Good Grief – What Does it Look Like?

I have just learned of Ben Witherington’s tragic loss of his daughter, and here post his reflections on that sudden and unexpected death and his belief in a good God:

Having recently gone through the devastating experience of having our beautiful 32-year-old daughter die, completely unexpectedly, of a pulmonary embolism, I was determined from Day One (January 11, when she was found dead in her home in Durham, N.C.) to be open to whatever positive thing there might be to glean from this.  I cling by my fingernails to the promise of Romans 8:28 that “God works all things together for good for those who love him….”

The Nature of the Trinity, Part 4: Emmanuel

“He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (Jn14:7)

“In beholding the Son, we see the Father.” (Athanasius)

Emmanuel – God with us. Jesus Christ is “the embodiment of the whole being of God,” the “perfect and proportionate image of God.” In The Crucified God Moltmann comments that the doctrine of the Incarnation holds that “God is not only other-worldly but also this-worldly; he is not

RIP Sarah Burke

I can’t seem to stop thinking about this tonight. I did not know Sarah, but the news of her death today has for no apparent reason hit me hard. A world champion skiier, Canadian, a “fearless competitor who shaped her sport,” she suffered an accident during a training run in Utah last week. Just 29. A newly wed. I can’t stop thinking of that young man and his pain – Rory is his name…her parents…her sister… and seeing the pictures of her smiling so bright. So young. So very sad.

God the Ageless Romancer

So long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about – He is looking for us.1

Yes, this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the reparation for our sin. (1Jn.4.10)

1. Simon Tugwell in Curtis & Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, 69.

The Nature of the Trinity, Part 3: Perichoretic

In John’s gospel we read that the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father (17:21-23), that the Son and Father are one (10:30). Writing in the eighth century, John of Damascus called this mutual indwelling or interpenetration, this intimacy, between the Father and the Son, perichoresis. Traditionally this indwelling has been viewed as fellowship. But John, who was influential in developing this doctrine, described it as a “cleaving together.” Such is the relationship in the Godhead…

God’s Love

 

 

God cannot ravish. He can only woo.

 

CSLewis, The Screwtape Letters, 45-46.

I Am Second

If only we could be truly Loved…

Of all the things that are required of us in this life, which is the most important? What is the real point of our existence? Jesus was confronted with the question point-blank one day, and he boiled it down to two things: loving God and loving others.

Somewhere down inside we know it’s true; we know love is the point. We know if we could truly love, and be loved, and never lose love, we would finally be happy. Gerald May wrote, “We are created by love, to live in love, for the sake of love.”1

What is the point of it all? Intimacy… intimacy with the triune God who is kenotic love… the One who emptied himself, who knows us intimately & wants the very best for us… who calls us likewise to empty ourselves, to relinquish ourselves to both his waiting embrace and for a hurting world…

1. in John Eldredge, “Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive,” 48.

The Nature of the Trinity, Part 2: Kenotic

“Christian theology has long attributed self-limitation to God in the very notion of God creating something other than Godself with a given degree of autonomy.” An all-powerful God must, of necessity, accommodate himself to the limitations of that with which he desires to be in relationship; otherwise, he remains unreachable, unknowable and unknown. But any limitation by God is only by his free will, is only in his freely made decision to share his eternal love beyond his triunity. While immutable in his being he can choose to limit himself as and when necessary, for example, to accommodate his infinitude to the finitude of his creatures. 

The Tenderness of God

There came a point in the evolution of Jesus’ religious development when he could no longer call upon God by the traditional Hebrew invocations – Adonai, Elohim, El Shaddai, Yahweh – but had to call him Abba, the very name implying tenderness. Henceforth, for Jesus and for his followers then and through the ages, God had a new name. He would be called Abba because he protects, cares for, understands, forgives, and fusses over his children. Adoration would no longer consist of covering the eyes and face with one’s hands but of surrendering oneself with boundless trust into the powerful and tender hands of the One who is forever “Papa.”

Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God’s Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives, p.28.