I am stubborn. Always have been.
This has been a bane and boon.
At great cost to myself and those I love, I’ve continued when I should have quit; when I should have repented.
But when it comes to love, I have been stubborn in the right direction.
I have pioneered a worn path, a testimony of a bright future.
As this world becomes more complicated, my world grows simpler, kinder.
As this world grows fragile in trust, I march steadily toward reconciliation.
In a world of churning absolutes, love is my certainty
…it’s my repentance.
Love is my burning heart and the way in which I am learning to walk.
It’s my dictionary, my interpretation, the answer to the question.
Love is my approach to crisis, confusion, loss, need, brokenness; it’s how I navigate fear, guilt, shame, and every other fruit of missing the mark.
Love is the lens through which I define justice, hope, mercy, grace, and forgiveness.
And also, The Law, punishment, wrath, separation, and bitterness.
Love is my approach to heaven, now and later.
Love is my approach to hell, now and later.
Love is my certainty; and how I repent…
Love informs my education, information, knowledge, ideology, and systems.
Love is how I navigate the scholar, and the experienced, the spirit-filled, and the fundamentalist.
Love is my approach to scripture, my hermeneutic, my method of interpretation.
Love is the God-Man on a cross reconciling the world to Himself not counting Adam’s or my delusions against us.
“Father forgive,” is my certainty, and my inclusion…
Love inhabits my passions, promises, and desires.
And my wanderings, disappointments, and confusions.
Love is my childhood and my old age,
my art and my intellect,
my union.
Love is my certainty, and why I repent…
Love is how I address politics, religion, culture, the news cycle, nationalism, the United Nations, COVID, Vaccines, flat earthers, and misplaced trust in corporations and government.
Love is my interaction with gun enthusiasts and gay rights activists, black lives matter, and all lives matter.
Love is my answer for the sarcastic cynic, the cruel hypocrite, the preacher, and the comic, the Church and Hollywood, the ‘for’ and the ‘against.’
Love is my certainty… when I repent…
Love defines my King as the greatest servant of all, and His Kingdom in the context of family and friendship.
Love defines my Master as the humblest of slaves, and His obedience as an obligation to kindness.
Love is my empathy and my compassion.
Love IS the balance,
it is my certainty,
it is my repentance…
Love is stubborn in the right direction.
Excerpted from my forthcoming book, Leaving and finding Jesus
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