Friday, May 06, 2005
ruminating
love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. if you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. 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. to love is to be vulnerable.
~clive staples lewis
damn you c.s. for being so right. ok, really i like him and his writing. he's a very insightful fellow, and it's good to be reminded of how we should really live instead of how we naturally desire to live. when you're hurt in any way, the natural response is not only to recoil, but to do whatever it takes to not experience that pain (or any other) ever again. and with me being an internal/mental processor, i'm probably even more prone to pretend everything is fine while inside i'm closing up and attempting to numb myself so as to avert the possibility of future pain.
but that's not who i want to be, and more importantly, that's not who God made me to be. He made me with feelings not as a superfluous addition, but to experience joy, happiness, and His love. so as tempting as it is at the moment to retreat into that proverbial coffin (and thus doom myself to a metaphorical emotional death), the only real choice is to continue in the way of love and leave myself vulnerable. because that's really the only way to ever experience all the good God and others [as a blessing from God] have to offer us through the medium of relationships. is anything really fun or worthwile if there's no possibility of danger or failure? that sounds like a fairly boring existence to me. and a boring life is not what God means for us to experience either.
hurt is an unfortunate side effect of all this, but Jesus experienced the ultimate hurt in displaying God's love for me on the cross, and God is hurt (grieved) every day by those who reject Him in favor of whatever false source of contentment they've currently decided to subscribe to. so if God is willing to be continually rejected by many for the sake having a relationship with those who do choose to love Him in return, surely i can follow His lead (albeit on a much smaller scale, since i am not truly worthy of anyone's praise or affection).
perhaps someday, should God so choose to bless me in such a manner, it (love) will be reciprocated in all the most humanly fulfilling of ways. but even were i to become despised by every last one of my fellow earthly inhabitants, i must remember that the one and only source of true love is God Himself, and only with Him will i be satisfied to the core of my being. everything else is mere imitation.
this all feels very disjointed as i write, but the heart knows only what it feels, not necessarily how to lucidly convey such sentiments.
movin' my soul: newsboys - i surrender all
ink, mind & parchment: the journal
love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. if you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. 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. to love is to be vulnerable.
~clive staples lewis
damn you c.s. for being so right. ok, really i like him and his writing. he's a very insightful fellow, and it's good to be reminded of how we should really live instead of how we naturally desire to live. when you're hurt in any way, the natural response is not only to recoil, but to do whatever it takes to not experience that pain (or any other) ever again. and with me being an internal/mental processor, i'm probably even more prone to pretend everything is fine while inside i'm closing up and attempting to numb myself so as to avert the possibility of future pain.
but that's not who i want to be, and more importantly, that's not who God made me to be. He made me with feelings not as a superfluous addition, but to experience joy, happiness, and His love. so as tempting as it is at the moment to retreat into that proverbial coffin (and thus doom myself to a metaphorical emotional death), the only real choice is to continue in the way of love and leave myself vulnerable. because that's really the only way to ever experience all the good God and others [as a blessing from God] have to offer us through the medium of relationships. is anything really fun or worthwile if there's no possibility of danger or failure? that sounds like a fairly boring existence to me. and a boring life is not what God means for us to experience either.
hurt is an unfortunate side effect of all this, but Jesus experienced the ultimate hurt in displaying God's love for me on the cross, and God is hurt (grieved) every day by those who reject Him in favor of whatever false source of contentment they've currently decided to subscribe to. so if God is willing to be continually rejected by many for the sake having a relationship with those who do choose to love Him in return, surely i can follow His lead (albeit on a much smaller scale, since i am not truly worthy of anyone's praise or affection).
perhaps someday, should God so choose to bless me in such a manner, it (love) will be reciprocated in all the most humanly fulfilling of ways. but even were i to become despised by every last one of my fellow earthly inhabitants, i must remember that the one and only source of true love is God Himself, and only with Him will i be satisfied to the core of my being. everything else is mere imitation.
this all feels very disjointed as i write, but the heart knows only what it feels, not necessarily how to lucidly convey such sentiments.
movin' my soul: newsboys - i surrender all
ink, mind & parchment: the journal
