The Father’s Heart

God, Love 0

The heart of the father burns with an immense desire to bring his children home. . . .

God, creator of heaven and earth, has chosen to be, first and foremost, a Father.

As Father, he wants his children to be free, free to love.  That freedom includes the possibility of their leaving home, going to a “distant country,” and losing everything.  The Father’s heart knows all the pain that will come from that choice, but his love makes him powerless to prevent it.  As Father, he desires that those who stay at home enjoy his presence and experience his affection.  But here again, he wants only to offer a love that can be freely received.  He suffers beyond telling when his children honor him only with lip service, while their hearts are far from him.  He knows their “deceitful tongues” and “disloyal hearts,” but he cannot make them love him without losing his true fatherhood.

As Father, the only authority he claims for himself is the authority of compassion.  That authority comes from letting the sins of his children pierce his heart.  There is no lust, greed, anger, resentment, jealousy, or vengeance in his lost children that has not caused immense grief to his heart.  The grief is so deep because the heart is so pure.  From the deep inner place where love embraces all human grief, the Father reaches out to his children.  The touch of his hands, radiating inner light, seeks only to heal.

Here is the God I want to believe in:  a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting, never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders.  His only desire is to bless.

— Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, p. 95-96

A New Song

God, Healing, Trials 0

I would count on this:  God is always working to make His children aware of a dream that remains alive beneath the rubble of every shattered dream, a new dream that when realized will release a new song, sung with tears, till God wipes them away and we sing with nothing but joy in our hearts.

— Dr. Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 82

Forgiving the Unrepentant

Forgiveness, God 0

It is possible to close ourselves to grace, both human and divine.  But only grace can pry open the door that has been shut in its face.  So God continues to give to the ungrateful and to forgive the unrepentant.  Christ stands before the closed door of a grace-resistant heart and knocks gently with a nail-pierced hand.

So should we.  When things go well, gifts engender gifts, and forgiveness gives birth to forgiveness.  That’s the power of giving and forgiving.  When things go ill, gifts fall on hard soil, and forgiveness remains barren.  That’s the impotence of givers and forgivers, for they can only “knock at the door” by giving and forgiving.  And then they must wait . . . and knock again and wait — trusting that the Spirit of the resurrected Christ will make the seed of their forgiveness bear fruit.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 205

What If It Really Is True?

God, Life, Trials, Trust, Truth 0

But consider this:  What if you knew it would all turn out well, whatever you are facing?  What if Romans 8:28 really were more than a cliche?  What if it was a certainty, a Spirit-certified life preserver, an unsinkable objective truth, infinitely buoyant, able to keep your head above water even when your ship is going down?

What if it really worked?  What if it always worked?  What if there were no problems beyond its reach?

— Robert J. Morgan, The Promise:  How God Works All Things Together For Good, p. 3

Guaranteed

God, Life 0

In Christ, we have an ironclad, unfailing, all-encompassing God-given guarantee that every single circumstance in life will sooner or later turn out well for those committed to Him.

— Robert J. Morgan, The Promise:  How God Works All Things Together for Good, p. xviii

Two Lenses

God, Trials 0

The Lord took no pleasure in my broken neck.  Like any father who has compassion on his children, it pained his heart to see me hurt.  Yet at the same time, it pleased the Lord to permit my accident.  My spinal cord injury was something he sovereignly designed in and for his good pleasure.

God’s ways are so much higher than ours, he has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses — through a narrow lens and a wide-angle one.  When God looks at a painful event through a narrow lens, he sees the tragedy for what it is.  He is deeply grieved. . . .  When God looks at that same event through his wide-angle lens, however, he sees the tragedy in relation to everything leading up to it, as well as flowing out from it.  He sees a mosaic stretching into eternity.  It is this mosaic with all its parts, both good and evil, that brings him delight.

— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, July 6 entry

The Best Promise

God, Life, Trials 0

Everything that happens to you is for your own good.  If the waves roll against you, it only speeds your ship toward the port.  If lightning and thunder comes, it clears the atmosphere and promotes your soul’s health.  You gain by loss, you grow healthy in sickness, you live by dying, and you are made rich in losses.

Could you ask for a better promise?  It is better that all things should work for my good than all things should be as I would wish to have them.  All things might work for my pleasure and yet might all work my ruin.  If all things do not always please me, they will always benefit me.

This is the best promise of this life.

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, quoted in The Promise, by Robert J. Morgan

The Painful Reality of Sin

God, Life 0

If we think of hell as the state in which God allows the painful reality of sin to hit home, then we can understand both the terrible imagery used in Scripture to portray such a fate and the urgent warning to avoid the wide road that leads in that direction.  It also removes the objection that God is being presented as a cosmic torturer hurting people until they agree to follow him.  God does not torture anybody — he simply withdraws his protection that allows people to live under the illusions that sin is not necessarily harmful to a truly human life.  The natural (though none the less God-ordained) consequences of sin take their course, and it becomes harder and harder to fool oneself into believing the seductive lies of sin anymore.  In this way hell is educative and points us towards our need for divine mercy.

— Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, p. 136