verse of the context, that charity
"believes all things and hopes all things," he probably refers to the
great virtues of believing and hoping in the truth and grace of God...
I can believe and hope in God's grace.... Does this mean I can believe
God saved my grandfather when I spoke to him about the Lord that last
night? Still, my heart isn't settled with such a leap of judgement,
even though Grandy uttered one clear "Yes," when I told him I wanted
him to come to heaven with me.
I will believe that You've done the right thing with him, I told the Lord. I will believe in Your mercy and grace, and in the love You have for us. He belongs to You.
Into Your hands I commit his spirit.
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Untitled Comment
It is so hard when we think of the eternal home of some of the people we hold dear. God gave us this heart! My dad is not a Christian. Oh, he attends church with my mom and mom and I have talked to him. If he was asked his religion he would state, "Christian." But, I fear that he has given intellectual acknowledgement that indeed their is a God and he is confusing this with a committed heart. I was where he is for a long, long time.
I am also believing in God's hope and grace. I have found this easy to do as my dad is still alive and I hold on to hope that he will indeed have a change of heart. Praying for you through this spiritual struggle!
Oh, and I will take you up on your "offer" of a tag. Usually against my better judgement. Actually, the only person that was tagging me was Marissa. Hers always had something to do with what is the last movie you watched, what are you wearing, pick up the nearest book and turn to page... Your question has value and forces us to remember that we are more blessed than we know.
Blessings ~
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