For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great are His mercy and loving-kindness toward those who reverently and worshipfully fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Psalm 103:11-12 AMP
Only the Holy Spirit can walk out a paradox, and the whole Christian life is one big paradox: free will and an Omniscient God, judgment and mercy, loving your neighbors and hating evil. How do I live in audacious forgiveness, completely removed from my transgressions, while retaining the mercy and compassion that comes from knowing that “There but for the grace of God go I?” I can’t! Only the Holy Spirit can square that circle.
Waltzing through the Paradox
Only God knows what a heart needs when it needs it. Only God knows how to keep from snuffing the flickering wick. Only God can let fall His judgment on a person out of the deepest love and mercy. When I attempt to reason out a response to someone or some situation, I fall prey to the paradox that only the Spirit can dance through.
I know the fruit of the paradox. I AM that fruit! I felt the weight of God’s judgment and the heat of His wrath. I sat in the cold terror that KNOWS every blow is just and death is deserved. I know the wordless shock and gratitude that follows a stay of execution. I’ve known the miracle of being bathed in love and forgiveness when all seems lost. I didn’t meet God through human reason. I met Him in the paradox.
Embracing the Paradox
I don’t need to figure God out, I just need to be loved by Him and love Him back. The love of God envelopes every paradox and answers the unanswerable. I want to be in the flow of that love. I want to live out the adventure that accompanies God’s love everywhere it goes. I am so tired of the small and petty reasonings that cloud my mind, tripping over the divine mystery and profiting me nothing.
I love the paradox! When I live not knowing, every morning is Christmas morning, full of surprises and warm socks! I can live in the boundless wonder of the Holy Spirit, or I can try to square the circle and have nothing but doubt and disappointment. Put that way, is it even a choice?
I am Yahweh, that is My name;
I will not give My glory to another
or My praise to idols.
Isaiah 42:8 HCSB
“Put that way, is it even a choice?” That’s a great point, Jennifer. As the paradox it is, I would define it as “a choice that is not a choice” (not a “strength of will”, but more like a “dance of wills”). Once the Lord inspired me how our will and His will function, and I saw them dancing on a theater platform, like Man and woman, two lovers fallen in love “dancing the dance of love”. The rest of our powers were there, sitting at the front rows of the theater, watching it: memory, emotions and intelect. But the… Read more »
So beautiful Jennifer. Profoundly beautiful.
Love.