It may come as quite the surprise, but I have on occasion been known to analyze the circumstances of my life. Perhaps you’ve suspected as much, and perhaps you’ve even suspected I’ve done so with you.
It’s pretty much a given if we’ve had anything more than a five second conversation, I’ve at least tried to guess how much schooling you’ve had, what you do for fun, and why your last relationship failed. I study, I deduce, I extrapolate. We all do it. It’s really just human nature, but I’m so overt about it that most folks are fairly easily put off by the whole thing.
I would like to take just a moment to explain myself. Not that understanding why I study you will make it any more comfortable, rather in the hope that my motivations would justify why I won’t stop.
I was not introduced to forgiveness through the bible. Instead a series of unfortunate events led me to see forgiveness not as forgetting, but as recycling. Forgiveness turns what was ugly and broken into a beautiful beginning of a lasting relationship. I didn’t grasp this from the bible; I experienced it. It was that experience that paved the way for me to begin to understand the depth and breadth of what Jesus offers through his death and resurrection.
I was not introduced to love through the bible. Instead a series of fortunate events led me to see love not as a feeling, but as an underlying motivation. Love provides the foundation allowing forgiveness to transform hurt into joy. Again, the experience opened my eyes to the glorious gift that is the love my Father shares with me and through me.
I have grown up in the church, but it was not the church which exposed me to truth and peace and joy and sacrifice. It was you. Here’s the great part: I can see God in you and you in God regardless of your intention. Some of you don’t even know the things you’re showing me; you might teach me about joy without ever even experiencing it yourself. You might reveal deep insights into the work of the Spirit and not even believe God exists.
So you see, I’m compelled to study you, to try to glimpse the parallels in our relationship to my relationship with him, to hear his words in yours, to experience him in our experiences. I’m in a long distance relationship with a God who is even now bringing me into an ever more intimate relationship with him by bringing me into an ever more intimate relationship with you.
This probably doesn’t really make you feel any better. At best it just validates your suspicion and at worst it destroys the tenuous trust we might have been able to form. It may sound like I’m just using you, which coincidentally is the complete truth. I’m using you for exactly the reason you were designed, created and introduced into my life.
You are my love letter. You are a gift from the God of love, truth, beauty, grace, peace, joy and forgiveness. I am consumed by the desire to read and re-read you, to glean every morsel of truth from what he shares with us through us for us, even at the risk of sacrificing my relationship with you.
While I will not stop, nor put up the pretense that I will, I will offer you my most sincere gratitude from the depths of my heart. Because of you, I understand him more clearly. Because of you, my long distance Love is right at hand. Because of you, I can see him, hear him, hold him, and love him. You are a part of the love story that is going to take so long to write that he filed an extension request for eternity and then signed it in his own blood. Truly, with all my heart, thank you.
Posted with : Bare with Me