What to Reflect When You Are Reflecting
From 1 John 4 – 16 And we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so we are in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been perfected in love.
Dallas Willard was nearing his eternal home, as relates Gary Moon in Becoming Dallas Willard. The actual, intimate sense of the Presence of Christ in which the Christian could walk, a constant, golden thread throughout Willard's ministry, was very much on his mind in his last public appearance.
He taught on the Aaronic blessing and challenged his audience which radiates with the reality that God tells us His face shines on His people. Willard counsels, "If you have trouble with a shining face, find a grandparent somewhere."
The apostle John in the fourth chapter of his first epistle points in the same direction, that the perfect, vertical love we get from Christ can be demonstrated in our horizontal relationships with imperfect people. I didn't find a grandparent this week. All four of mine have been promoted to Glory and are basking in Christ's perfect love toward which good people and good weeks can only pantomime. Yet, in the absence of the Divine unabashed favor reflecting in the smiling creases of a grandparent's craggy face, God chose a human through whom to reflect His favor toward me.
The person whose eyes and smile He borrowed to reiterate in 1 John 4:17 fashion that love has been perfected AMONG us even after Christ's ascension hadn't really been scowling before. But the physical distance in a relationship usually mediated through binary code, servers, and cold characters left plenty of room for doubt. Connecting again in the fashion more normal to humans through the centuries forced the gloom of my assumptions to retreat.
It's possible, I realized, that the gifts God has given me to affirm people consistently and with enthusiastic, breakthrough phrasing may leave me, nonsensically, to expect this diet of somewhere between steady and gluttonous praise from everyone else. Absent fawning attention for my most incremental victory, and ever-attentive encouragement in my mistakes, I was ready to assume the opposite.
A week of proximity dispelled this silliness in Proverbs 15:30 fashion. The verse reads in the New International Version, "Light in a messenger's eyes brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones." Seeing that the light was still in my friend's eyes irradiated any idea I had that the failures for which I constantly castigate myself were dimming my friend's regard for Christ's work in me. Through seeing how one imperfect person actually thought and lived around me, my faith in our common Creator and Re-creator inch closer to being perfected on the unswerving, sanctifying arc of 1 John 4:18.
Of course, if I scan the next friend's face in a frantic measure of my approval or disapproval, I've learned nothing. Not even a grandparent could prop up that fragility. The Lord alone, rejoices and reminds the Passion Translation of Psalm 33:20, is our radiant hope. Directed by a constellation of otherwise varying faces and phrases to the reality that I am individually, delightedly, constantly approved in Christ, my own expression will begin to change. As Boy Born Dead relates of a regenerated David Ring, with the same eyes, same nose and mouth, Christ in his life rendered a different face altogether.
That expression, satisfied in Him and reinforced by His reflection through other people made in His image will be less preoccupied with self. The brow will be less furrowed, and the thoughts behind it a little less subject to distraction. Thus, the person looking for something indication of Christ's affirmation in my reaction to him or to her won't catch me scowling over some other mishap and completely unaware that this can feed into the insecurity of those around me. As Christ's face shines on me, and I know it and dwell on it, I'll be as the moon to the sun, reflecting the real Source of radiance.
Dallas Willard was nearing his eternal home, as relates Gary Moon in Becoming Dallas Willard. The actual, intimate sense of the Presence of Christ in which the Christian could walk, a constant, golden thread throughout Willard's ministry, was very much on his mind in his last public appearance.
He taught on the Aaronic blessing and challenged his audience which radiates with the reality that God tells us His face shines on His people. Willard counsels, "If you have trouble with a shining face, find a grandparent somewhere."
The apostle John in the fourth chapter of his first epistle points in the same direction, that the perfect, vertical love we get from Christ can be demonstrated in our horizontal relationships with imperfect people. I didn't find a grandparent this week. All four of mine have been promoted to Glory and are basking in Christ's perfect love toward which good people and good weeks can only pantomime. Yet, in the absence of the Divine unabashed favor reflecting in the smiling creases of a grandparent's craggy face, God chose a human through whom to reflect His favor toward me.
The person whose eyes and smile He borrowed to reiterate in 1 John 4:17 fashion that love has been perfected AMONG us even after Christ's ascension hadn't really been scowling before. But the physical distance in a relationship usually mediated through binary code, servers, and cold characters left plenty of room for doubt. Connecting again in the fashion more normal to humans through the centuries forced the gloom of my assumptions to retreat.
It's possible, I realized, that the gifts God has given me to affirm people consistently and with enthusiastic, breakthrough phrasing may leave me, nonsensically, to expect this diet of somewhere between steady and gluttonous praise from everyone else. Absent fawning attention for my most incremental victory, and ever-attentive encouragement in my mistakes, I was ready to assume the opposite.
A week of proximity dispelled this silliness in Proverbs 15:30 fashion. The verse reads in the New International Version, "Light in a messenger's eyes brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones." Seeing that the light was still in my friend's eyes irradiated any idea I had that the failures for which I constantly castigate myself were dimming my friend's regard for Christ's work in me. Through seeing how one imperfect person actually thought and lived around me, my faith in our common Creator and Re-creator inch closer to being perfected on the unswerving, sanctifying arc of 1 John 4:18.
Of course, if I scan the next friend's face in a frantic measure of my approval or disapproval, I've learned nothing. Not even a grandparent could prop up that fragility. The Lord alone, rejoices and reminds the Passion Translation of Psalm 33:20, is our radiant hope. Directed by a constellation of otherwise varying faces and phrases to the reality that I am individually, delightedly, constantly approved in Christ, my own expression will begin to change. As Boy Born Dead relates of a regenerated David Ring, with the same eyes, same nose and mouth, Christ in his life rendered a different face altogether.
That expression, satisfied in Him and reinforced by His reflection through other people made in His image will be less preoccupied with self. The brow will be less furrowed, and the thoughts behind it a little less subject to distraction. Thus, the person looking for something indication of Christ's affirmation in my reaction to him or to her won't catch me scowling over some other mishap and completely unaware that this can feed into the insecurity of those around me. As Christ's face shines on me, and I know it and dwell on it, I'll be as the moon to the sun, reflecting the real Source of radiance.
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