The best friends are the ones willing to hold a mirror to your life and challenge you to reach higher. In this manner, I came to a mindset-changing realization this morning (thank you, J).
My heart is for the Lord. I long to see His Kingdom lived out-- fellowship, love, justice, redemption, peace, and joy. This is the very beat of my heart. But somewhere along the line, I have become more focused on the antithesis of this. My mind has become consumed by my hatred for what is not of the Lord. At first glance, this doesn't seem like such a problem. Are hatred for the wrong and love for the right such different things? Don't they lead to basically the same actions? Perhaps, but the quality of life and character of the living are so very different.
Jesus, with a passion, hated what was wrong. But Jesus was never driven by hate. Hate was never the motivating factor of His actions. On the contrary, He knew the intimate details of right, He knew what good looked like, and He loved it. Knowledge and love of God's perfect Kingdom motivated His every word and action. If He grew angry at corruption and brokenness, it wasn't for their sake alone. It was because He KNEW perfection, and nothing else would satisfy!
I want to be driven by a love of God, not a hatred of Satan. I want to trade my cynicism about the way things are for idealism about how they can be. I want to trade my abhorrence of brokenness for the knowledge and pursuit of wholeness. I want to be running toward the light, not just away from the darkness. I want to know Christ in His perfection and let that relationship be the motivation for everything else I do.
Jesus, keep my eyes fixed on you and not on the raging seas around me.
Showing posts with label perspective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label perspective. Show all posts
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Perspective
"We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm."
-from Herman Melville's Moby Dick
I love this passage. Okay, I'll own up to it: it's one of two passages of Moby Dick I've ever actually read (maybe someday). Perhaps it's because I grew up accustomed to cold weather and the delight of being warm under the covers when you know how cold it is just outside of them. Or maybe it's just because it's such a perfect description of the value of perspective.
I've been delighting this year in watching the spring (slowly, slowly) unfold from its dormancy. Discovering sprouts of daffodils and mysterious other early flowers around my yard, leaving the curtains open all day and coming home to a wonderful, sun-warmed cabin, keeping a close eye on the leaf-buds all around that seem to grow even as I watch them. I have always loved spring, but my appreciation for it has blossomed exponentially after four years in California. When it's almost always sunny, when the trees stay green all year or drop their brown (not red and gold) leaves in the unheard-of month of February, there's no value to spring.
But when spring follows months of wearing four layers of clothing inside, chopping your weight in wood daily, walking to work and then waiting an hour to regain feeling in your toes, oh, welcome, glorious Spring!
It's about perspective. It's about contrast. There is so much in this life, in this world, that will pull us down and break us, freezing our hearts until we can't bear to feel anything anymore. This was not God's intent at the beginning of all things. But praise the One who redeems even the deadest of circumstances, who uses our greatest trials for our greatest deliverance! Without winter, could spring be so glorious?
-from Herman Melville's Moby Dick
I love this passage. Okay, I'll own up to it: it's one of two passages of Moby Dick I've ever actually read (maybe someday). Perhaps it's because I grew up accustomed to cold weather and the delight of being warm under the covers when you know how cold it is just outside of them. Or maybe it's just because it's such a perfect description of the value of perspective.
I've been delighting this year in watching the spring (slowly, slowly) unfold from its dormancy. Discovering sprouts of daffodils and mysterious other early flowers around my yard, leaving the curtains open all day and coming home to a wonderful, sun-warmed cabin, keeping a close eye on the leaf-buds all around that seem to grow even as I watch them. I have always loved spring, but my appreciation for it has blossomed exponentially after four years in California. When it's almost always sunny, when the trees stay green all year or drop their brown (not red and gold) leaves in the unheard-of month of February, there's no value to spring.
But when spring follows months of wearing four layers of clothing inside, chopping your weight in wood daily, walking to work and then waiting an hour to regain feeling in your toes, oh, welcome, glorious Spring!
It's about perspective. It's about contrast. There is so much in this life, in this world, that will pull us down and break us, freezing our hearts until we can't bear to feel anything anymore. This was not God's intent at the beginning of all things. But praise the One who redeems even the deadest of circumstances, who uses our greatest trials for our greatest deliverance! Without winter, could spring be so glorious?
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