How the love of God works.
I was driving home from work tonight during a heat lightning storm, which, if anyone here hasn't ever witnessed one, is one of the most beautiful things you can see on earth. I was listening to a live version of "Awesome God" by Rich Mullins and he was talking about how bizarre the love of God is from our point of view being that someone so utterly alone and so far above humanity would desire us so much that He would create us in His image and become one of us in every way so He could help us be more like Him.
While I don't entirely agree with every part and parcel Rich Mullins believed, I do believe he was one of the greatest men of God to ever live and certainly one of the most heart-after-God men since King David. Just to read his songs is enough to know that he had a relationship with God that is like that you would have with your wife or husband or lover in the most intimate way and it is this kind of relationship that God desires with every single human being that has ever been created and not only does he desire it but his love goes so far beyond what any lover could ever give you that it makes even the most close of relationships seem pale.
I'm going to quote one of my favorite dialogue from recent literature, which I believe makes the point far better than I ever could.
TAKEN FROM WATCHMEN:
Doctor Manhattan: Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.
Laurie Juspeczyk: But... if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!
Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world... But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come... dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.
-Watchmen
What a powerful ideal...the miracle of birth and life in itself is possibly the greatest testament to the value and worth of a person. Like the above characters, I forget by how many miracles I am surrounded by every day. Think how God must feel, with that love for every single person as if they were the pinnacle of his creation, which they, I and you are. To not consider a human just a set of cells and electrical impulses and animal instincts but the greatest single miracle in existence changes how you look at people. In a sense, yes, humans are nothing, dust in the wind, vagaries of perception, with love and emotions being no more than the temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose.
But in another sense, in the greatest sense, we are everything. The apple of God's eye. The greatest miracle he ever conceived. The thing he created out of nothing less than a pure burning desire to fellowship with in the most intimate way possible. Something that God loves in a way no human can even remotely begin to fathom. In that sense, we as creations are nothing less than the most immense and essential thing ever created, birthed out of a love so fiery and intense and so beyond comprehension that the Creator would take on our fallen and feeble form and die a sickening horrific death so that we could be with him if we so desired.
Which is what he desires.
I was driving home from work tonight during a heat lightning storm, which, if anyone here hasn't ever witnessed one, is one of the most beautiful things you can see on earth. I was listening to a live version of "Awesome God" by Rich Mullins and he was talking about how bizarre the love of God is from our point of view being that someone so utterly alone and so far above humanity would desire us so much that He would create us in His image and become one of us in every way so He could help us be more like Him.
While I don't entirely agree with every part and parcel Rich Mullins believed, I do believe he was one of the greatest men of God to ever live and certainly one of the most heart-after-God men since King David. Just to read his songs is enough to know that he had a relationship with God that is like that you would have with your wife or husband or lover in the most intimate way and it is this kind of relationship that God desires with every single human being that has ever been created and not only does he desire it but his love goes so far beyond what any lover could ever give you that it makes even the most close of relationships seem pale.
I'm going to quote one of my favorite dialogue from recent literature, which I believe makes the point far better than I ever could.
TAKEN FROM WATCHMEN:
Doctor Manhattan: Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.
Laurie Juspeczyk: But... if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!
Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world... But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come... dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.
-Watchmen
What a powerful ideal...the miracle of birth and life in itself is possibly the greatest testament to the value and worth of a person. Like the above characters, I forget by how many miracles I am surrounded by every day. Think how God must feel, with that love for every single person as if they were the pinnacle of his creation, which they, I and you are. To not consider a human just a set of cells and electrical impulses and animal instincts but the greatest single miracle in existence changes how you look at people. In a sense, yes, humans are nothing, dust in the wind, vagaries of perception, with love and emotions being no more than the temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose.
But in another sense, in the greatest sense, we are everything. The apple of God's eye. The greatest miracle he ever conceived. The thing he created out of nothing less than a pure burning desire to fellowship with in the most intimate way possible. Something that God loves in a way no human can even remotely begin to fathom. In that sense, we as creations are nothing less than the most immense and essential thing ever created, birthed out of a love so fiery and intense and so beyond comprehension that the Creator would take on our fallen and feeble form and die a sickening horrific death so that we could be with him if we so desired.
Which is what he desires.
God loves us. We mean the world to Him.
ReplyDeleteI can feel your awe and passion in this post. It is beautiful...like that heat lightening storm.