Light Bulb
Every now and again I will have a moment of clarity. A moment when everything feels great. When I feel hopeful, excited, optimistic and ready all in one.
I’ve never had many of these in my life but recently I have been having more. And it’s great and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
Most of the time it’s because of either a song or something I have read. Today it is listening to the new Sufjan Stevens album, ‘The Age of Adz’. Last year it was going to see Anathallo. The year before, The Swell Season. It happened the first time I read Blue Like Jazz and Velvet Elvis.
It’s the moment when something encompasses exactly what you have been thinking or dreaming of. It’s not when you just ‘get’ what a song is saying to you or when you resonate with a piece of art. It’s when those things ‘get’ you.
Do you understand the art or does the art understand you? Answer. Yes.
And I think we sometimes lose out with God when we don’t interact with him like this. It’s amazing when God says something to us that makes every fibre of our existence sing out in jubilation. A sermon, a book, a song, a thought. But that’s one way. That’s us reacting to God.
But what if it works the other way too? What if God looks at us and is singing? What if he looks at us and who he has created us to be and he can’t help but be ecstatic. Not happy or content but so insanely crazy about us.
Now at this point we have a choice. We can look at the scrapbook of sin and crap and dirt in our lives and just not get why or how God can look at us. Or we can choose to believe what the Bible says over and over and over again. That God loves us. God wants us to love him but before we can even think about that we need know this. That we are loved. Heck, we are liked.
A verse that is taking on new meaning for me is Romans 5v8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
God knew that we would throw it back in his face but instead of making him reconsider, he went ahead and saved us. Even though God knows we just looked at porn or neglected a friend or told someone we were busy to talk with them when really we just didn’t want to hear it, he did this for us.
He continues to renew us. He continues to open new doors for us. He continues to show his face to us. He continues to give us new hope. He doesn’t give up on us. Ever.
Do we love God because of who he is, or does God love us because of who we are?
Answer: Yes.