a kingdom built of seeds

Intellectually and theologically I can’t state exactly what I “believe”. But I can feel and sense what I believe. I don’t think my way through life as much as feel my way through it. Is this wrong? Does this come back to “the heart is deceitful above all else”? Yet it says to love the Lord your God with all your heart. Can the heart be trusted only when first things are first?

But it’s not possible to be so pure. Every heart is bent off course. Perhaps this is why we love not only with one part of ourselves—not only the heart, or mind, or strength, or soul. All. Like checks and balances. When one strays, the others keep you centered. I trust no one piece of myself completely, or much at all, when taken separate and alone. It’s when I come with everything—love with all of me—that truth emerges. Faith is not only what you think or believe, nor only what you sense or experience. They’re complementary. They check, they balance. We cannot love from only one aspect of ourselves.

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I’ve heard it so often: “Give God everything, all of you.” But in our humanity this is not possible. Not all at once, not at all. Surrender is not the dissolution of self. It’s a starting point. And then it’s growth and maturity. But never perfection. Of course you’re frustrated and disillusioned when you admit you can’t be unadulterated in your surrender, you can’t give everything all at once, or at all. Why not accept that, instead of everything, you just give some-thing, one-thing, and release yourself from the guilt of the impossible? 

It’s as if we’re being asked not to exist, to lose ourselves to some Christian nirvana. No. I become more, not less—I am expanded, not diminished—when I love and receive love. (When we say, “He must increase, but I must decrease,” we say it as a friend of God, not as one who disappears.) I become more fully human, not less. Can there be love if there is only perfect surrender—nothing to forgive? While we are still sinners, we are loved. There is no one to love but the sinner, partially and imperfectly surrendered as we are. Why do we expect so much of others, expect so much of ourselves? Does God? As always, it depends on which God you speak of.

“Give God everything, surrender everything.” It’s simply not possible. Just start with some-thing, one-thing. Know what’s being asked of you in the moment, and respond with flawed but sincere faithfulness to this.