Meditation: Love is a Choice

The good that I would, I do not; the evil that I would not, that I do

Who is to deliver me from this body of death? (Paul of Tarsus)

Paul is speaking about the common condition of mankind - the tension between our everyday selves and the selves we aspire to be. We live with the tension in two ways, either by ignoring it, thinking this is the normal state of human existence, or by using the behavior of others as the yardstick for our own, and thinking we are as good as most and a lot better than some.

But can we entirely shake off the sense of an absolute, higher standard, a law of absolute love, against which we fall short?  

In this poem John Donne says he is like an occupied town or like a spouse married to God’s enemy and can’t escape, unless God uses a battering ram against his unwilling heart. He needs to be broken and made anew.

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Donne is saying he is helpless to divorce himself from God's enemy and wants God to do it for him.

Anne Bronte penned this verse in her poem “A Prayer”

"I know I owe my all to Thee;
Oh, TAKE the heart I cannot give!
Do Thou my strength my Saviour be,
And MAKE me to thy glory live.

She too tries and fails to give her all, and pleads to be forced to live the life she wants.

Both ask for their hearts, the seat of emotions, to be invaded by the love of God.

George Macdonald disagrees with this idea. Love, agape love, sacrificial love is not about how you feel, it’s about how you live – the choices you make. He writes:

We cannot expect God to give us nice feelings so that giving ourselves in love is automatic. Most of the time there are no special feelings, so our internal conflict is to be decided not by feeling but by our will.

God does not by the instant gift of His Spirit, make us always feel right, desire good, love purity, aspire after Him and His will.

The truth is this: He wants to make us in his own image, choosing the good, refusing the evil. How should he affect this if he were always moving us from within? …..

For God made our Individuality as well as, and a greater marvel than, our dependence.

Made our apartness from himself, that freedom should bind us divinely dearer to himself with a new and inscrutable marvel of love;

for the Godhead is still at the root, is the making root of our individuality and the freer the man, the stronger the bond that binds him to Him who made his freedom.

As I have a problem with the G-word and prefer to use the Greek word for sacrificial love, Agape, written here as LOVE, I have rewritten Macdonalds thoughts:

We cannot expect LOVE to give us nice feelings so that giving ourselves is automatic. Most of the time there are no special feelings, so our internal conflict is to be decided not by our feelings but by our will.

LOVE does not make us always feel right, desire good, love purity, or aspire after a sacrificial life.

The truth is this: LOVE wants to make us in its own image, choosing the right, refusing the wrong. How should this be affected if LOVE was always moving us with feelings from within?

For LOVE creates our ability to love but does not make us dependent on feelings of love. We are left with an independent choice of the will.

When two people love there is giving and receiving; it is not a one-way street. So with ourselves and LOVE’s source. It does not overwhelm us but invites us to respond, not out of our feelings but out of our free will.

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Meditation: Refining

Divine Burning

From CS Lewis' anthology of the writings of George Macdonald

He will shake the heavens and earth, that only the unshakeable may remain. He is a consuming fire, that only that which cannot be consumed may stand forth eternal. It's just the nature of God so terribly pure that it destroys all that is not pure as fire, which demands like purity in our worship. He will have purity. It is not that the fire will burn us if we do not worship thus; yea, it will go on burning within us after all that is foreign to it has yielded to its force, no longer with pain and consuming, but as the highest consciousness of life. The presence of God.

He is like a refiner’s fire, and he shall purify

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see the Father

O Thou who camest from above

The Pure celestial fire to impart

Kindle a flame of sacred love

On the mean altar of my heart

There let it for they glory burn

With inextinguishable blaze

And trembling to its source return

In humble prayer and fervent praise

Ready for all They perfect will

My acts of faith and love repeat

Til death Thy endless mercy seal

And make the sacrifice complete

Jesus said: You must be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.

Impossible! – too hard a burden to lay on our shoulders, simply piling guilt on guilt until following Jesus becomes a miserable burden, a Sisyphean task, crushing and condemning us.

The Adam & Eve myth speaks of a time of innocence and purity in the Garden of Eden, how these were lost when Adam & Eve disobeyed God and knew for the first time both good and evil. They are banished from the garden but the memory and feeling of loss would be with them and their descendents for ever.

The myth points to a spiritual void within humankind that cannot be filled by the pursuit of wealth or status or anything of the material world. 

We are caught between our natural selves and spiritual selves. 

We lack love and carry guilt. 

We are a people in exile longing for home.

We long for the garden where the Father walks in the cool of the evening.

When Jesus says, you must be peerfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect he is simply shining a light on our exile.

Jesus sets before us the purity of the Father's love, revealing the weakness of our own, contaminated as it is by our selfish ego. Gold contaminated with base metal needs refining.

Dare we ask to be refined?

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Meditation: The Seed Shop

 

The seed shop by Muriel Stuart

 

Here, in a quiet and dusty room, they lie,

Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes shrivelled, scentless, dry -
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.
In this brown husk, a dale of hawthorn dreams,
A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust.
It will drink deeply of century’s streams,
These lilies shall make summer on my dust.
Here in their safe and simple house of death.
Sealed in their shells, a million roses leap.
Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

Meditation

We too are the the fruit of biological seeds sown by our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and on and on. Back and back the lineage goes, species by species to the first spark of life on Earth.

We sow in turn into generations yet unborn. Life to life in one endless chain of humanity.

But to what end? Just more biology?

Words too are seeds. We hear them, see them and speak them. But what fruit do they bear?

“You have the words of eternal life”, Peter said to Jesus

These words of eternal life we too may hear - seeds that fall into our minds. What fruit do they bear?

Jesus told this seed story:

A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed,

• Some fell along the path, and birds came and ate it up.
• Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.
• Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.
• Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

“Listen to what the story of the sower means:

• When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it,the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path.
• The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.
• The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.
• But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

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