"You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it" -G.K. Chesterton

I have been thinking. We are commanded to love our neighbor.
What if I do not love my neighbor?
Well, then. I must choose to love anyway.
I must purposefully,
           intentionally choose actions that will demonstrate love toward my neighbor. Sometimes, this will come at great cost to myself, either in the form of time, money, or pride. If time or money, do not worry. Neither our time nor our money is our own. If it is our pride that will be lost when love is demanded...praise be to our Lord and Savior. "We know our blessings by their cost" (Wendell Berry). To lose one's pride is surely blessing.

But listen. I have heard an excuse, as of late. "How can I love someone I do not love? How can I change what I see or how I see it? I cannot, for I cannot change what I feel." I've heard the excuse, but I've also been reading about virtue and the cultivation of virtuous action. I have been in some of the best educational systems my whole academic career, and yet the idea that courage and love are things to be practiced, not merely bestowed, was shocking. If a person must strive to be courageous, is he less honorable and more in sin than another man? Less honorable because, "well, the fact that he had to work for it means he didn't have it in the first place" and more sinful because, "he is trying to do it on his own! this fool is trying to better himself on his own power!"

Listen. I have heard these things. Some in what I have read. Some in my own heart and mind. The logic does not even follow. Tending to our spirits, tending to our virtues, this is not usurping Christ's rightful place in our lives. His pure blood flowed onto our stained soil in substitute for my lifeblood. I should have died, like Icarus, a fool in my foolishness. But in His death I died, and in His life I live.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,⁴ by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. ⁵ For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, ⁶ and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, ⁷ and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. ⁸ For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

          (2 Peter 1:3-8)

Make every effort, my friends. I think it is probably true, that one cannot love a thing without wanting to fight on that 'thing's behalf. But, perhaps it is more true that one cannot love a thing without needing to fight for that love itself, at times. Put on the new man, as Paul has said in Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3.  Pray for God's intervention to change your heart, while you act in such a way that says you expect your heart to change.

More later. I realize my thoughts are disjointed. 

from "Letters to Malcolm" by C.S. Lewis

"If the imagination were obedient, the appetites would give us very little trouble."

As this past semester is shaken and pressed, this is what runs over

"Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys." (C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters, ch. 8)

Many know this has long been my favorite quote by Lewis. I have carried this quote in my head and shared it quickly at the slightest opportunity. It was a romantic quote, romantic in the sense of being nice, neat, and pretty--and small enough to fit just a bite-sized piece of theology in it, enough to chew on for an afternoon.

It is highly unlikely that I will ever again be able to see in this quote its once-thought romantic qualities. I will see in this quote a brokenness that causes nausea. I will see a weariness that clenches the chest and makes it difficult to breathe. I will see a confusion that causes once dry eyes to weep.

I will see a God who is faithful no matter how faithless we are or become. I will see the ability to obey when blind as an ability dictated by need--desperation for life itself. (as the deer pants, so my soul longs for the God of my salvation)

Obedience when God seems not present has seemed the over-arching lesson of this past semester. And that sometimes, I think I am obeying, when what I am doing is trying to carry my own sin until it breaks me. I think I am obeying, but instead, I am trying to give people myself instead of Christ. I say I do not have time for more than short prayers throughout the day and a token verse...and then I expect joyful obedience. Praise God that neither my salvation nor ultimately, my sanctification is on my shoulders.
And praise God for community that is willing to show us that we need to fellowship with God through Scripture, prayer, and meeting together with one another. Praise be to the God who uses others to convict us when we are not searching for God, and then throwing up our hands and bemoaning our befuddled minds and hearts, and His seeming distance!


To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. Even in the wilderness- especially in the wilderness- you shall love him. ~Frederick Buechner

My life is like a liberal arts university. It is like taking a history class that matches up with a Spanish class, that is reminiscent of a social work class. It is learning the date 1492 and later finding out that not only did Cristobal Colón land in America that year, but that the first official Spanish grammar was printed that year.

I wandered the library at school, for I had two nights in which I could read a book. I found a collection of short sermons by Frederick Buechner. The title appealed to me. The Hungering Dark. Yet I read the one titled The Magnificent Defeat. (Jacob wrestles with God and is magnificently defeated...utterly defeated, for the Angel of the Lord did not cause the struggle to end until Jacob had nothing left. There was to be no doubt in Jacob's mind but that he was not a match for his opponent)

I did not know that a quote I had long pondered originated by this man, Frederick Buechner. And now, it makes more sense.

As this past semester is shaken and pressed, this is what runs over.
Only the grace of God.
I have nothing of my own to offer.

Spurgeon

"In one word, the great pillar of the Christian's hope is substitution." Charles Spurgeon

"I didn't go to the moon, I went much further--for time is the longest distance between two places" (Tom, in "A Glass Menagerie")

Is time the longest distance between opposites as well? oye. perhaps not. that gets complex or unintelligible.

But opposites in pictures can speak louder than...alot.