I've hesitated for nearly 5 months to put the thoughts in this post into words beyond my own journaling and a few private conversations with dear friends for more than one reason. First, it seems so ridiculously presumptuous for me to have anything at all to say about sexual intimacy as someone not even 5 months married. But I decided that there will be a day when perhaps I will want to remember how powerful and strong all these thoughts are here in their newness. Second, I know that every couples' experience is so different and that comparison of any kind can be very unhealthy. On that front, I came to the conclusion that as it is not necessary to get into any kind of specific detail to ruminate on the aspect that has captured my soul lately, the risk here is worth the discussion. Finally, I was concerned that to discuss what is something so beyond-words-beautiful to me would inflame an ache in the hearts of my single friends and perhaps deepen bitterness or increase temptation. But as I've thought and prayed more about that aspect, it has seemed to grow increasingly clear that is perhaps most of all for my single friends that I must attempt to write this out. It remains to be seen whether the words which strain to hold these thoughts which have so impacted me can truly bear out their desired significance with clarity. But I must try.
Flashback to 19 weeks ago on another beautiful, windows-open day at the cabin in West Virginia where Josh and I were in the midst of our honeymoon. I can so clearly remember the moment when, staring out the window at this view, 15 years of wrestling with the meaning of John 15 seem to suddenly come into focus. Of course I am very much aware that I am only rippling the surface of this beautiful passage and the mystery it holds, but to even dip my toe into it is a richness beyond what I had imagined.
"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." (John 15: 4 -5, 9-11)
As I pondered this passage and the experiences that the first few days of marriage had held, a letter I read around the age of 12 from the missionary Hudson Taylor to his sister Amelia flooded my mind again. At the risk of making this post unbearably long, I will quote below several portions at some length because I find that it says so much of what I wish to communicate and much more clearly than I can get it out.
....I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was how to get it out. He was rich, truly, but I was poor; He strong, but I weak. I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness; but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question. As gradually the light was dawning on me, I saw that faith was the only prerequisite, was the hand to lay hold on His fulness and make it my own. But I had not this faith. I strove for it, but it would not come; tried to exercise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fulness of our precious Savior—my helplessness and guilt seemed to increase...
When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy [John McCarthy, in Hangchow] was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before. McCarthy, who had been much exercised by the same sense of failure, but saw the light before I did, wrote (I quote from memory):
"But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One."
As I read I saw it all! "If we believe not, He abideth faithful." I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, "I will never leave you." "Ah, there is rest!" I thought. "I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I'll strive no more. For has He not promised to abide with me—never to leave me, never to fail me?" And, dearie, He never will!
But this was not all He showed me, nor one half. As I thought of the Vine and the branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul! How great seemed my mistake in having wished to get the sap, the fulness out of Him. I saw not only that Jesus would never leave me, but that I was a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. The vine now I see, is not the root merely, but all—root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit: and Jesus is not only that: He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for, or needed. Oh, the joy of seeing this truth! I do pray that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ.
Faith, I now see, is " the substance of things hoped for," and not mere shadow. It is not less than sight, but more. Sight only shows the outward forms of things; faith gives the substance. You can rest on substance, feed on substance. Christ dwelling in the heart by faith (i.e. His Word of Promise credited) is power indeed, is life indeed. And Christ and sin will not dwell together; nor can we have His presence with love of the world, or carefulness about many things."
And now I must close. I have not said half I would, nor as I would had I more time. May God give you to lay hold on these blessed truths. Do not let us continue to say, in effect, "Who shall ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down from above." In other words, do not let us consider Him as afar off, when God has made us one with Him, members of His very body. Nor should we look upon this experience, these truths, as for the few. They are the birthright of every child of God, and no one can dispense with them without dishonour to our Lord. The only power for deliverance from sin or for true service is CHRIST.
The content of this letter, while wonderfully encouraging, had never quite clicked for me practically. I wanted the joy and confidence that this letter describes. I wanted to just "abide" in the Lord, but this made so little sense to me when I looked at all the scriptural calls for active dying to self and striving towards the fruits of the Spirit. How could something so passive fit with all the war-like calls to kill sin and to "take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm"? And that's when it finally hit me that to "abide" is not passive at all. It is in fact quite the opposite. This is the juncture at which the new and wondrous mystery of becoming One, body and soul, with my Beloved shed new unexpected light on this perplexing reality.
In a letter to one of my dearest friends, also recently married, I wrote the following a few weeks after the wedding:
To become one is in so many ways to offer oneself to the other and then to remain - to abide - in that posture. It is not a thing devoid of desire! Oh is it ever the opposite! I've never known a desire so deep and all encompassing in my life. My heart races, my body quavers and my mind seems to ascend beyond the thoughts of words and into a sort of direct communion. Oh no - it is not martyrdom. But it is yet principally an offering and then an abiding. I suppose that could be a workable definition for abiding: a ceaseless offering. I strain to get into words how this is different than the striving after holiness I've grasped at till now. Again I think the key difference is some facet of understanding that to offer oneself to the will and desire of the other is not passive but it also cannot be stripped down to a list of activities and remain even related to the great mystery that is Oneness with the Beloved. If you imagine the most beautiful physical expressions of your love and line them up as a set of steps to perform towards achieving perfect marital Oneness and then set about striving to practice them as acts separate from a heart surrendered in trust and openness it seems absurd, flat and alien....
There is something so indescribably rich and pivotal in this mystery of the way that by offering ourselves fully (to husband and by image here to Christ... or perhaps vice versa) to be taken by the one so trusted, we are opening ourselves up to be filled and made new in ways beyond anything we could ever ask or imagine. I've been simply bowled over by what this images for the call to obey. What an unspeakably sweet thing it is - suddenly - to be called by the Great Beloved to abandon all and follow ... to abide at every cost. I cannot help but reverberate with this quote from Bonhoeffer:
"At the call, Levi leaves all that he has - but not because he thinks that he might be doing something worth while but simply for the sake of the call. Otherwise he cannot follow in the steps of Jesus. This act on Levi's part has not the slightest value in itself, it is quite devoid of significance and unworthy of consideration. This disciple simply burns his boats and goes ahead. He is called out and has to forsake his old life in order that he may exist in the strictest sense of the word. The old life is left behind, and completely surrendered. The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity (that is in truth into the absolute security and safety of the fellowship of Jesus), from a life which is observable and calculable (it is in fact quite incalculable) into life where every is unobservant and fortuitous (that is, into one which is necessary and calculable) out of a real of finite (which is in truth the infinite) into the realm of infinite possibilities (which is the one liberating reality.) Again it is no universal law. Rather it is the exact opposite of a legality. It is nothing else than bondage to Jesus alone, completely breaking through every programme, every ideal, every set of laws. No other significance is possible, since Jesus is the only significance. Besides Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters."
To paraphrase, one could almost concentrate this all to "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die - and in that call "creates the situation where [life] is possible." Or "[Grace] is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life." I cannot get into words properly what a sweetness it is to suddenly hear the call to obedience as a call of love and not a death knell. Of course it is a death knell too - but to the death of death itself! Is my grimy soul clinging to it and therefore wrenching at the pain of the consuming fire of Holiness? Of course. But it is something like the twitching of the snake's body on the crushing of its head. It is the weakness of a flesh yet to be made new, not a death of any true significance. And on the other side of each of a thousand daily deaths, which are the price of obedience to the call is sweet fellowship beyond all imagination. It is a taste of oneness. It is the graft beginning to take to The Vine. It is exhausting ... yes of course. We are but dust. Bonhoeffer again:
"When Jesus said 'Come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened,' he assumed we would grow weary, discouraged and disheartened along the way. These words are a touching testimony to the genuine humanness of Jesus. He had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following Him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love."
The Demand of Love. That is so close to what I mean. Love demands all and gives infinite life... on the other side of surrender. We cannot know what shape this true life will take because it is to follow Christ not a system of rules. But we do know that to be called to follow is to be called deeper and deeper into his love. There is life everlasting and full of glory. And oh it is a weight of glory too great for our meager bones. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality!" Lewis writes:
"We do not want merely to see beauty, though God knows even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it."
Here, in the arms of my Beloved Joshua, I am intoxicated with just a taste of this kind of immersion into glory. The freedom of surrender...the shadow of a oneness that seeks always to abide in the other. And here - oh here - I see that this room of love is but the faintest whiff, the greyest shadow, the blandest taste, the slightest breeze of what it means to be One with the Great Beloved and to ceaselessly abide in Him in surrender and in fullness of life. At the cabin, I kept a sheet close by to jot down thoughts as they came to me and this is how I wrote it down at the time. "We, the bride, open ourselves fully, wholeheartedly, and as we seek to please Him, he is honored and his glory spills over into us, making us new and, like Moses, causing our faces to shine with his glory."
"We sat grown quiet at the name of Love." That is truly how I have felt perpetually as I ponder these thoughts and glimmers and shadows of such a beautiful reality. To think that we are invited in to this mystery! Here we daily pledge our troth in a trust unbreakable and full of glory.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
There are two clarifications which I feel I must add as a sort of appendix to this rather tome-ish post. First, some of you (married and single) will read this and think that I am sadly and hopelessly in my head about sex and that somebody should mercifully liberate me and that my poor husband has been subjected to a wretched lot of nonsense over the last few months. While I'm sure it is true that he has put up with an endless list of my nonsense in general, we both agree that meditating on the dizzying parallels between the mystery of becoming one with each other and becoming one with Christ has made intimacy unspeakably richer and endlessly more meaningful. To experience something so beyond what we could have imagined or tried to grasp at in moments of succumbing to temptation during our single years and then to realize how richly it images what Christ is calling us into has been truly life altering. To become that intimate physically and emotionally (for it is certainly both) demands an unparalleled level of trust in the Beloved. And yet on the other side of that surrender each to the other can be such unspeakable joy! Why is it then, that when Christ calls us deeper into his love - a call which inescapably demands unparalleled trust and a relinquishing of our tightly held control over our lives - we cower and resist as if this is a wretched, unthinkable cost? If I can trust myself willingly to my Dear but inescapably fallible Joshua, how much more can I trust myself to Christ, abide in his love, and open myself up willingly to His costly call of love?
My other clarification regards something that I hope is already implicitly understood, but I recognize as I look over this post was never made explicit. I have written these thoughts from the wife's perspective because that is my own perspective. I have also switched back and forth frequently and without explanation between exploring Oneness with Christ and Oneness with my earthly beloved, Josh. This could perhaps create an impression that I fully equate the absolute submission of our obedience to Christ's infallible call with my willing offering of myself to the desires of my fallible husband. This is not the case. While I do see abundant parallels, that is not the point I wish to make. I am instead glorying in what I see as more of a triangle of intimacy. As both Josh and I seek to submit ourselves willingly and without reserve to "the demand of love" which is Christ's call to obedience, we meet there and have the privilege of tangibly tasting and celebrating the image of that intimacy in love to each other. It is by no means a perfect image but it is a rich one and unspeakably full of glory.
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