god

Embracing the Cross

/ Morgan Grace Hart / Leave a comment

Here is a journal entry from several years ago:

9-3-13
So today when I felt the need to pray at lunchtime:
I found myself thinking back to those images in The Passion of the Christ where He first sees the cross and embraces it. And I got this really moving thought in my imagination about Jesus first seeing the cross – a strange thought, since it will be the way He’s meant to die – that there was a moment there where God seemed to touch His shoulder and say, “take heart, Son, here it is!” and draw His eyes to it in the way that loving parents bring their children on Christmas morning into the room where they have lovingly laid out their gifts for them. Was there a moment, in His heart, where despite the horror, Jesus could see that, even though it was Punishment, even though it was Death, and His Curse… it was also His Life, the life that God had trustingly given Him to spend, full of good things and bad things, but a blessing nonetheless? – That He had been lovingly equipped with the strength to endure it, lovingly connected to the people He would save? That God had, at some point in Jesus’ life, begun to lovingly cultivate a living tree somewhere, knowing that it would be The Tree? That as some unknowing woodcutter felled that same tree, God was lovingly working through his hands to fashion the cross that His Son would be crucified to? That He had carefully orchestrated this, thinking lovingly of His Son, of what His Son was capable of?
Was it not just love for us coming from the Father, but also something He did because He loved Jesus, too, giving Him the greatest honor, though it came with such misery?

This thought was repeated to me three times. At the end came a thought closely related to a C.S.Lewis quote from The Screwtape Letters: “[sic] You fear this terrible thing happening to you or that terrible thing happening to you. You fear so many things, but all you actually have to do is the one cross that God has designed for you.” And I felt the Father tell me this: that the cross you bear every day is exquisitely hand-crafted for you by the Person who loves you most in the world…and once you fully grasp this idea, you will never be terrified of anything in life.

 

Dear friends, He was not only willing to die for you – He was grateful for it. His love for His saved ones runs so deep, I have no doubt that He constantly thanks the Father for allowing all these people to have a true relationship with Him, regardless of the cost to Himself to gain this kind of access to the human heart.

God bless you, and have a good day. And P.S. – I really recommend reading the Scripture references this time, if you’re unfamiliar with these verses.

-Morgan Grace Hart

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES:

Hebrews 12:2, Isaiah 53:11, Isaiah 53 (whole chapter), John 12:23-28, Hebrews 2:10-18, Luke 9:23, 1 Thessalonians 5:18.
For those without access to a Bible, a free online copy is available in multiple languages at biblegateway.com.

Good Friday

/ Morgan Grace Hart / Leave a comment

As with many families with small children, here we are this night of Good Friday, celebrating by just doing the things we would be doing any other day. Toys are strewn about, snack leftovers are on the table, and the TV is playing in the living room. As my kids fall off to sleep, I’m now the only one awake in this dark room, the sole spectator to the end of Return of the Jedi. As I watch Darth Vader and Luke’s dramatic lightsabre duel and Vader’s ultimate turn back to good, I find something in the film’s emotions calling my mind back to Christ. I remember a time many years ago, the same year that Star Wars: Episode III came out. I remember saying to myself, “Vader was looking for immortality through evil, power, and medical treatments…and he never found it…until he gave up his life to save Luke.” Something in the idea would not let me go, and before the year was out, I knew my heart was calling out to Christ. I was sensing something I would later hear and know more clearly from the scriptures: Jesus’ words “Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.” (Luke 17:33)

That idea is at the heart of salvation. It was so important to Jesus that He repeated it 5 separate times in the scriptures, with an additional paraphrase in the book of John. While I no longer remember much of Episode III (after all, it’s been over 10 years now!), I vividly remember having that thought. And I absolutely remember, in the months that followed, giving up my own life of sin, losing it, dieing, and finding Christ alive in its place.

A lot of people worry about losing the meaning of Easter in all the commercialism and informality that surrounds it now. And these are valid fears. But I never let it worry me. I have found, in my own time, that Christ is very skillful at rescuing and bringing home the hearts that are searching for Him.

God bless you all, and have a very happy Easter.

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES:
Luke 17:33, Matthew 10:29, Matthew 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, John 12:25; Luke 19:10.

For those without access to a Bible, many versions are available free online at Biblegateway.com.

Growing in Awkwardness, Growing in Love (or: Quoting Elvis to God)

/ Morgan Grace Hart / Leave a comment

When I first surrendered my life over to Christ, I found myself feeling through some very new emotions. The strangest of these, I realized after a few weeks, was that I’d really begun to love God. This may sound like something that would be very obvious to feel, but it took me completely by surprise. All my life, I’d heard about people loving God. And I did love God before I gave my life to Him. But I’d imagined it more formal, more stately. Like you’re on one end of the room, and God’s on the other. Like being around Him should give you the same joy as meeting the president or a king, and you should have great respect for Him.

Those feelings of respect never left me, but something much stronger surmounted them. I found growing in my heart a burning love for God, that was tangible and entirely human. Though there’s not a perfect way to describe it, it definitely did not feel like respecting someone from across the room – in fact it felt almost like dating someone. I can remember various short-term romances in high school, the excited feeling I’d get sitting alone with someone, the daydreamy way I’d write their names on the back of notebooks.  And that was really the way I’d begun to feel about God. I’d fall asleep thinking about Him; I’d be reminded of Him by different love songs on the radio. Always in my mind I was reminded of how close He was to me, how when I was in a room alone, I was really in a room alone with Him.

These feelings were so shocking to me that I worried I might have misunderstood the Gospel and crossed some kind of line somewhere. I thought that it was inappropriate that I feel so close and so connected with God. After all, He was an almighty God, and I was just a person. I apologized frequently, thinking I must be very disrespectful to feel like His friend or His spouse, putting aside the shock of His omniscience and omnipotence for more human emotions. I was convinced that these sort of romantic feelings were just something twisted in me, that God and Humankind were meant to be in their respective places, not mixed together, not experiencing all the strange, messy, confusing emotions that come from being in love with someone. Surely, a God so powerful and important and above me was not meant to be experienced like that.

And boy was I wrong. The more I apologized to Him for thinking I was breaking a rule, the more I realized that He gets to make the rules, without any higher authority above Him dictating His etiquette. I realized with reading the scriptures that it is very much a romantic love, and just as messy and real  as any relationship we have on Earth.

When I think back to that time and the struggle of worrying that there was a “right” way to love Him that I was missing, I think of the words from Elvis: “Shall I stay? Would it be a sin? For I can’t help falling in love with you.”
Scriptures:
Rev. 3:20, John 3:29, Mark 2:19, Rev 21:2-3; Zechariah 16 is also excellent but you may want to use a study guide as it is parter of a longer, more complicated story.