While I am a Cincinnati'an at heart, I am no longer one in residence. This little lady lives in Oregon and her heart may have finally found home.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Love Beyond Reason
(I'm going to jump into the a chapter of John Ortberg in which he's talking about the leper healed in Mark)
"The law said, 'Don't touch.' The Gospels are full of stories about people who sought to touch Jesus: little children, the woman suffering from hemorrhages who desperately grasped the hem of his garment, the prostitute who anointed Jesus' feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair, and doubting Thomas, who demanded to feel Jesus' wounds with his own hands.
Unlike all of these, the leper made no attempt to touch Jesus. The leper understood the situation. He knew the law.
But notice what Jesus did: 'Moved by compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, 'I do choose. Be made clean!''
Jesus touched the leper before he healed him. He touched the leper while the leper was still unclean. This would have scandalized anyone who watched. To toucha leper was to be regarded as unclean yourself. This was a great miracle. This is God, who, after all, made the law, breaking his own law, for the sake of humanity. Jesus did not need to touch the leper to cleanse him. He performed other miracles at a distance; all he had to do was say the word. The word healed his body, but the touch healed his soul. But Jesus wanted something understood.
The miracle of the touch is that Jesus was willing to share another person's suffering in order to bring about healing. This is a foreshadowing of the cross: Jesus taking on our sin so that we could take on his life. By his stripes we are healed.
In a contagious world, we learn to keep our distance. If we get too close to those who are suffering, we might get infected by their pain. It may not be convenient or comfortable. But only when you get close enough to catch their hurt will they be close enough to catch your love."
He later quotes C.S. Lewis and it's beautiful so you get both for the price of one.
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
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