Being a House Husband

It's 10:25 at night and we've had a big day of preparation. Preparing for the big holiday of Thanksgiving tomorrow. We've baked apple cakes, prepared the big family breakfast in advance for tomorrow, and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned! But in the midst of all the housework and cooking and everything else a family has to do, we fell a tad short of our goals. My wife is incredible in everything she does and she did so much for me today and our family. And since we have company coming over at 8 am, we can't put it off to finish another time. So, I'm taking the late shift, brewing up a stout cup of tea, and finishing the work load myself. (Well, I took a short break to blog)

I actually was excited to do this tonight. Not so much that I'd get a couple minutes to do some writing or even a moment of independent thought from the hectic day, but that I've begun to notice God is incredibly attracted to doing lovely things for others. He really likes it. And anyways, this all goes back to years ago. So years ago, I made the connection between good character traits, like selfless acts, pursuing someone, loving without expecting anything back with my love affair with Jesus and my love affair with my wife very quickly after we first met. My wife was attracted to me because of these spiritual traits she saw in me, and that's exactly what God is attracted to in us. Here was a question I pondered for awhile: If we are living in a love affair with God, then why is so much of the Bible (especially the New Testament) about bettering our hearts to be more like Christ? Why an 1100 page tome with only 1 book gushing about God's utter desire for intimacy with us (Song of Songs) and a lot of the rest about making our hearts like his Son's? Why not an 1100 page romantic thriller? The reason we have not figured it out is the same reason this guy below is carrying a murse (man-purse) to make himself more attractive to some poor woman out there (at least I hope that's why he's carrying it. lol):



The reason we miss the point with God in beautifying our hearts and our character traits is the reason why these guys miss the point. Women aren't attracted to men the same way men are attracted to women. In fact, improving your physical appearance is not the #1 thing a dateless dude can do to find his true love. It has a lot more to do with your heart than how much you bathed in Axe body spray this morning (again, at least let's hope that's true. There might be hope for this world then after all! lol) The heart of a Godly woman is attracted to the same thing the heart of God is attracted to. What is that? It's the fruit of the Spirit, it's 1 Corinthians 13 (remember the whole discourse on love and faithfulness). That's why the beatitudes in Matthew 5 and everything else Jesus talked about when he gave us the ethics of his Kingdom are so important. It's what he is attracted to, what he desires in us. How wonderful in relationships is bountiful knowledge in ecclectic topics like "Not Worrying About Tomorrow" (Matthew 6 :25-34) and "Judging Others" (Matthew 7:1-6) and "Pursuing The One You Love" (Matthew 7:7-8). This is good stuff! And then, when we are perfected when we are brought home to him and those attributes are fully in us, then true, true intimacy can occur with him. That's when we will finally be married to him.

“In that day,” declares the LORD,
“you will call me ‘my husband’;
you will no longer call me ‘my master.' Hosea 2:16 (NIV)

God desires to be one with us. A oneness and tenderness and passion far surpassing any intimacy on earth. This is where we are going with our lives, with everything we are, our bodies, our souls, our minds. We are going to be enraptured into a diving romance where our Lover never stops blowing us kisses or quits adoring us body and soul, always whispering in our ears how much he loves and desires us. Us loving him with everything we are (fulfilling the first great commandment-worshiping our God with all our soul, mind, and strength). The Spirit chose the loveliness of the intimacy of a bridegroom and bride to describe the joy and intimacy and oneness with our Spouse when we are brought home to him to be his forever. And when we see him, we will only be able to exclaim, 'How beautiful you are, my Darling! Oh, how beautiful!' (Song of Songs 4:1)


And we will live happily ever after in his adoring arms :)

Thoughts on Friendship/Thanksgiving with the Holy Spirit/Translations

We recently went to our good friends' wedding; well, not just 'went to', my wife was the matron-of-honor. So we had our own part to play in it all. It was a beautiful wedding. The couple are both very much in love with God and are wonderful together and are two of the most Godly people we know. Rewinding 24 hours to the rehearsal dinner, we come into the theater where the dinner is being held and I immediately get a huge huge from the groom. [Insert huge guy] Where he picks me up into the air and starts shaking me. He being ~7 feet tall (his arm width twice the size of my neck; yeah, pretty sure he's done some bench presses in his lifetime) and me being ~5 foot 6 meant that I was hugging a kodiak bear. At the same time my wife immediately got caught in the torrent of bridesmaids and associated womenfolk and two seconds later I was left alone. But then I turned around to find the Christian brothers (Godly brothers, that is!) of the groom waiting to welcome me to their group discussion. They were all from Alabama and to make convo I told them how long it took me to drive from Oklahoma to Florida-it was all I could think of as I had to drive through Alabama to get to Florida. But, even after some awkward convo, it ended up being the first time in a long time that I've really felt "on the inside" with other brothers in this family of God. It was nice :)

It's worth mentioning, we all have had friendships gone awry. I've engineered too many friendships with people who never came through for me. And it's hurt my heart in the process. And through the healing from that, I've learned that it happens because of the sin of the world against the family and kingdom of God we are in and to just let forgiveness take the place of any bitterness in my heart. That was a hard task at times, but I'd like to say I'm close to being where God wants me with others. But oh how much we all want to have friendships, close fellowships, of which we can say, we are all "a chord of three strands [which] is not quickly broken" (Ecclesiastes 4:12). And irregardless of this world, the next promises a richness of friendships and brotherhood and sisterhood unmatched by what we have (or haven't had) here and now. To see new friendships with people we never knew blossom and our own friendships now be carried into the Kingdom of our God in eternity will be one of the many facets of love we will have in our future with our Prince. It is one of the (many) things our hearts can hope for in life with our beautiful Love, our Jesus.

Thanksgiving is only a couple days away. Today is the last day of class (thankfully!). It's getting colder as the week goes by. An arctic air mass is scheduled to arrive ~Wednesday night and will make Thanksgiving a cold one. And the thing that makes this time more special than anything, it's not the cold air, or the hot coffee, or the Fall comfort food, or the falling leaves, it's feeling Jesus' beautiful Holy Spirit around me, talking with me, listening and waiting for me to tell him how lovely I think he is, loving him, and spending time with him with my family. I so hate to live life as if God is not apart of our family. He is! It's why he is coming from Heaven down to earth to live forever, and why our very own bodies are his temple and not some church building with angels and choirs. He's the Leader of our family, but he's our Father, and he's my Beloved, my Friend, the One I sit around and talk to because I love being with him. I feel so out of place when I don't pursue him during the day. But I'm more thankful for God's Son as our own than anything else. For his love and his desire for me. To love me, to wed me, to pursue me, to make me his own and give me his heart and a life of worshiping him forever. How perfect! And it's the battle of our lives here, to never not stop worshiping him even though our minds forget him at the drop of a hat. And also to know one day, we never will have to fight that battle again when we do live with him forever and his lover and with all our brothers and sisters in our Father's house. It will be so great to take a walk one day with my Lover Jesus, my wife, my daughter, and my brothers and sisters on that road above ^ during an autumn afternoon; then go back to our Father's house and have some apple cider by the fireplace and have a wonderful dinner. Life with him is coming soon!

The other thing was I've been reading the Bible in the original Hebrew lately. Well, the Old Testament anyway. And it's incredible. I mean, the translations we've been given from the Hebrew to our English just utterly fail the richness of God's love letters to us and our story with him from the beginning. I applaud Eugene Peterson for attempting to bridge that attempt in his version The Message, but it really is worth it to read it in depth in the original language. I'm thinking we might start a sister blog on translating some original Hebrew and Greek passages with interpretation and discussion (with great props to my dad, who knows a lot of New Testament Greek). We'll see!