Who Romances Whom?
In Donald Miller's book, Blue Like Jazz, there is an excellent little chapter on grace. (If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it. It's a quick read and great fun to boot.) In the book he compares some of the concepts from the Bible to stories we have probably read (or at least we saw the movie.) Mr. Miller compares our "dream" of Christ's love for His bride, that's all of us in the church, as reading like Romeo and Juliet. Two equals in a passionate embrace. And in fact that's what Song of Solomon in the Bible is all about. Christ romancing us as it were, and we just take it all in like a blushing bride.
Mr. Miller feels that the reality of our relationship, at least in the beginning, is a little more like Lucentio's pursuit of Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew. Remember the groom (Christ) goes about endearing the belligerent and shrewish bride (all of us who are trying to be "holy" on our own) with kindness, patience, and love while the bride does not so readily accept his advances. It's much as Romans 2:4 (CEV) says, "You surely don't think much of God's wonderful goodness or of his patience and willingness to put up with you. Don't you know that the reason God is good to you is because he wants you to turn to him?" God's willingness to put up with us is part of what His grace is all about.
When we accept God's love for us, we are accepting that Grace, and accepting the fact that we can't change ourselves and we can't make it on our own. We have to stop thinking that we can make ourselves right in God's eyes. We have to let God's love do the work. We have to accept that love and when we do, we begin to fall in love with God. When we fall in love, then we start wanting to romance Him. Which is what God wants. After all the bridegroom likes to be romanced as well.
~ star crossed lovers , and rachman
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posted by rachman | 10:21 PM
3 Comments:
Pretty interesting read. The couple in the picture kind of look like brother and sister.
Scott
Hi Scott,
Good to hear from you. The couple in the picture I hope are not brother and sister. They are the actors from the old Felini version of Romeo and Juliet.
~ rachman
Wait, something is wrong there. I just realized I said Felini--doh! I meant to say Franco Zefferelli. Well it has a "f" and a "i" in it. I checked for incest's sake and the actors are Leonard Whiting from the UK and Olivia Hussey from Italy. Okay it's cool.
~ r.
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