Poem of the Week

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time/I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

a vision of love from malachi 1:1-5

It's February and I'm scheduled to preach this coming Sunday.  So, what better thing to do than to cover the topic of love, right?  Right.  I'm always about obligatory sermons, albeit with a little bit of a twist.  C.S. Lewis had quite a bit to say on the topic of love, though from a standpoint of the four Greek ideas of love: eros, storge, filia, and agape.  In considering this model, I found it wonderfully captivating to consider the agape love of God vis-a-vis Malachi 1:2.

So,  that is to say that I'm doing away with the traditional 1 Cor. 13 storge, filia, and eros (at least from a human context) sermons and focusing more on our love for God, and God's preceding and subsequent love for us.  God's love is awe-inspiring in its uniqueness.  He loved us before we loved him, and even when we don't feel like loving God anymore, he still loves us.  In Malachi 1:2, we hear these words: "'I have loved you," says the Lord."  That phrase, "I have loved you" is jarring and revelational.  In Hebrew, this phrase is "Ahavti et-chem" (אָהַבְתִּי אֶתְכֶם), and it is perfect tense, meaning: past action, present implication, and a future consideration or commitment.  What is so interesting about this phrase is that God affirms his love through the ages for a people who question whether or not he loves them (rest of Malachi 1:2: "And yet you say, 'How have you love us?'").  What we can learn from this is that God loves us, his people, even when it is unrequited on our part.  Even when we don't love God in return like we should, God comes again and again professing his love for us.  And 1 John 3:16 gives us insight into a full expression of God's love for us, even as New Testament believers: "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us."  There is no fuller expression of God's love for us than this.

So, as we step into this February season of love, let us keep this in the back of our minds and consider how we can emulate God's everlasting love (a love that was, is, and will be) in our daily relationships.
Posted by M. Lane at 2:13 PM

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