I found Will’s post on Writing Your Own Copy of “The Message” energizing my creative juices again this morning, I believe trying it out would give one a taste of what it means to let the Scriptures “saturate” & “shape” us. I admit, some passages would be harder to do it at first glance but I was delighted to read Lisa’s effort here in The Love Chapter and The Love Chapter, cont’d. Here’s a sneek into what she wrote:
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… If I speak with polish of Glenn Close, or write like Annie Dillard, or do either of these with the perspective of one who serves God and has stood in praise before the Divine Presence — and have no love to give — well, all those words might as well be thrown in the garbage because they sound like the hideous noise of a dial-up modem connecting to the internet.
… Love answers the “why” question of the toddler a thousand times; love listens on the phone for an hour to a hurting friend; love drives someone who has no wheels to the doctor’s office or gets off its butt to fix everyone a cup of tea not just herself even though it’s much easier to just pop a mug into the microwave.
… Love doesn’t park itself in the ten-items or less express check out lane with 15 items, and it doesn’t count the items of those who do, then mutter, “Well, I thought this was the express lane!”
… Love doesn’t flare up when somebody cuts it off on I-95; Love doesn’t turn to its spouse or significant other and say, “This is the fourth time this month you forgot to take the garbage out to the street.” Love didn’t do the happy dance when Lorena Bobbit cut of her poor husband’s sexual organ but love rejoices when a married couple finds the pleasure of God in the pleasure of their union.
… If love promises to pick up the kids at four, it comes at four, and if it says it’ll bring a dessert to basket bingo at the VFW hall, it does, and if someone is puking in the toilet at 3 a.m., love will be there to hold up the long hair of its daugher or wipe the sweating brow and rub the tender, spine-bumped back of its son. Love buys the Depends before they’re gone.
… And still we see as though in that fog, stumbling along in pure faith that God is who He says He is, but someday, oh someday the mists will lift and we will see His face. And on that day, He will see ours, for the first time, in our new perfection, not the future promise of such, this blood-stained perfection bought on the cross stabbed into the hill of Calvary. Completion! Redemption full blown!
Faith, and hope and love abide here now as we paupers live our lives covered in a costly grace. But love? It outshines it all.
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