Christmas/Incarnation

New Article: At the Heart of Christmas

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Click on over here to read my latest article in Testimony Magazine.

“The mystery of the Incarnation hovers over Christmas, whispering through the twinkling lights and beckoning in the silent nights. That “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made”  should come down from heaven and put on our tattered flesh—here is awe and wonder! Here is joy to the world and all the true magic of Christmas. Immanuel has come: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory …” (John 1:14).
But what a home we gave Him then. “No room at the inn,” the story goes. Bethlehem hospitality fell short that night in what could only be described as an epic fail. Now, eager to make amends, we sing, O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, There is room in my heart for Thee. We want to clear a space, sweep away the dung and stale hay, and prepare a proper bed for baby Jesus. If God is choosing to make His home in us, then we feel we need to have things just right on Christmas Day.
Yet, almost inevitably, the turkey burns or the cat throws up under the tree. Tensions surface between family members or we are stuffing our mess into a hall closet two minutes before company is due to arrive. It’s so hard to get it just right, so hard to make space in our cluttered souls. How many times do we lie awake the night before Christmas whispering, “I’m not ready”?
  
But what if Christmas is not so much about making room in our hearts for God as it is God making room in His heart for us?”

Read more here…


~lg

hard things/holiness/hope/love/marriage

Run for Covenant

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What I want to say is this: In the face of the bewildering nature of human interaction, there is nothing better than to throw oneself headlong into those relationships defined by covenant. When you want to run for cover, run for covenant. When restlessness calls like the mythical merfolk out beyond the sandbars, don’t waste your time splashing in the tidepools straining to hear more. Turn and run for the hills, to the Mount Zion of your relational landscape. Run to the shelter of timber and hearth before the storm surges up and sweeps you out to sea. Run to the fortress of covenant.
The only true freedom to be had is that of obedience, and the sacred bonds of spoken vows will only chafe unless you are close enough to run together. It is not restriction – it is the place of revelation. It is not limitation – it is the face of love, whose lines can only be traced, caressed, transfigured in the constant whispering of the covenant oath.
Here is grace.
Here is truth, when the tempter’s lies buffet.
Here is trust, when trials should come.
Our original response to original sin is a patchwork cover threaded with shame. And there are days when the old bruised heel still aches along the stony way of life. But even though the path back may be laced with thorns, the healing balm is held by the hands of covenant.
It is the covering for shame.
It is the context for sanctification.
It is the geography whose contours lead to the horizon of hope and whose ridges all rise in ascent to the holy city.
What I want to say is this: Run for the covenant. For Christ Himself will always be found in the relationships He institutes. He is present in the sacramental mystery as King of the mountain. He is its heart. So run for covenant. Run for love. Run for your lives. Run to Christ.

~lg
Uncategorized

Terror, Love, and Living Free

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And with all this “terror” round about us, what is the antidote to fear? Oddly enough, not courage, not even faith, but love. When the shots ring out and the doors lock down, we do not hold on to bravery, but to love.

“Perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:8)

Bravery alone steels itself for the onslaught to come. Love puts on the armour of God and sets out to do good. To be sure, this making vulnerable takes courage, but bravery must be put in service of this end if it hopes to be a virtue.

To put our hearts in lockdown – this is the true tyranny of terror. To hide our faces from the other, to stockpile hate, to execute hope – this is the victory of darkness. But hearts in love are free from fear, for love’s end is always, eternally life. Hearts in love are free to give unconditionally and serve sacrificially, because they are secured in a reality stronger than death.

Love is the only thing which will loosen fear’s grip. If we are afraid, the first thing we must do is find some way to love – love concretely, love generously, love in new and strange and difficult ways – because it’s the only way we will ever face the last thing when it comes.

Love your child, love your neighbour, love your enemy’s child. Make a cake, make a peace offering, make a friend. Say a prayer, send a letter, start a movement. Give your stuff, give up your seat, give your life. Where fear blows a hole, step in. What we need most now are love’s boots on the ground.

~lg

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Last words

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At the end of some days there is nothing left to do but exhale. I have reached the limits of my capacity, used up all my oxygen. My voice is gone and I am turning blue.

My prayer is nothing more than a death rattle:

Holy Spirit, breathe.

I wait in the cold.

Then, the stirring of warmth, a breath against my cheek. Mouth-to-mouth, you give soul CPR, inflate what has collapsed till all my blood runs bright. It’s your breath in my lungs and I could live another day if you stay near, if you teach me to breathe. I could sing another day, a thousand years to exhale your praise.

~lg

love/marriage

“The Armor of Worth”

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~ Excerpt from The Mystery of Marriage, by Mike Mason

“It is not intimacy itself, therefore, which is so distasteful and intimidating to the world but rather the moral condemnation that comes with it. People crave closeness with one another, but are repelled by the sin that such closeness inevitably uncovers in themselves: the selfish motives that are unmasked, the pettiness that spills out, the monstrous new image of self that emerges as it struggles so pitifully to have its own way.

Of course, only God can give people the strange desire to know the whole truth about themselves, and the strength and courage to live wide-open, exposed lives before one another. And how does He do it? How does He slip us this bitter pill, coated with intense desire and determination? Fortunately, the pill is also lavishly coated with the mystery we call love, which is the only thing in heaven or on earth which can shield us from the horror of knowing what we are really like. That, in fact, is what God’s love is: it is His armor, an armor of forgiveness and acceptance that we put on over our corruption, an armor of worth or worthiness that completely covers our own worthlessness. God’s love is, in a sense, the courage to go on living in the face of our sin, in the full knowledge of who and what we are. This intolerable knowledge of self must, indeed, be exchanged for knowledge of the Lord, and supremely for the knowledge of His saving power through the love of His Son Jesus Christ. That is what it means to “put on” Christ: it is to assume His strength and purity and goodness, recognizing that we have none of our own. Such an actual transfusion of character is possible only in the depths of loving intimacy with God in Christ.

And so it is in marriage that when the Lord draws a man and a woman together in the most intimate of human associations, He does so by giving them His love, which is all that can shield them through the searing experience of self-revelation they are to undergo. This is an experience that all people both crave and fear, with a fear that is conquerable only by love. Only love can drive out the constant threat of condemnation and rejection that otherwise haunts and spoils all experiences of intimacy. People cannot seem to refrain from judging one another, and in the crucible of marriage the judgment can be so intense and oppressive that the only recourse is a loving forgiveness of the other’s wrongs, and in turn a courageous willingness to see one’s own sinfulness exposed, conquered, and actually replaced by the other’s love. In such a relationship, a true transfusion and transformation of characters may take place as each puts on the good qualities of the other and forgives the bad. Each is armor to the other, each is the other’s strength and worth.”