H,
It has been nice having a
full week off but I am bristling with loose energy again. I keep thinking of
the great and informal sense of loving God versus the structure of discipline
that lies in front of anyone who takes the narrow path. The goodness and
severity of God, if you will. That He can be father and friend at the same time
is a given. That we see the depths of love in both is something I am still
getting used to.
It is clear that if you take
only the goodness of God in this present state, you will not grow. You will
need a miracle placebo to get through the hard spots of existence and every
trial will be alienating from the divine and from people. You will not be able
to reconcile the friendship of God with the Fatherhood of good because all you
will expect is His power to make your immediate life better and your immediate
circumstances more palatable.
If you only accept the
severity of God all you will see are demons, ghosts and enemies. You will not
see anything really wrong in yourself but only in others. You will not be able
to experience the other side of joy because you will always accept the slaps of
fate and the arrows of destiny. God will be a master and a lord but not a
lover. Being in love with God is important. This thing is eternal. And you were
not made to be an eternal slave.
You know how I hate the word
“balance”?  Well, balance is needed here.
Both views have to shake hands and become one. You have the narrow path of
living in God inside the wide path of being loved by God. He is one whole being
and not two or any other number. All the things in Him that seem contradictory have
made their peace with each other and become one whole purpose of love. This is
the way we must see it. The world is a difficult and sorrowful place. The purpose
of His love is to bridge that gap of the temporal with the eternal light of the
world He is making of this present mess. We have to see it through His eyes to
understand that though the process of becoming is life long and not the easiest
thing that we will ever do, it is also already done. He has made it all
possible. Eternity is a circle. We are merely remembering how we became forever
like Him.