To A Nameless Love

Behold! A figure in the West!

Strong! Bold! Full of heart, empty of fear

Eyes as with fire from Hades, but cooled with calm from Poseidon

Her Will fortissimo, as rushing Alpine

Constant, unchanging,– a mountain in seas of reeds

But I could climb it, to see from Olympus’ peak

The utmost secret: her fashioned armor’s chink

Hark! A light in the East!

Lo! The second Sun!

Her Beauty trumps all else; squanders my clumsy tries

An earthquake my limbs, when mine meet her blazing eyes

Wisdom is gone! Learning has fled!

My thoughts are a tumble with her piercing my head

Were I a bird in the sky, climbing toward your radiance

That I may steal the Sun a glance but even for a moment!

Shout! A spirit from the South!

Full of life, empty of death!

In her there dwells no fury; her soul hath not rage

Her life is her stage; her death is a cage

Let no man resist her glee! Death to me thrice for to step on her joy!

Thirty pearls she wears when her twice-gleaming emeralds seize mine

All my wealth, my peace would I give to reach beyond her rhind!

Kneel! A queen of the North!

Fear! Love! See none but her!

Purity made bold; love so true; care seen pure

To stand 'fore is a lifetime; to touch her feet, an eternity!

I am no man before such greatness!

A bug on her tree - nay, a speck of black bark.

My whole life to achieve a fraction of her spark.

Alight! The four ways combine!

Here stands she, for whom you waited the time!

Whole being demanded, whole being I give

But to have you and hold you as long as we live!

Renewal, Redemption, and Restoration

Something that has been eating at my mind when I find myself otherwise unoccupied is the thought of how much focus I and others put on the negative. Whatever situation I am in, I often find myself recognizing what things are wrong with such a situation, overlooking what is good and emphasizing what is bad. I am characterized with a predisposition to test things and to determine whether or not they could be improved, instead of accepting them as they are and giving praise. This of course is two-sided, having one end where I am cursed, not able to shake the haunting recognition of the unsatisfactory, while on the other, I am able to use it to multiply the blessing to other people.

I feel that we often fail to realize the utter goodness of God. We spend our time wailing and feeling sorry for the starving children of Africa or the terrorist attacks or the broken families that we experience or the break-up that we just went through, without recognizing the efforts of God to teach us something or to call us to action. 

When my tire goes flat on my truck, I spend all my time regretting taking the road I did, because I would have missed the nail if I had gone a different route. Then my mind is taken up with making arrangements, fixing my car, paying for repairs, and then continuing my life unchanged. I have so often failed to see the effort of God in situations such as these! He is trying to teach me humility; he is trying to teach me patience; he is trying to teach me acceptance, forgiveness, and satisfaction. Who am I to be frustrated at God for the things he does to me? I have the believe that everything God works for is for Good; I praise him for that and look toward that when I am placed in a situation like this. 

Let us begin to see and find the good in things. This is not a call to optimism, but a call to realism. If you are a Christian, as I am, this ought to make perfect sense - with faith in Christ comes the realization that while everything is not as God intended it to be, the End will be. Everything that happens to us may not happen because God was the cause, but my God is a God of redemption, and he takes even the most broken and twisted things of Man and of the Enemy and reshapes them into purity, holiness, and love. 

This is where I place my trust: If my God can redeem even a man such as me, then he can certainly redeem the evils of this world and the actions of it.  

Purity

I was speaking this week with a group of friends about the subject of purity in our lives, and our reason and method of upholding it. The subject of relationships and how we are to go about them has been a hot topic in my mind recently. I've been putting some thought into just why I am trying to be pure. Is it for my future wife? Is it because I don't want to be a hypocrite? Is it moral? Ethical? Why exactly do I, do we as Christians, strive for purity?

Well, that's the key right there - "as Christians." Literally, "follower of Christ." As a follower of Christ, why do we strive for excellence, for blamelessness, for purity in our relationships? The first suggestion may be that  we must remain pure in order to become faultless before God in the end. We must eliminate from ourselves any form of impurity so that we may become pure in the sight of God. Purity is our means to attain an end, a goal, that being blamelessness before God.

However, in this discussion with my friends, we talked about a different option. We talked about how ultimate reason of our purity and the real goal of it should not be a "for" but rather a "because." I am trying to be pure because I have been made pure in Christ. I strive for cleanliness in my life because my life has been cleaned by the blood of the Lamb. At least in my life, staying pure in order to benefit my career and my future wife and my friends and my kids are all great reminders, but they are not reasons for it. I use the things that benefit from my purity as reminders that point towards the one and only real reason for my purity - that being Christ, and my new life that I have received. 

The old life is dead and gone. I must live a new live because my old life is gone. I really have no choice in the matter. If I am to continue being a Christian, I have no choice but to challenge the impure things in my life and to overcome them with this new Power. I am pure not in order to become a righteous man; rather, I am pure because I am a man who has been made righteous.

"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." -- Romans 6:1-4