Abi's Lent: Day Seven

Sacred love--that's the topic of chapter 5 in The Jesus Creed. It is a powerful chapter and my brain is swirling with connections. Even from Hosea, one of my old favorites from the mid-70s when I came across the book "In The Shadow of Gomer." This is not Gomer Pyle, now, but Hosea's prostitute-wife. It was a powerful book ... I loaned it to someone ... I hope they were really blessed, because they never returned it. ;^)

I have a couple of thoughts that are really grabbing me today: learning to love self and that the root of sin is dishonoring God's sacred love. There's more, of course, but that's what I'm going to restrain myself to share today.

So let's start with learning to love self. This is what I wrote in my Jesus Creed Journal: "'Mission' is everywhere and always going on because the first mission of God is to secure in us the knowledge of his sacred, all-consuming, love for us, so that we can return that love to him and can share it with others out of our abundance. Wow."

I wonder whether anyone else hits fog banks that hide Abba's never-let-you-go love. It's not that I don't know of his love...it's that sometimes I let things fog my glasses (like when you open the oven on a cold day--poof! Instant fog!) and then I can't see it.

Takes me back to The Five Love Languages and the concept of the love tank that is not full. And I wonder whether I have an undiscovered hole in my love tank out of which Abba's love is leaking out, and I don't seem to be able to overflow.

That turned deep even as I was typing....

It must be a purple hole ... or better yet, maybe it is being siphoned off? Some part of the pain and suffering around me that sucks it up without my being fully aware of it. I'll have to ponder that one for a little longer....

I'm praying that Papa will help me, somehow, lean into him deeply enough to feel him leaning back. How do we reconcile the trusting and the feeling? The faith and sight? The walk is simple, but it is the path that is difficult.

Okay, coming up for air ... whew!

The other thought is that the root of sin is when we dishonor God's Sacred Love--for us and for others. This is how I have defined sin: breaking covenant with God and others. Whatever is not done to faithfully provide for the best interest of the other is breaking covenant.

But we have turned "sin" into "evil behavior" and something that good, honest, kind, generous and moral people don't see as relevant to them. When the truth is that sin is not honoring God's Sacred Love for us, receiving it, returning it, and passing it on. It is as much omission as commission -- omission in the days before we knew of his Sacred Love, and commission when we treat it disrespectfully.

This is the "sin" that separates us from God, not our evil acts. Papa is especially fond of each and every cracked Eikon and want reconciliation and restoration, not judgment and damnation.

...well, this is deeper than I can process at the moment.

Leaning farther into Papa.