Saturday, May 14, 2016

His Bride's Mind and Heart


"What then is the nature of the discipline that love provides?  In the first place, it is something that I must quite deliberately want to do.  For many of us this is the first great roadblock.  In our relations with each other there is often so much that alienates, that is distasteful; there seems to be every ground for refraining from the kind of concern that love demands.  It is curious how we feel the other person must demonstrate a worthiness that commends itself to us before we are willing to want to move in outflow, in the self-giving that love demands.  We want to be accepted just as we are, but at the same time we want the other person to win the right to our acceptance of him.  This is an important part of the sin of pride.  There must be genuine repentance for such an attitude.  Forgiveness for this sin is the work of the grace of God in the human heart.  A man seeks it before God and becomes aware of forgiveness only when, in his attitude toward his fellows, he comes to want to make available to them the consciousness of what God shares with him.  God enables him to want to love."

~Howard Thurman, Disciplines of the Spirit



I acknowledge that there are many splendid intricacies that I will not know of God until I meet the Most High face to face.  Yet I also acknowledge that it does not quicken my relationship with Christ to choose to acquiesce, to settle myself in that reality.

"My soul followeth hard after thee..." 

When we love someone, we are in the continual process of knowing them.  There is no end to learning another unless we choose to end.  Submitting oneself to being taught, to learning what moves another to speak as they do, walk as they do, laugh as they do, and cry as they do is a part of the perfecting process of Love.

I ask questions and seek to know not because I am attempting to have all knowledge.  It is not within my capacity as a human woman to contain the full height nor the full depth of the all in All.  Yet it is within my capacity to come into not the fullness, but a fullness of Christ.  I question and seek because to love is to open my heart each day to engage understanding my beloved.  The day that we cease to desire to understand another, is the day that we've chosen to engage death...not a physical death but rather a death of relationship.  It is a decision to end abundance and life between us.   

What is the exercise and practice of intimacy?

In marriage, it is my aim to ask questions and seek to know my Groom.  Each day I desire to understand Him.  Truly this human form, in all of its fetters, does not allow for a perfect, all encompassing understanding of what moves my Groom to speak, walk, laugh, and cry.  It is not possible for me to know all of the subtle nuances that culminate His being.  Yet that reality does not justify an unwillingness to question and seek The Knowledge of my Groom's mind and heart.  I ask of Him...

Why do you speak of truth with such unfolding grace?
What leads you to take a walk in the cool of the day?
Where is the well from which the joy in your laughter springs?
When you cry, do your tears prelude a mindful heart?

The day we choose to cease to desire to understand our beloved, is the day that we choose to allow the spirit of communion that is matrimony to expire, to be left bereft of good. 

For me, to seek to understand is to love.  I ask questions about the bible, even while experiencing being significantly misunderstood in my pursuit, becasue I love the Most High.  Those whom I love I ask questions of them and seek to know them. With tender intention, I quite deliberately want to understand those whom I love and those who love me.  I've learned and I am learning that inclining unto one another is the exercise, the practice of those who fellowship...the discipline of those who love.

Of mind and heart, my love is the intellectual and spiritual acting as one in hard pursuit of my Beloved.  For me, "in the name of Christ" means "in the name of Love."  And so, the desire to know the living word and the desire to know you, my brother and sister is the desire to question and seek in the name of Love.  After all, how can we claim, in spirit and in truth, to love those whom we do not affectionately desire to understand each day?  God forbid.  How dare I claim to love someone I do not thoughtfully care to ask of, to seek of?

Selah.




 "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus."

~Philippians 3:12



  



    

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