love is different....

That is the title from a Caedmon's song from a few years ago, an intriguing tune that always makes me wonder, "Is love, in fact, actually different than we think?"  

I have gone through varying brands of love in my life. So many versions of what I thought that word actually means.  There were times that I thought I loved, and then I would find myself manipulating them.  Other times I would say that I loved helping someone, or a group of people, or an individual person, but I would deny them my love by denying them my time.  For me, quality time is my greatest demonstration of love.  For you, it may be something different.  I'm talking about romantic love, love for humanity, love for the poor, love for books, love for God, I don't care what it is.  For me to love, it means that I want to spend time.  Good, long, quality time.  

But it goes higher than that.  Or deeper.  Or "further up and further in". How is that?  Well here is the thing, at some point in any kind of relationship (I mean this in all senses of the word) then you will undoubtably face doubt.  You will question the worthiness of that love.  You will be tired.  You will have a conflict.  That woman will flirt with another man.  What will happen is that you will begin to question your commitment to all of this.  You will begin to wonder if any of this is worth the sacrifice.  It almost always, in all forms, involves disappointment, heartache, a sickness in your stomach.  You will feel the pain. Do you know what Leonard Cohen said about that?  He said "I've seen your blood on the marble arch/Love is not a victory march/Its a cold and its a broken 'Hallelujah'".  

This sounds ridiculous, but I'm more and more convinced that it is true.  I hate to get too preachy here, but no matter what you believe, you have to look at Jesus when you consider a thing like love.  Here is this guy who has all the power, all the authority in all of everything.  I know that you may doubt that, but I ask you to put that paradigm aside for just a moment and consider the story.  All of that power, all of that influence, and this guy starts off as a baby.  Completely dependent on Humanity to keep him alive. 

Here is this guy with his dirty feet and his knack for wood working and his big dreams and vast mind and endless compassion and he decides that the best way for him to get people to understand that he loves them, that he truly, earnestly, desperately loves them is that he will, first, not be powerful.  I know that he did miracles.  They were some pretty cool tricks and all but they weren't that amazing.  Not when they are compared to the stories of magic and wonder in other religious texts.  Thats not the point. These miracles were not meant to offer us a mystifying magic show.  If that were the case, he could have done a lot better.  Jesus, it seems, does not get too excited about smoke and mirrors.  The point is that these miracles point to something bigger.  Its a grander notion, its a higher frequency.  Its that he loves us. Its that he wants us to get well.  Then, he goes around talking about the "Kingdom of God."  He says that its "at hand".  Well naturally, we're going to be curious.  And Jesus wants us to believe so you would think that he would lay all of this out pretty straight forwardly, correct?  Not at all.  You ask the guy what this Kingdom of Heaven is like and he starts telling you that its like a mustard seed or a lamp or a coin.  Why would he be so guarded about something if he definitely wanted us to understand it, find it, enjoy it?  

Well I think that its this: that he could have forced it all down our throats.  He could have given us logic and miracles and wonders that would have changed humanity in an instance.  We would have all fallen down to worship him in a moment.  But that is not love.  Love is different than that.  Love, true love, takes on the nature of a servant.  It manifests itself by lowering itself, by sacrificing. Love will allow for personal suffering, for heartache, because love knows that you can't be afraid of the pain. As The Alchemist says, "The fear of suffering is greater than the actual suffering."  

When you love someone, or something, or whatever, then you will suffer for them.  You crawl weeping and broken for their sake, for their happiness, for their good and their joy.  You will begin to assess those relationships, and you will realize that you would take on their pain.  That you would take their sicknesses, their cancers, their death.  You would take a bullet.  

Love is different than the movies. Its different than a song.  Its not a funny feeling in your stomach.  

Its a cold and a broken crawl.  And that is what makes it beautiful.  That is what makes this all worth while.  Because every cliche that we have ever come up with comes back to this idea that anything worth having is worth fighting for.  Not with force, mind you, but with sacrifice.  With humility.  Its poor, mournful, meek, hungry, thirsty, merciful, pure, peaceful.  Do you get it? 

You will. You'll have that chance.  That crossroads-with someone, somewhere.  And you can decide.  Do you quit?  Do you go for the safe bet?  Do you take the valley with the safe and well traveled road or do you take the high pass? That rocky and dangerous way that is so risky, but the view, the experience will change you to your core? 

Thats the difference.  You can love and it may kill you.  But that is what makes this life "to the full." Thats what makes love different. 

Advent-agious.

I'm sitting here at the desk in my office.  I'm listening to the Home Alone soundtrack pour through my little computer speakers.  and have yourself a merry little.....I'll have a blue....I have no gifts to bring bahrumpbhabumbum....

Did you know that this Sunday is the beginning of the season known as Advent?  Thats the Christmas season-a time when we are preparing our hearts for the arrival of God on earth.  This didn't mean much to me when I was a child.  I used to see those funny calendars that people sold as kind of silly.  Why do we have to open that little paper door?  If we're going to buy chocolate, couldn't we get it in smaller packaging? 

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  

The whole Christmas thing is incredibly fascinating.  The way it has evolved from the very beginnings of the early church.  I can't think of much else in our culture that is so stable as the Christmas season, and probably won't change much for awhile.  It's far too lucrative.  Can you imagine not giving/getting presents on Christmas morning?  That is Three King's Day in other cultures.  The big gift giving day being in early January.  Can you imagine?  Can you picture a Santa Claus in Sweeden wearing a blue robe instead of a red suit? It must be a burden to have to change clothes as he passes from country to country-and so cold!

Christmas is a holiday that began from the birth of a guy in the mideast sometime in August or maybe March or who knows-somewhere around 6 B.C.....or who knows?  And then a few hundred years go by, and this little birthday is slowly beginning to be celebrated on the Winter Solstice. The holiday that a bunch of folks used to sacrifice goats and such to a god named Yule.  Oh yeah-you've heard of Yule-tide carols.  The yule-log.  I'm not sure what thats all about, except I think it has something to do with a goat sacrificing god Yule.  

So then an epoch passes and you get a little poem called "The Night Before Christmas."  This pretty much created the character of Santa Claus in our culture-along with the drawings of Thomas Nast and Coca-Cola.  Now we have the "War on Christmas."  Why is that?  Do we suspect that Santa has a cache of weapons of mass destruction up at the North Pole?  I say we leave the man alone so he can go back to giving me coal. 

What's really impressive about Christmas is that we love it so much.  We love it for everything that it is.  We love the way it makes us feel inside.  And the way it makes us feel when we tune into the cheesy Christmas music playing spot on the radio is completely false.  It is not Christmas at all. 

I hate the phrase "Jesus is the reason for the Season." 

We should completely get rid of all trite sayings like this and all hand motions to songs. I will not lift my hands and spin around. 

But I will say this-

That what Christmas is, what it really is, is something so deep and mysterious that I can't get my head around it.  If there were ever a moment of magic in this rational world, then that was it.  The day that God Himself became a pooping baby boy.  Can you imagine being a deity and then trading it in for being a person?  The answer is no.  You cannot.  Can you remember back to your Christmas' as a kid?  When you 11, 12, 13?  Could you trade that time with your family-as imperfect as they are-to go and live in an orphanage during Christmas?  I can still get inside of my adolescent brain and I can't imagine anything worse than that.  It would be awful.  

And here is this guy whom we've never met making himself a baby.  It is comedy and it is tragedy.  

in Life of Pi,  Piscine is a young boy from India whose father runs a zoo. This is the way the character of Pi relates to this news: 

"And what a story.  The first thing that drew me in was disbelief.  What?  Humanity sins but it's God's Son who pays the price?  I tried to imagine Father saying to me, "Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas.  Yesterday another one killed a black buck.  Last week two of them ate the camel.  The week before it was painted storks and grey herons.  And who's to say for sure who snacked on our golden agouti?  The situation has become intolerable.  Something must be done.  I have decided the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to them." 

Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do.  Give me a moment to wash up."  

"Hallelujah, my son." 

"Hallelujah, Father."

Don't you see it?  This world is crazy.  There is no sense in God being with us.  Walking with us.  Eating with us.  Everything is turned upside down when this happens, don't you think? Absurd. 

So if you get that little warm fuzzy when you think about Christmas this month, then I submit that it is no accident.  Everything about Christmas has been built upon and painted over to where we can hardly see why its such a big freaking deal in the first place.  But when magic like that happens-real and true and bonifide magic occurs, its going to last for a long time.  There are still traces of it in the air.  We feel it and breath it and share it all through out the season of Advent.  

God moved into the neighborhood?  

It's ridiculous. It's amazing. 

walking without knowing

It is a great day to be working at a church. Things are slow around the office. There is no bible study this week because we have a Halloween party instead. We have no 5th Quarter. No Six Flags. Life is good.

So I think what I want to do is to keep coming back to that story in John where Jesus heals this guy's son. Apparently, the guy was an official, and apparently, the kid was a long ways away from Jesus-lying sick on a bed with a rough fever. But the dad was desperate and went in search for this Jesus and he walked away with nothing but a promise. Just words from Jesus claiming that everything was going to be okay. "Your son will live" was how he decided to put it. Pretty direct, but no tangible evidence.

So you see this guy turn and walk away. He has no clue whats going to come of all this. He just goes. And he has to walk quite awhile (a day and a half, I think) before he gets word that his boy's fever left. It had left at about one o'clock-right when Jesus told the official that his son would live.

Now isn't that something?

This guy just goes walking without proof. He has to wonder and hope and basically walk on whatever faith he might have had left in his system.

Don't you think that Jesus must have been revealing something about God in all of this? Don't you think this must have been the point? Jesus makes tons of promises. But we don't always know how it will work out immediately. Jesus still comes through, but we might have to walk awhile without knowing.

I thought that was pretty key for me. I think that really shows me something about this Jesus I sort of, kind of understood in the back of my mind, but God has used this miracle to really reveal himself to me in a profound way.

It is pretty cool-pretty interesting to see the God of the Universe doing stuff like this for us, for me and for you.

If you want to hear the message that inspired this little posts-head here to listen to Kris McDaniel from Trinity Vineyard talk on the subject.

-tatum