Crazy Love

I'm so irritated.

I'm reading this book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan. It's very simple, it's taking a step back from the do's and don'ts of American Christianity and asking a very simple question. Who is this God?

I picked up this book at Tulsa Airport on the way back from my great-grandmother's funeral. I had a bag of cheeze-its and an apple juice tucked into the crook of my arm, and in one hand I held this book, Crazy Love. In the other hand, I held a Cosmo Magazine. Decisions, decisions. (By the way, I've decided if I ever publish a book, a picture of what I looked like while holding these different items would be the cover, for it is a perfect picture of my life). I put the magazine down. I decided if I was sitting next to someone on plane, I'd rather have a plain-front book than a magazine, whose' cover screams "5 Ways To Make Your Butt Look Awesome." Also, the book was just far more applicable, anyway.

So I started reading on the plane. I hate flying. I used to love it. It's not that I fear death, really. It's the plummeting, screaming, life jacket donning, oxygen mask wearing (honestly, do you think a blown up piece of plastic and a yellow Dixie cup attached to your face is gonna save you?) FLIGHT to death that I'd rather not experience.

So, back to the book. It's as if the author walked up to my isle seat and said, "Hello, you are wasting perfectly good oxygen sitting around in life doing nothing. Please get off your tukus and serve the Almighty God who, for reasons obviously unknown to us, loves you."

I don't think that was the author's intention. But that is how I felt. God loves me. I know we say this all the time, we sing about it at church, it's on bumper stickers and t-shirts, we whisper it to our children. But the thought......I'm out of words on how to describe it.

He loves me. Loves ME. Have you met me? I'm not the most lovable. And those who do love me, love me because I can, in return, love them. In almost equal amounts. The Creator of everything, even me, before there was time itself, loves me. I cannot love Him in return in the same manner. No matter what I do, my love is totally imperfect. I love things and people because, deep within my heart, I know that all that love can be returned to me. How often to I love people that truly REJECT me? A masochistic kind of love.

Then, during some turbulence, I started thinking about my funeral. Morbid, you say? Eh. I think about it more than some people, I'm sure. Brittany and Laura will sing. Some pastor I've had at some point will give the eulogy. People will sing a few hymns (How Deep the Father's Love for Us, In Christ Alone, When We All Get to Heaven, etc.) And people are required to say nice things at a person's funeral. It's mandatory. The truth gets stretched a little bit further than it should, in cases where people are truly thinking, "well...she wasn't a very nice person."

I do not have false modesty. I don't think that people will be thinking, "Good thing she's dead." I'm sure I will be missed. Maybe even remembered, for a while. But this life, a vapor, a 1/4 second glimpse of me, the 'extra', in the movie of "God," is all I have to serve Christ. Here is what it all comes down to.

I have made Christ a part of my life. Sometimes, he's a big part of my life. That's a good thing, right? But here's what God thinks of that....

He should BE my life. He has no identity complex. He does not need me to feel complete. The fact that he ALLOWS me to love him is blindingly inconceivable. So what am I to do? I don't know. I don't know how to even begin to love Him in the way I should. The Bible is clear. If I love him, I follow His commands.

The parable about the rich man who comes to Jesus and tells him that he's "been a good boy", and wants to follow him, touches a nerve within me. Jesus tells him to leave everything he has, give it all away, and follow. I am that rich man. I have been a good girl. Sometimes, annoyingly so. I've accepted his gift of salvation so many years ago. And still, I feel like I'm stuck standing still in the story. "I want to follow you! I've been so good!"

He looks in to the eyes he formed, into the soul he knew before I existed, and says, "Leave it all, daughter. What you think you have is waste. The lukewarm life you are so proud of is not fit for the manure pile. Your good deeds are filthy rags. Leave it all, follow me."

To be continued.........