Monday musings (part II)

Following on from "Monday musings..." a few weeks ago...

I thought I couldn't write about hope without writing about it's friends love and faith

(1 Corinthians 13:13...you know it...)

* * *

"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."

Whether we like it or not, we focus our lives on love.

Some love money.

Or power.

Or themselves.

Or others.

It's true that it's a hunger.

We long for it.

We need it.

We focus on it.

It's the highest cause in all humanity.

It's out universal commonality.

It's out most divine need.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with it.

It's wonderful, isn't it?

But it's what we love that causes issues.

I think what we miss is that love isn't a trivial human thought.

It's a spiritual force.

A choice.

And when we love truly,

honestly,

selflessly,

like Jesus

love breaks bonds of brokeness and oppression.

Love is the motivation of justice.

The power behind hope.

The fuel of forgiveness.

I'm human.

And I do find it hard sometimes to understand why Jesus loves me so much.

But it's not because I'm loveable.

I'm not.

It's because I am His, and He is love.

He can't help to love me.

That's encouraging.

I've heard it said that to love someone else is to see the face of God.

I guess it's true, when you think about it.

To love someone else, through the faults of being human, (because, lets be honest, none of us are worthy...)

really is seeing the face of God.

He loves us through our faults,

our brokeness,

our human-ness.

His love seeks no other agenda.

It's unconditional.

It doesn't want payback.

And in spite of all the madness of life, it wins.

Reflections of Winter..

Winter gets a bad rap. Like actually.

Its cold.

Its wet.

Its dark.

But its beautiful.

Without winter, there would be no summer.

Without the rain, there would never be rainbows.

Without darkness, we would never experience light.

Winter is beautiful.

Monday musings...

"Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired."

We all hope for something.

Big or small, it's always important to us, at the time.

We hope we'll pass that exam.

We hope we'll see that person.

We hope, no matter how hard it is to believe, that everything will turn out ok.

It's only human nature.

To wish.

To dream.

To hope.

Hope really must remain, if we're to remain sane.

It has a very close relationship with faith.

Faith gets you through when feelings are absent. Hope gives you something to look forward to, the light at the end of the tunnel.

Faith is believing in the unseen. Hope is what you make out of nothing.

Losing hope though, is a huge reality.

In our broken world, as fallen people, there seems nothing to look forward to,

nothing to dream about,

nothing to hope for.

It's too hard to look past the crap surrounding us,

it's too scary to step out and dream.

Being let down is too much of a reality.

Disappointment is inevitable.

Unavoidable.

Certain.

And if I've learnt anything, it's that there's not one person that won't let me down.

We're human.

We're broken.

But through that, I've learnt that the unconditional love of God is the single thing in the world that I can rely on.

Totally.

Faithfully.

And that gives me hope.

Broken...

A world that celebrates success doesn't see value in broken things. But God brings beauty out of brokenness. For a plant to rise from the soil the seed must be broken. For a baby chick to experience larger life the shell must be broken. Even a thoroughbred horse must be broken; it must learn to respond to the tug of the rein and the sound of the master's voice. Getting the idea? After a humbling encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road, Paul re-evaluated all the religious activity he once boasted about and called it "dung" (Philippians 3:8). And you don't brag about dung, you're repulsed by it.

Brokenness is the work of God by which He strips us of self-sufficiency so that the character of Christ may shine through us. Now don't misunderstand; being broken doesn't necessarily mean experiencing some tragedy. Many people suffer tragedy without drawing closer to God or even acknowledging Him. Indeed, the same sunshine that melts the butter hardens the clay. The issue in brokenness is not so much our circumstances, but our response.

What is God trying to teach us? True brokenness is when He strips us of self-sufficiency to the extent that we've no strength left to fix ourselves. When God blocks every exit we try to take and we come to see that He alone is our answer, we make a life changing discovery. "And what's that?" you ask. When God is all you have - God is all you need! Bottom line: God's power is reserved for those who have given up trying to do it in their own strength or to accomplish it for their own ends!

I've recently begun to "take off my mask", exposing my brokeness, my imperfections, my human-ness. And rather than being woe-is-me about it all, I want to embrace it, reveal it, use it. I firmly believe that God uses brokeness, we are all broken after all, and all I have to be is willing. Willing for Him to break me and mould me how He wants. I think its okay not to want to, to be scared. Being totally okay and content is different from being willing. I think brokeness is a gift, in a way. Theres nothing like being totally isolated, totally out of options, and all you can do is lean on God.

You'll never know that God is all you need, until He's all you've got.

x becks