sigh. i love, love experiencing community with brothers and sisters. oh my, tis so sweet and tasty.
i especially love corporate prayer. i'm not very adept at pinpointing the exact reason, but people together pouring out themselves in praise, adoration, cries, and pleas to God... mmm that's good stuff. it's honest. it's naked. it makes Him smile. it makes me smile. whoo hoo.
lately i've had all of these questions accosting me. they're formless questions... more of an annoying buzz of discontent and unease. they whisper doubts. they demand answers, but in stacked decks that back you in a corner without letting you reach for truth.
argh. ugh. blehk. geeehhaarrrrrrg. >:O.
these questions leave my mouth tasting like copper and my head swimming in a fog of disheartened frustration, but here's my rallying cry and attempt to kill this bitter root....
"screw that."
i know it's not very eloquent, but why waste my breath or brain power on something so fruitless? i want to love my God with everything i am, including my mind. if there are questions, He has the answers and He commands us to seek wisdom, but our drive for wisdom has to be underpinned by one solid, behemoth of a foundation: the fear of the Lord. it's the realization that there is a God, that He is God in every sense of the word, and that everything finds their beginning and end on His terms. in short, it's the trembling recognition that He is God and we are not.
i fight the urge to find this oppressive. i mean, trembling? really? i automatically want to buck it and shake an accusing fist, to "fight the man." humph. foolishness is what that is. why would an ant be angry about having to acknowledge the truth that the sun is far, far more immense, more powerful, more dangerous, and just plain more than it is? is that not just reality? when said at point blank, there is no offense rising up in me. of course God is God and i am not. duh. but to tell me to fear Him? that requires not just submission, but a substantially deeper level of deference. it's humiliating. it's groveling. it's truth. ha, imagine the truth being offensive :)... i shake my head at myself.
"but what about a God of love?" is my mind's next volley of attack. why should we fear a God of love and mercy and kindness? does He not delight in us as a father his children? as His own word says, there is no fear in love because perfect love casts out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and those who've dove into Christ have no fear of punishment. so, the sunday school teachers when i was young taught me that fear means respect. maybe that's right. i'm no master of hebrew. i wouldn't even consider myself a novice, but as far as i've looked, God uses the same word (yare') when He commands to fear Him as He does when He says not to fear others, but maybe that's not much of an argument. after all, why would God tell us to view anything or anyone else with the same reverence that we should view Him. so my question remains - what does this fear look like?
perhaps the problem is i'm looking at this from the wrong perspective. or maybe it's a simple matter of swallowing pride. or maybe it's a combo because i've been immersed in this idea that someone else doesn't have the right to tell me what to do and someone who does take that right is a horrid tyrant unless i consent to his/her power. (not a wretched mindset i suppose in dealing with humankind and in the right manner. injustice is not a thing to be taken lightly and those who claim to be following Christ and are not fervently fighting injustice might want to take a second, third, or twenty-thousandth gander at the true heart of God.) but is God a man that i might have the same standards and means of interaction? no. dear Father, no.
so what is it then? it can be no other thing than that i am not God and God is God, and by that very distinction, by the person He is, He has every right and quality to be feared. In fact, in one passage God implies that the right relationship to Him is one where we fear and tremble in the sense that we twist, dance, writhe, and travail in anguish at the thought of His might and wrath. it's the same respect and fear that caused Job not only to shut his mouth, but to weep in dust and ashes when God allowed Him a picture of how immense and powerful He really is.
arghhh. if only i didn't have such an either or paradigm. now my battle is to realize the truth of fearing God without dimishing the truth of the incomprehensibly great reach of His arms of Love - that nothing, not distance, not life, not death, not evil and sorrow and pain, nothing can separate me from His loving embrace and the fact that because of Christ i am inextricably bound to Love Himself.
sigh.
perhaps the unimaginable depth of His neverending, never-changing love is why we should be in such awe, fear, and reverence of Him. to think that the God of all that exists, the One who literally made it all, loves me? i mean really, loves me? wow. and to think that He loves me so much that He would take all that He is and all His might and make Himself like me in order to be hated, scorned, and murdered that He could bring me back to Him.
oh Father, my Father! thank you.
what's more, (who could imagine that there would be more!) He defeated death! He killed the very bane of my existance to give me Himself, Life. i am not only free of the consequences that i rightly have crushing me, but then He gives, gives! me something i could never, ever be worthy of.
ha! seriously folks, joy is almost an understatement :)
the word is love.
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