Where our blogger attempts to translate English into English

Lent 2012 A Clean Heart, Create in Me                     C.S.Lewis

Thursday, March 14                                                  Jeremiah 7:23

WARNING! WARNING! LANGUAGE HEAVY BLOG!!  SLOW READING AND REREADING RECOMMENDED.  From C.S.Lewis, “God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.”  Ok, this sentence seems to twist and turn as much as a dog chasing its tail.  Let’s tear it apart and see if we can get to the juicy middle where hopefully God and meaning meet. God paid, this gift cost God something dear, but instead of diminishing this infinite God this gift somehow made God eternally more.   Intolerable meaning that we cannot bear the love of God.  The love of God is too much for us to label, understand, return fully, reciprocate or live without.  Yet this love is a compliment.  I would rather it be our complement, adding that which enhances us because it is, what we are not.  Loving us, it is a phrase that kaleidiscopes around because of the treasure trove of meanings.  How does God love?  Well check out John 3:16.  And who is included in this us? Check out Galatians 3:28.  And does deepest mean lowest or does it mean most significant, authentic, essential?  Well tragic is easy to understand.  God promises to be our God if we will be God’s people.  God is faithful and we are not.  God knows our broken nature before he makes this promise, indeed, even before God created us, he knew.  Yet how is it tragic if God continues to be God even when we fail to be his people?  Isn’t that where our hope resides?   Inexorable has these synonyms: relentless - implacable - grim – merciless.  These words limit us to an inflexible unyielding hard God, which, honestly, God can be.  I like the definition unstoppable.  This unstoppable Love will reach us no matter where we are and love us so completely that we can trust in a God that we cannot see.  What a compliment that we are given such a gift.  I hope it complements us as we strive to be the people of the God who loves, even us. “God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.” AMEN.