May 2017 – Kiwichurch

Grief

Grief is the deepest, most pained outpouring of love.
For how can we grieve if we have not first loved?
And how can we love, without knowing in our heart of hearts we may yet one day pay the price of grief?

Grief is a stroll in the valley of the shadow of death,…
and yet this is a place we need not fear to tread.
The valley is green: there are blossoms, there is light;
There are many coloured rainbows of memory erupting in our hearts.

Grief can change us, by making us more thoroughly human than we were.
Death can be swallowed up by a more vibrant grasp of the precious value of life.
The end of one season can pave the way for the beginning of something new.
The treasure of the past can forge a greater determination for the future.

Grief can reveal to us where our true treasure lies,
its pain fuelling us ever onward, toward the joy of restoration.
For is death the end? No, death is not the end.
Death is only the beginning.

I see Love standing over the grave, beckoning, waiting:
A greater Love, a truer Love;
A Love of beauty, and passion.

The Light is overcoming the shadow,
forever.

Time

It has been said that our most precious commodity is not money, but time.
In my forties I now wholeheartedly agree.
Some say, ‘Time is money,’ but I say, ‘No.’
Time transcends money.
Time can be spent in many ways: the pursuit of money is but one of them.
A lifetime can be defined in many ways.

In what way do we want our lives defined?
How should we spend our set time?
What is of most importance in life?
Where does our true treasure lie?

The clock shows us that we are finite.
Our mortality shows us there are choices to make: priorities to establish.
What are your priorities?
What is of most importance, when time has run out?

What to make of Humanity?

What to make of humanity?

We are children, sometimes, groping in the dark;
Groping, and clutching, and owning, and fighting.
Beating, and bullying, and insisting that we are the best.…
For what if we’re not the best? What if we don’t own?
What if we can’t win?

There is a vulnerability to the heart of humanity that is the heart of a broken child.
Desperate for love, dead without it, fighting tooth and nail to hide the lack that is within.

And yet with all of our flaws, with all of our brokenness, with all of our battling for self defence, and for personal victory, there are other realities too.
A capacity for love; a capacity for healing.
A capacity for sacrifice.
A hand reaching out to a higher Way.

I can see now why God loves humanity:
even a humanity that robs, that rapes, that murders the chance of another for life.
I can see why God bears with our failings.
There is a seed of the chance for change, even admist the deepest failing;
There is the chance for a new kind of life, even out of the ashes of the old life.

The child within can still reach out to the higher Way.
And while that chance still exists, while that possibility still breathes,
God waits, and beckons, and stretches himself out on a cross in death, to carry the full cost of giving us another chance.

Redemption comes at a high price,
but life after death is sweet indeed.