Colors

Did you ever notice how many colors there are?  How many hues of green alone are in the world.  Tints and shades, glossy and matte.  It is rather amazing the infinite number of colors around us.

It is Autumn once again and the trees are a menagerie of colors.  Each solitary leaf will itself journey through a range of colors.  It is beautiful to behold.

And what I find fascinating about all this color around me is the pure beauty of it.  Because honestly the world does not necessitate such vibrancy.  It would be quite possible for the world to have been created with half the colors we know or for there to only be one shade of orange.  Some aspects of creation are necessary because of the nature of God and His character.  "Love" is "good" in creation because God is good, God is love, and love is good.  So why so many colors?

As with everything the answer comes from the character of God, but it is an expression of personality.  It is not utility that spurs this myriad of shades.  We have so many colors simply because God is extravagant.  He does not just make a color, a few colors, but He made a number of colors beyond human comprehension.  God is a God of beauty.  He values things for more than utilitarian function.  He is a God of the concrete and the abstract.  And He chooses to express Himself in awe inspiring ways.  God is extravagant.

Consider God's love for us, each of us personally.  God loves us so much, beyond our understanding.  His love is independent, rooted in Himself.  Now consider my love for God.  My love is rather weak and feeble, and even at my strongest is still entirely dependent upon God and His love.  He initiates I respond.  This imbalance is okay, it is how eternity works.  God loves me with some extravagant and awesome love; a love that He alone is worthy of.  I love God with a small love; a love that is imperfect like me yet God somehow in His extravagance chooses to be blessed by.  How awesome is that?  God loves me as He alone deserves, in response I weakly love God back, and God chooses my love and receives it as more than it is.  It's crazy.  I don't understand it.  But God is extravagant.

Whenever you see colors around you may it remind you of how incredible God is and how extravagant His love is for you.

"Where are you?"

Have you ever wondered what was the saddest moment in history?  What has been the darkest hour in creation?  I would submit that there are two equally and intrinsically linked saddest moments, and that they both revolve around the question "where are you?"

Scene 1:  The Garden.

God has finished His work of creation and everything is good.  We see humanity as the pinnacle of God's creativity.  Scripture describes Adam and Eve as being "naked" which I think may be one of the most beautiful descriptions in Scripture.  They were naked before God and naked before each other.  Perfect relationship.  Nothing hidden.  Fully present and fully known.  Adam and Eve had an intimacy with God that we will only know in Heaven.  Adam and Eve had a depth with each other that we can only catch glimpses of now.

Naked.

And then the Fall.  Their ate, their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked.  They knew they were naked so they hid themselves.  This beautiful and perfect state was broken and stained.

Then God comes walking in the garden.  He calls to them "where are you?" (Gen 3:8) not because they were hiding from an omnipresent and omniscient God.  God said this as an expression of the severed intimacy.  In one bite Adam and Eve went from perfect relationship with God to complete isolation.

Scene 2: Palestine

Emmanuel has come.  Jesus has been leading his band of misfit disciples around the countryside and now they have come to Jerusalem to start the revolution.  Everything seems perfect.  But then in a flash Jesus is arrested, tried, convicted, and executed.  Upon a hillside between two bandits Jesus hangs dying.  

As Jesus takes on the sins of humanity, my sins, Jesus who was one with the Father (Jn 17:11) suddenly becomes isolated from the Father.  Jesus who is God, and knows an intimacy with the Father that is beyond my comprehension, was cut off from God.  His perfect relationship was eclipsed by my sins.  In that moment of Hell Jesus cried out "where are you?" (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Mk 15:34).

Jesus died alone to save me.  He also decided to stop being dead that I may know life.  Jesus went through the Hell of isolation that we may no longer be isolated.  We have hope.  We can go home.  Jesus has overcome.

a lesson in herbs: pests and parasites

Last spring I decided to plant an herb garden in our one-bedroom apartment.  I chose herbs because they are edible and small.  So I bought some pots, soil, seedlings, and began the experiment.

There have been several ups and downs with these herbs.  I have lost a couple plants along the way, while others grow almost effortlessly.  I have learned that basil doesn't really like to grow in-doors and that just slightly over-watering mint will spawn destructive powdery mildew.

When we moved into our current apartment in June the garden moved from the dining table to the balcony (and the basil was very thankful).  I have had to deal with a variety of pathogens and parasites from aphids to mildew to caterpillars that have all been merciless toward my little plants.  Poor peppermint, RIP.

But God has been speaking to me through this little garden; the act of getting your hands dirty and creating, cultivating life.  I have seen how desperately I need to be watered daily, and while this seems quite obvious it is intriguing to see play out.  I have also seen how completely helpless the herbs are to the attacks of these insects.  The herbs can do nothing to stop the ravenous appetites of the caterpillars or aphids.  Left alone the plants would each be overcome and die at the hands of these bugs.  The only hope for basil and oregano is that I will regularly sit down and pick off the pests.

And God showed me that my life is similar.  I still have places of selfishness and sin in my life.  These areas within me still dog me, drain me, and pull me down like these parasitic bugs.  And I am equally helpless to remove these parasitic parts of me; I am sinful and I cannot heal myself.  Thus I need a savior.

Praise God for sanctification.  But in this process I have found that my tendency is to try facilitating my own healing.  I act like for God to move in an area of my life I need to present it to Him.  While it is good to present our needs and requests to God, it's important to not fall into thinking that God is limited to only our requests and that the burden of our sanctification is dependent upon us.  My part in my healing is much smaller than I like to think.

Contrary to my habit of bringing specific requests this summer God taught me to seek Him by sitting down and just saying "Lord I have caterpillars in my soul."  I have had to stop, be still, and rather than trying to order or direct, allow the Master Gardener to pluck out my weeds and bugs; to trust Him to remove pathogens that I am not even aware of.  Praise God that we have such an attentive gardener who waters, fertilizes, prunes, and removes our parasites.