the gravity of love

I heard someone say the other day, that "culture is what we make of creation". Interesting. I often forget that culture originates with the mediums that have been given us by God. Therefore, culture has the power to be this really beautiful piece of art that we've made with the tools God has given us...we have the chance to follow the Creator's model and be 'creators' ourselves.

How am I creating? How are you creating?

Sure, I'm writing songs right now, but how is that process birthing anything? Am I tossing around worship cliches and musical notes, or am I actually bringing something of Truth into light...using my story to illuminate God' story.

And that's also something that I forget quite often, that I'm part of God's story...God's narrative. I'm not the main character, God is. I'm always asking God how he can move and influence my story, as if it exists outside of God or something. Really, God is authoring my story and my life that I might influence others in THE story.

It makes me remember one of my favorite quotes, by Don Miller. It goes something like this:

"If you forsake telling the story of your life...if you keep it to yourself...if you don't share your stories of death and struggle and pain...and if you don't share your stories of life and birth and resurrection...something about the character of God goes unsaid".

Wow...now this doesn't mean that something 'becomes' true about God...it already was true, but as far as we are concerned, as human beings who live life through the lens of our own experience, some Truth about who God is becomes illuminated as others tell their stories, becomes 'alive' to us, in a way that our souls might resonate with it. It's as if truth was there all along, but suddenly we collide with it...we don't 'brush up against it' we truly collide with Truth, and we can't helped but changed by it.

I think maybe that's why I love singing about and to God so much...when I'm in that zone, somehow this confluence of music, poetry, lyric, and community comes together, and Truth is on this direct collision course with my soul, and my soul feels it and realizes it and resonates with it and responds to it. And it's usually such a big collision that I can't leave from that space unchanged. And as I leave that space and go on to try it out, to live it out, to dicuss it, process it, live it out, fail at it, wrestle with it, succeed with it, fail at it again, pray about it, and simply try to DO the Truth of God, I find myself continually coming back full circle to the space of communal worship. Something happens in communal worship that connects my soul to truth in such a way that I can better understand it and live it out...and then after I've gone and done that, I can come back and sing about it all the more.

It kind of reminds me of another quote, one that our professor Irv Brendlinger used to say in our preaching class, in response to us being 'young kids' and not wanting to be hypocritical...trying to figure out how we as human being could declare God's Truth authoritatively and confidently, while continually realizing our humanity and our failings at living out what we wanted to so faithful preach. Irv shared us this quote, that was basically "preach Truth until you live Truth, and once you're living Truth, you will preach Truth all the more". Basically, we are always on this circular process of understanding, living, and then understanding more of Truth...I won't ever achieve being Jesus, but I can sure preach it and sing it and try to be it, and maybe after I do it enough, I'll actually live it out as well...I can't really wait until we've got it all figured out...I never will.

I guess for me, that practically acts itself out in how and why I sing...I sing because I'm responding to what I know and have experienced of God in history, in the Word, and in the story of my life thus far, and I sing because I know what I'm singing is true and because I want it to be true in the way I live. I sing so that I might one day be there. I sing because I am there in some ways and because I hope to be in others. So for me, singing helps me do God's story because it's true right now, and do God's story until I and my community reflect that.

There's a song that I have been listening to a lot...intially, I was hooked to it because of this beautiful, repetitive, groovy guitar hook, and I was then captured by the beauty of the lyrics and how much I resonated with them. I think this song is powerful because of the music and the melody, but especially because the lyric I think can resonate with anyone who really "gets" the idea of responding to their souls collision with the love of Jesus.


Open my eyes and see
The wonderful mystery of love
Forming into you
I am drawn to the gravity of love, love, love

We're standing still
In a moment of eternity
When worlds collide
And I feel the breath of heaven over me

My soul sings
My soul sings
My soul sings
How I love you

Open the page and see
The wonderful history of love
I start and end with you
I am pulled to the gravity of love, love, love


So to come back full circle. We started talking about creation and creativity...it is through someone else's creativity (specifically in this case, the band Delirious) that I connected and continue to connect to the beauty and truth of God's story of love. It isn't Delirious' love, it's God's love, they just created some space, through the vehicle of song and poetry for me to resonate with love...created space for me to remember the story, to live presently in the love and grace and mercy of the Messiah, and to anticipate the hope of things to come...all that I might be 'pulled by the gravity of love'.

What space are we creating, for ourselves and for others to get in proximity with the story of Love...so close that we might really be pulled in?

I want to be so in the gravitational field of this love...that is pulls me closer and closer in, that I am on a direct collision course with love. Lets live and create and tell our stories, that more of God would be known and understood and realized by those around us, and lets all together be pulled to the gravity of love.

living in the story,

ian