When I went back to the states... I saw a few friends and family members that had vinyl stickers on their walls that were bible verses. I immediately fell in love with them and planned to bring some back to Sierra Leone with me to help 'decorate' our new place. This is quite a big step for me, because I do NOT consider myself a decorator at all, nor do I even think about decorating when I think of a home. That's why I will someday need someone (ahem... Robin... Megan) to do it for me. And then I will keep it that way until somebody (ahem... you know who you are) tells me that its been outdated for nearly a decade and its about time to make some changes.
So its had been over a month since we've been back that I decided to finally put up one of the stickers in our living room. I chose 1 Cor 13: 4-7 because I thought it would be a good idea to have a constant reminder of perfect, agape love for me to refer to as needed :) I told John that morning I was going to try to put it up and he acted surprised that I hadn't done it earlier.
That morning I started my spiritual exercises for the day but didn't get that far because Aden woke up earlier than usual. The exercise was on experiencing God's love in a more tangible way and the bible reading for reflection was Psalm 36:5-10:
Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast. How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light. Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart.
Later that afternoon I decided to pick it back up again and meditate on the Psalm searching and praying to feel the way the psalmist described his experience of God's love. The author of The Exercises Volume II critiques present day evangelicals because we often have such a head knowledge of God's love but stop at that and fail to seek a real life experience of that love for fear of being too "feeling based" in our relationship. In that fear, our relationship is emotion
less and we find our Christianity lacking any enjoyment other than feeling good about ourselves for doing our devotional in the morning. "Check! Now I can get on with my day."
So back to the story... In my afternoon study... I felt a little deflated because I know I have not been experiencing God's love in a tangible way, knowing that he was intimately involved in my life and willing to show it through his love. I even wrote in my journal "I'm having a hard time thinking of a time that I have experienced God's love in the last week, particularly the
unfailing aspect of it." So I prayed that God would show me, in a tangible way how his love never fails.
I decided to take a break to put up my vinyl sticker. I was careful to follow the directions to a T but I had problems with the paint. As I was peeling off the front leaving the stickers behind, the paint was coming off with it. At first I kind of laughed to myself thinking that maybe God was trying to speak to me about love but decided I liked some of the paint peeling because it made it look like a restored newspaper on the wall.
By the time I got to the end of the sticker, the last part of the verse that says "love never fails" comes off and so does the paint around it. "Never fails" are the only words that I can't get to stick onto the wall. I took a picture of it because I always want to remember how God showed me that everything in this world will fail me, including my bible stickers, but God WILL NOT. And this all happened within 20 minutes of me praying to him to show me about his unfailing love! I then call John to tell him about it and he in a slightly disgruntled way 'shut me down' in my excitement because he was driving, didn't want to talk, and so hung up on me. But I was even more overjoyed because I could again see that my earthly love (John) would also fail me, but still God never would.
I pray that this next season of life that I would seek after God in a more tangible way and not get stuck into ruts of being content with knowing about Him rather than knowing Him.
