Love Your Children Out Loud

I am convinced that one of the greatest gifts my parents gave me growing up was letting me hear them tell others how much they loved me; How much worth I had to them; That they were proud of me. In Christ-like love, though I deserved it, though culture encouraged it, they refused to belittle me in front of others. That was how I learned about the love of God the Father.

I Am Paradox

Oh, God.

I am not near You. I am too often a professional Christian and too rarely a real one. The war within is cataclysmic. My tectonic faith floats upon a sea of inner molten conflict. I ponder my name and feel such shame.

Oh, God.

I am so near You. I am always loved and treasured in Your sight. The faith within is anchored more deeply than sentiment. I know the one who sleeps in this boat as it tosses. I cannot be shaken, because You are unshakable. You whisper my name and I am not ashamed. You whisper, “Don’t You dare doubt my love for You.”

Oh, God.

You are a majesty I will never be. You are a man, just like me. I pressed sharpest thorns into your flesh and nailed You to a cross in the place called death. You pressed me deep to Your chest. You’ve known me from before I had form, and when all of these earthly days are a memory on the furthest shore, I’ve only just been born.

Oh, God.

Eternity more.

The Great and Magnificent Day

A Prayer

There is no time to fill with groans
For aching flesh and shattered bones
You’re closer than we’ve ever known
Lord grant that more should near your throne

For when the trumpets crack the sky
The clouds roll back before our eyes
The lips who cursed the name of Christ
Will beg the rocks to take their lives

A dreadful day is coming soon
A blackened sun, a bloodstained moon
A cursed race condemned and doomed
Eternally apart from You

O When we see You glorified
Returning as You prophesied
O Jesus, catch into the sky
An endless throng to join Your side

And of the number grace has called
Let there be found among them all
The ones who don’t deserve to be:
The wretched, wicked “they”, and me.

The Temple Nag

Remember, the body is a temple.

Specifically, your body is a temple. The little nag shows up uninvited at the doorstep of my weakest moments. It’s insufferable, really. It isn’t impressed by the donut’s extra cream filling. It really cares what we look at. It always puts on a helmet. It totally lifts, bro. Oh, and it wanted to go to bed four hours ago.

“Fine. The body is a temple. Who let you in anyway?”

I submit, but I can count my lifetime temple visits on one hand and I have never worshiped at one, so I don’t pause to consider what this really means. I just hear this little killjoy’s incessant “No”. *sigh* Why can’t I have nice things.

Time to investigate this whole temple thing. Looks like the little verse in my head comes from 1 Corinthians 6. Great, but the Bible is huge, does it speak of a temple anywhere else? Oh. It’s everywhere.

I find it in the meticulously detailed Tabernacle of Exodus. I find it in the intentionality of the rituals of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. I find it in the years of waiting and planning by the ancient Hebrew kings. I rejoice at its completion with Solomon. I mourn its destruction in Jeremiah. I long for its return. With each account I discover that the Temple represents something precious; something powerful. It is the statement there is something sacred, that something (or rather someone) is God, and that God is worthy of a sacred place.

Temple. Sacred. I don’t think in these terms…

…But as I work my way back from my Old Testament adventure to my little nagging friend in 1 Corinthians I begin to realize I had better. I realize it is not a pesky little nag, it is a life-altering claim: I don’t have a temple or sacred place to go visit because, if the Holy Spirit now dwells in me, I am the temple. I am to treat my body and my soul as the sacred dwelling place of the Spirit of God.

Honestly my mind can’t even handle that. I cannot fully grasp the ramifications of the Creator of everything sending His Spirit to dwell within me. God, You know me. You know me better than I know me, and I know that I am horrible. How. How can you see the same envious, judgmental, slanderous, prideful, sinful man I see and choose to be any part of that? But there it is:

1 Cor. 6:19-20 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

This calls for a new paradigm.

I am not to avoid donuts, or harmful images, or laziness, or selfishness primarily for the sake of my own health, or even the honoring of my future wife, as noble as those reasons are. I am to do this because my body and my soul is a temple of the sacred, living God, and He is worthy.

So, my little nagging friend, come on in. Tonight, and every day after, you are my honored guest.