Being a Christian can be equated to two lovers getting married and then
beginning the real task of living together. There is the euphoria where
love is fully found for the first time and a man and a woman have now
entered into a new life together. It could modestly be equated to fully
witnessing your first spring or catching your first taste of the cold
morning dew. We as the Bride have exchanged our vows and promised to be
faithful to One Husband. Though, while we conceptually
may have understood, we did not realize then how strenuous the process
of dying to oneself would really be. We now begin the process of riding
ourselves of all selfishness (all the while failing miserably) and
seeking forgiveness for our wrongdoings, daily. Like the perfect Husband
He graciously forgives us and continues to lead us with life-giving
leadership but we struggle with accepting that He still perfectly loves
us in spite of ourselves. Daily, He affirms us by noting how wonderfully
made we are and He makes us his number one priority. Yet, we run. We
break our promise. We act out in our flesh, we run after other desires,
we commit adultery with things that have no power to satisfy but we do
it over and over again, unsatisfied, we go back. All the while the
Husband sees us for who we really are. Though we are a wretched-cheating
mess He beacons us home and calls us blessed, He calls us redeemed.
There at His feet we repent and He picks us up, dust us off and says,
"you are forgiven." For the Husband knew whom He had married and He knew
His Bride would be a mess before we said, "Yes" to His call. As the
years go by, the Bride learns to that to die to herself means to become
more like Him. Though the battle will be strenuous and perhaps even
daunting at times we move forward because of how unwavering His love is
for us despite our imperfections. It is His love that drives us, it is
His love that carries us, and it is His love that gives us new life. As
time passes by we learn how to better love Him and be obedient as His
wife but ultimately we model His love and life-giving sacrifice.
There is so much more to our Christian responsibility than our views on same-sex marriage and a child’s right to life. If I can be honest both of those areas are legitimate concerns but lazy excuses for wholeheartedly supporting a political party (or person) on either side of this democracy. For far too long we have allowed the conversation of political Christian ethics to be driven by the limiting (and debilitating for Christians of color) perception of single-issue voting. President Donald J. Trump has, by any stretch of the imagination, been a flawed representation of the American political process (at the very least) and who he is as a man has superseded his responsibility as the leader of the ‘free world’. I think it is also limiting (and politically lazy) to make his character and his presidency two mutually exclusive topics when we are voting for the person just as much as we are voting for a set of policies. What must be challenged, in the middle of this #impeachment, is not ...
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