No margins
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Peripheral vision is a human thing. You and I tend to focus on the things we like - the things and people we deem worthy of our love.
And it’s okay. In fact, it’s the only way we can be.
A couple of God-thoughts (theology) here…
First of all, the God I’ve come to know has no peripheral vision. There are no margins to God’s field of view. Every-thing and every-one is at the center of God’s focus and is endlessly loved by God - not because of who they/we are or what they/we do, but because this is God’s nature. To create love.
God does not see or seek beauty. God does not pat us on the head for being ‘good’ or ‘worthy’. God CREATES beauty and worthiness ‘out of nothing’ (ex nihilo).
God does not love because something is lovely. God loves in order to MAKE something/someone lovely. God breathes love and worth into what we might deem as unlovable or unworthy.
We see this in the ministry of Jesus.
On one hand, he comforts those who see that all that they’ve done - all the ways they thought they were making themselves beautiful and worthy - have failed. In their state of nothingness and unloveliness, he loves them back to life, ex nihilo.
On the other hand, he afflicts those who think their worth lies in what they’ve done or haven’t done (aka the self-righteous).
That is when they become free. They become free from being the ones to have to make themselves lovely or worthy. In Jesus, they see that their loveliness and worth does not depend on them and what they do. Rather, their inherent worth, beauty, and loveliness are based on the love that God, in Jesus, speaks into them from his Word of unconditional love and mercy.
We are undeserving of this love. We cannot earn this love. By trying to work for it, all we do is resist and separate from it.
Divine love, TRUE love, comes from outside of us. And we have it all. Forever.
With this, we might look at the things we deem unlovable in a new way. We might be able to see that though you and I only see ugliness there (and maybe this is in the mirror), THIS is exactly where God is working to bring life to death.
In Comfort + Joy,
Jonas