Unpopular Opinion

During worship today I communed with God. We sang about nature and his majesty. He named the stars. My heart laughed that this immense creator lives within me! I imagined the two of us looking up at the stars. I was asking him, "What's that one's name?" He was telling me the answers. We're that close.

Then we sang: one thing I ask and I would seek to see your beauty - to find you in the place your glory dwells. I thought of this new one growing in me. This new person is being created to be the dwelling place of pure glory, majestic might, creative love, all things good. Right now as I breathe and move this little life is being formed to hold the One who forms him or her. How can the created contain the creator? This is too wonderful to comprehend - yet it is so.

I am learning more and more of how precious I am to him. He came to earth to buy me back. I gave all he could give to buy me back. He let them tear his skin and his heart. He let them ridicule and degrade him. He did this for me, for us, because we are his bride.

Back at our beginning God breathed his life into the dust and created adam - dust man. We have always been God-breathed, image bearers, friends of the almighty, children for God. God created many animals but we were not animals. We are something else altogether.

I agree with John Eldrige. He says that we aren't afraid of our darkness but rather we are afraid of our glory. We have had many charismatic speakers at our church. I wouldn't say that Ken Fong was the most charismatic of speakers but he received one of the most charismatic responses from the congregation that I have ever seen. And what was his message? We are all Rats! He said that we all try to walk around in our squirrel suits pretending to be cute and non-rodent-like when really we have all sinned and are all really rats. It's an old hook. I grew up with this particular lie and I know of it's insidiousness. What's really so sad is that in all my years of rat living my love for others never grew. I saw myself as a rat, for sure. And yes, I classified my type of ratness as better than other's nastier ratness. But the answer wasn't to see my ratness as filthy and nasty as their ratness. I did try that. It doesn't work.

I have invited Christ into my posturing and into my lack of love for others. My core problem was my own lack of self love. I didn't love myself because I didn't feel loved by God. I thought that God saw me as a huge disappointment - not too different than a rat! I came across the verse in Ephesians that talks about being rooted and established in love. I've been asking for that. God, grow my roots deep in your soil of love. Establish me strong and secure in love. This slow process has an outflowing of awareness both of his loving posture toward me and of his loving posture toward others. I really highly doubt that the Father would have sent the son to die for rats - that's preposterous! He sent his son to die for the image bearers of God. Yes, we were dead in our sins but we were never rats. The verse that Fong used referred to our righteousness being as filthy rags. Notice that the verse doesn't say we are as filthy rags - it's our righteousness that's worthless, not us. God values us greatly!

Is it easier to believe that we are all rats or that we are all full of His Glory? When we see someone degraded by drugs, sex, money or power it is awfully difficult to see their glory, to see His glory in them. But I don't have to go to the obviously degraded places see the unlovely. I can look around my church or neighborhood and have a hard time seeing lovely, loveable, valuable beings. My abililty to hate and despise floors me. But God is changing me. As I have begun to accept his love for me I have begun to see others with that same love. I used to look my church and see brokenness. Lately I've begun to see dearly loved ones. Many, many dwelling places of God.

"Who of you knows that they are a rat?" Not me Mr. Fong, not me. I occasionally exhibit ratlike behavior but my heart is good. I have been made new. I am the dwelling place of the Almighty. God doesn't dwell in rats!