It started with a conversation over brunch last Saturday. All of us minus the marrieds sat around the dining room table loading waffles with strawberries and whip, and I can’t really remember what had been said, but there was Jimmy, matter of fact. The only reason God created people was so we could worship him, and the Bible says he regretted he ever made us. Just like that. The boy’s been feeling a bit distant from God and no wonder.
I let those words simmer all day and night, and next morning I got up early to pray. I brewed the coffee and plugged in the tree, sat snuggled up in a blanket Nils and Lauren had picked for my birthday. My thoughts were scattered. A dream from just before waking still lingering, things to do a week before Christmas. And then, just like that, He took all of it captive and invaded my brain like only He can, bringing to focus His Word for the day. Which was LOVE. It’s got to be love. Any attempt at telling this story short of this perspective falls short and then some, and before any theology or anything else there’s got to be Love.
Hours later we sat in church singing my current favorite worship song. Just down the row was our buddy, Mike, and it’s his favorite, too, and we’re both singing our hearts out when it hits me. How it’s only worship if first it’s love. A love song of praise, and…
I can see Your heart in everything You’ve made Every burning star A signal fire of grace If creation sings Your praises so will I
Later during halftime of the Vikings game we gathered again around the dining room table to light a candle, thick discs of peppermint bark our Advent treat, and I held my Bible so they could see it, saying without hesitation. This book, before it’s anything else, is a story of Love. How He loves. And I reminded them of my Covenant word, this word Hesed. No English translation strong enough, and the whole story is woven through with this fierce and furious fighting love of a God who never gives up.
Pastor Randy had said much the same just an hour or so earlier from the pulpit. How those angels showing up and scaring the shepherds half to death weren’t exactly singing Christmas carols. A heavenly host, meaning an Angel Army, and this was WAR. His fighting love, come to earth, come to save us, just like He’d said.
Later Sunday Luke drove to the airport to pick up Ali for an early Christmas. I could see it in my boy’s face, just like I saw it in Emma’s last week at the basketball game. My sweet young friend in her second year down at Wheaton, and she’s on her holiday break, but she can’t stop thinking about that boy home with his own family out in California, and this LOVE is a crazy thing. Invading our thoughts and consuming our lives, and waking us up to be fully alive. Goodness. Human love alone is enough to transform us, and it’s the stuff of worship when we’re convinced our GOD loves us like that.
All week we’re in and out with girls and guys. Savoring time with Ali, and visits from Lauren, and even Marcela, who’s just a friend, but even at that you can see all the good she’s doing Felipe whenever she’s around. And I think about how all the life was sucked out of a boy, so distant, when he lost his love, and it’s a mystery, isn’t it? How much it matters. There’s nothing if there’s no love. And if God’s not LOVE before He’s anything else, why bother?
And as You speak A hundred billion creatures catch Your breath Evolving in pursuit of what You said If it all reveals Your nature so will I
I can see Your heart in everything You say Every painted sky A canvas of Your grace If creation still obeys You so will I So will I So will I
So Will I by Joel Houston, Benjamin Hastings & Michael Fatkin, Hillsong Music
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