Live Loved My Friends

I was just meditating on the relationship we are invited into in Christ. I think God so thoroughly enjoys us… and as much color, flavor and fragrance as He brings into our lives, it is returned to Him through His bride - you and me.

The more security and love He is able to impress on us, the more color we add to His creation.

His dream is for a bride in all of her glory – a bride that dwells in His love, beholding Him, abiding in Him, abounding and flourishing in Him until we are inevitably changed. This change is about reflecting Him but with our own unique color, flavor and fragrance. As the sunrise, mountains, cool springs and oceans reflect His glory, so too you and I are His reflection and as the word says His joy and delight. As much as we enjoy a sunset, He enjoys us. Oh the joy of living in His presence, dwelling in His favor. This is our ultimate quest and privilege. The source and the culmination of every thing we were created for.

He is my Father, the best of all fathers. And if you want to know my father all you need do is look at the life of His Son. If anyone has ever painted a picture of Father God, it was Jesus. He was the exact representation of Father God’s nature. Jesus was Gods expressed love in the form of a man.

This was not the God often perceived through legalistic readings of the old covenant; the kind of a God that you were afraid to piss off lest He smite you. This was a different, approachable, in disguise, man you could have coffee with, eat with, laugh and cry with, God. He was a man like us, yet so other than us. Born in obscurity, without pomp and circumstance, known for his illegitimate birth by a peasant girl, yet pure as the wind driven snow - and good, amazingly good, wise and kind.

He was not loved for his affluence. He was not followed because He was politically or religiously connected or powerful. He was poor and unassuming. But He was love. He came because He was love. He was filled with the compassion and empathy of a hopeful but wounded father. He came to heal and restore the damage in our hearts and in our perception of Him brought about by the fall…the sin, shame and the fear.

In the fullness of time He came. For the poor and the broken He came.

-That He might show the world what God the Father really looked like.

-That He might restore you and me to our original created value; that which He dreamed of before we were formed in our mothers womb - before the world was made…our individual color, fragrance and flavor.

-And that He might return us to His heart, the fellowship and the unbroken community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the community of heaven.

In the fullness of time He came, the fulfillment of promise. Angels announced His arrival singing, “Glory to God in the highest!” Seers and wise men recognized His entrance.

Poor shepherds celebrated His birth. And the bridegroom says come…

“He has come, as legs for the lame, the widow a mate, the orphan a name. He has come with love in His eyes, sing all you earth, the Messiah has heard our cry… Hosanna, Hosanna, Halleluiah, Heaven’s due has kissed the earth, HHHeaven’s King is majesty on high.”

Stay Thirsty my Friends

Live loved my friends

Merry Christmas!