Jonathan Sprang - March 15, 2015
Sleeping With Bears
Many times, we don’t recognize when we are doing things that are destroying our life. For us its just the way it is, comfortable, what’s expected. Sin works this way too. It’s hard to see that the only result of a life lived that way is death. It’s like we are sleeping with bears and surprised when we get eaten. Through the snake on a stick, and Jesus on the cross, God is peeling back the curtain on our lives to reveal where a life like that is leading, so that we can leave that life and accept the life God has for us. The only true life there is. Leaving that death is tough, and could feel a lot like dying, and it could take a long time to figure out, but it’s totally worth it.
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I don’t know how many of you have had the opportunity to attend a wedding during COVID but they’re strange affairs. Much smaller than usual due to restrictions on public gatherings. All the guests in masks. Awkward talk with other guests at your table even more awkward because of the masks.
I’ve had the privilege of officiating a wedding during COVID, and despite all the hassles and hardships, there’s something powerful and beautiful about a wedding being stripped down to its bare essentials.
There’s a passage from Peter Rollins I like to use in my wedding ceremonies. I’ve used it for a couple of the weddings I’ve done here at Catalyst. Pete asks us to imagine the scores of people we see everyday (of course this was pre-pandemic). How we don’t really see the vast majority of the people we encounter every day. They’re background noise.
What makes us special isn’t that we’re all that different from every other beautiful, unique snowflake in the world. It’s that someone loves us.
Love, according to Pete, is what enables us to see. When I love you, I truly see you. Love draws you out of the endless sea of others.
Love notices. Love sees. Love is intentional.
That is true of romantic love, but it’s also true of love in general. Love takes intention.
Intention is something that, for a lot of us, has been in short supply during COVID. Our relationships have taken a big hit.
God moves toward us with intention, lifting us up and out of the sea of indifference to choose us as God’s own children!
