Free Will Awe and Wonder
I was looking at Michele this weekend and it occured to me: the gift of free will - choosing to bind yourself to someone.
Then it got me thinking - when we fail to see the GIFT of FREE WILL - we lose the humility and awe of it. What I mean is that the greatest experience a person can experience is another's will and desire to say, "I choose you."
It's a humbling consideration. Michele's choice out of all the men in the world to pledge her life to - she selected me. That's a humbling thought. I'm NOT the godliest, brightest, richest, or best-looking man out of a billion men out there. Love is NOT an entitlement.
BUT we do think love is an ENTITLEMENT, something we are owed. That's why we can complain about our spouses, or moan about their shortcomings because we lost sight of FREE WILL. We whine, complain because we now think we are ENTITLED to something. The mere endurance of our spouse with our weaknesses, our offenses alone should shake us back to a sense of humility: they love me out of FREE WILL.
We quickly forget about God in this manner too.
We will question and challenge God about alot of things - (Why is their suffering? Why does injustice happen children? Why do good people die? to which alot of these questions we don't have an answer for) but a greater question that we should consider is: Why does God love us?
God has a choice too - a free will.
Does he have to put up with the heartache, angst and short-comings we are to him? People automatically think God OWES them something. We are a whole earth of self-centered, self-loving lemmings thinking we are so loveable like puppies at pet fair. God MUST pick us and love us because we have so many good qualities! Oh what a childish consideration!!!
Did forget we've created a world where there is suffering, heartaches and misery around us? We offend so easily!
God should find very little to enjoy in our company - we are not his equal and never can be. We don't have sovereign right to say HE OWES us love, as we are to say in courtship with our spouses: you OWE ME your love.
Love is something most people think God owes us. When things don't go right, we blame God, we doubt Him, we accuse Him and we dare question Him. God is a superior being to us and we non-chalantly question him like a bickering spouse.
We can WIN the love our spouses, but there is nothing in us to 'win' God's love. God was the one who had to make the first step to WIN our love. It's like the hymn writer said, "We love him, because he first loved us."
God has a rightful choice to extinguish our existence by holding his breath from us. He could have started history from scratch, and pull the 'Mulligan of Eternity" and just settled contently in fellowship within the trinity.
When you deeply consider God's FREE WILL to save us, love us and endure with us.... that is the question that should deeply prick humanity: why God does love us?
I'm amazed at the commitment of my wife's choice to be with me and it humbles me. It forces me to appreciate what she gave up to be with me. To that end, I have to say: I should be amazed at God, my God and superior being beyond the understanding of my mind, would pay attention to me and intervene to be a part of my life.
Yes, we should lay aside the 'lofty questions' of life in theology and our own personal considerations and wonder more at the question of: "How could God love me?". I know who I am: nothing, but God made me something.