Beginnings

a fresh new year

open, ready to receive

i wait, anticipating how 2012 will unfold

i have struggled with choosing my word for the year, one little word pregnant with possibilities

this year is no different, and may in fact be fuller than most

LISTENING  

to the voice of 

LOVE 

i have much to share with this word, but for now i want to leave you with this excerpt from a book i am beginning. "Listening to Love, responding to the startling voice of God", by Jan Meyers.

"What is it about us that we would either dismiss him or cower before him? Why are our hearts persuaded that he is either powerless or malevolent when in fact he would choose the humiliation of spittle on his face, splinters in his skin, and steel through his bone to answer the question, :Is it really you? Why do we listen to the mocking voice of evil or the faulty reasoning we extrapolate from our own stories and life messages rather than the truth that someone would want to die for us, defeat death for us, go back to the Father with our ransom in his hands and talk to the Father about us, pleading our case? And perhaps a more courageous question: what causes us to quake, not with the fear of the Lord - Jesus Christ of Nazareth - but before the God of our Worst Fear?"

"Our Worst Fears take many forms: God will not remember me. God will shame me for what I've been involved in. God will get my hopes up and then dash them. God will ask too much of me. God will leave me alone."

"...our gods - the need to secure our reputation in the marketplace, the voice telling us that the most important this is to be liked, the pattern of isolation we fall into when we guard ourselves with a routine of work and television, the belief that we must keep up the facade of a perfect Christian family, you can't be wrong, you have to come through, you must alter yourself, you must get it right or make sure you fake your way; convince everyone. The gods of our fear drive us from behind with threats of abandonment, requirement, and rejection if we fail to appease them. Then they offer the way to appease them - hide. Hide in obvious way, through pornography or materialism, and in less obvious ways, through self-condemnation or pride."

"There is safety - these gods do keep us from facing what we fear about God - for a while. Appeasing this fear - playing with our self-crafted appeasement trinkets - keeps us very busy as we hide our heart from God?  As long as we have our Worst Fear to cower behind, we never have to face our unbelief in Love."

"Discovering the Love that doesn't want or need to be appeased but desires all of us - longing for us to be alive, confident, free - is a great thing.  So why is the process so frightening? Let me say it this way: when we open the door to God, he comes to remove the obstacles in the way of our knowing the fullness of Love. He takes away our pride, our autonomy, our religion, sometimes our vocation, possibly our life. And as we'll see, he does this for our freedom."

in the next several days i will share more on this word and it's meaning to me.

grace and peace