Smart as Hell

This is why I love Rob Bell:

Yes, we get what we want.

God is that loving.

If we want isolation, despair, and the right to be our own god, God graciously grants us that option if we insist on using our God-given power and strength to make the world in our own image, God allows us that freedom; we have the kind of license to that. If we want nothing to do with light, hope, love, grace, and peace, God respects that desire on our part, and we are given a life free from any of those realities. The more we want nothing to do with all God is, the more distance and space are created. If we want nothing to do with love, we are given a reality free from love.

If, however, we crave light,

we’re drawn to truth,

we’re desperate for grace,

we’ve come to the end of our plots and schemes

and we want someone else’s path,

God gives us what we want.

If we have this sense

that we’ve wandered far from home,

and we want to return,

God is there,

standing in the driveway,

arms open,

ready to invite us in.

If we thirst for shalom,

and we long for the peace that

transcends all understanding,

God doesn’t just give,

they’re poured out on us,

lavished,

heaped,

until we’re overwhelmed.

It’s like a feast where the food and wine do not run out.

These desires can start with the planting of an infinitesimally small seed deep in our heart, or a yearning for life to be better, or a gnawing sense that we’re missing out, or an awareness that beyond the routine and grind of life there’s something more, or the quiet hunch that this isn’t all there is. It often has its birth in the most unexpected ways, arising out of our need for something we do not know we do not have, for someone we know we are not.

And to that,

that impulse, craving, yearning,

longing, desire –

God says yes.

Yes, there is water for that thirst,

food for that hunger,

light for that darkness,

relief for that burden.

If we want hell,

if we want heaven,

they are ours.

That’s how love works. It can’t be forced, manipulated, or coerced.

It always leaves room for the other to decide.

God says yes,

we can have what we want,

because love wins.

-- Rob Bell, Love Wins (116-119)

I sobbed through the end of Toy Story 3 today. I’ve enjoyed watching those movies repeatedly because there is always another detail to pick up on, and they are such beautiful pictures of love, friendship, justice, and redemption. Particularly poignant to me today was the scene in the incinerator. Just as the unlikely team of friends join hands and stoically resign to their fate, here come those weird little alien dudes with “the claw!” OooooOooooh, the claw. The claw was awe-inspiring to these little guys because it seemingly chose them one by one from their imprisonment for a new life. In this scene they utilize the big claw to save their friends from perishing in the fires of Gehenna, “the town garbage pile” (Bell, 69).

More questions: Does God choose us or do we choose Him? What if no one saves us from our garbage?

And now something funny I heard a student tell another student today: “I’m smart as hell but lazy as f---.”

May peace invade your heart this holy week, and may love open the eyes of your heart.

Love, Lynn