Beauty

By request of Peter Bradley, I am breaking my week long silence with a much needed post. Sorry for the lack of communication... life seems to be taking a lot of attention these days... but it's good stuff - stuff that swells my heart and of which I will write on later...

I've been reading the book To Own A Dragon by Donald Miller... I heart Donald Miller - the way he writes, his insights, his honesty. This book is about growing up without a father, and though I grew up with a wonderful father, it is helping me to see God in a different light and to gain a little understanding of those who did not. Here's a passage that struck me on Wednesday:

I wondered if all the relationships we have - relationsionships with our lover, our mother, our friends - are not unlike blurred photos of our relationship with God, as though they are foreshadowings in the sappy prologue of an eternal novel.

I wondered if sliding our arms around a woman's hips wasn't a kind of infantile introduction to the metaphysical. If I allow myself, I can see God holding up flashcards as I fall in love with a woman, cards that say, this is love, I am like this love, only better.

"See," God says, pointing at the flashcard with the word "love," then pointing at His own chest while I move down the woman's lips to her chin and her neck. "See," God says, putting down the flashcard with "love" and picking up the word "oneness." He says, "Get it? Do you see? It's all living metaphors. It's a hint of oneness - like My Trinity!"

I love this... this blurring the line between secular and spiritual. This knowledge that faith is so much more than sitting in a pew... it's all around us - God pursuing us in the little things. He's trying to get our attention with the everyday. How beautiful that is - to know that He is a God who desires so much more than a prayer or an hour in church on Sundays... to know that He is intimately involved in our lives - teaching, guiding, directing... loving. Beautiful.