"Calling God Abba Father is a cry of the heart, a prayer welling up from our innermost beings.
It has nothing to do with naming God
but everything to do with claiming God as the source of who we are.
This claim does not come from any sudden insight or acquired conviction; it is the claim that the Spirit of Jesus makes in communion with our spirits.
It is the claim of love."
My journey all along, specifically since January, can be summed up in this short paragraph; not fully explained, but fully felt and experienced, thanks to Henri Nouwen's superb wordage. Emotion welled as my eyes moved forward past each group of letters...
He is the Source of who I am. Not the me as I see-- the me He sees. And he has claimed this me.
His grip is strong but never forceful or angry.
His grip is simply gripping to keep me from slipping back into a slur of unfortunate s-words. The dark places. The lonely places. The foolishness of forgetting his fondness.
As I inelegantly seize moments of vulnerability, sometimes most unhappily,
I feel a steady shift in my soul. There is movement. There is change. There is life.
And he is the reason for it all.
from Rob Bell's, Love Wins :
"What is John telling us? It's the 8th sign, the first day of the new week, the first day of the new creation. The resurrection of Jesus inaugurates a new creation, one free from death, and it is bursting forth in Jesus himself right here in the midst of the first creation.
The tomb is empty. A new day is here. A new creation is here. Everything has changed. Death has been conquered. The old has gone. The new has come.
John is telling a huge story, one about God rescuing all of creation.
When we say yes to God, when we open ourselves to Jesus's living, giving act on the cross, we enter into a way of life. He is the source, the strength, the example, and the assurance that this pattern of death and rebirth is the way into the only kind of life that actually sustains and inspires. He talks of the life that will come from his own death, and he promises that life will flow to us in thousands of small ways as we die to [ourselves].
There can't be a spring if we're still stuck in the fall."
come on New Man
where have you been
help me wriggle from this self I'm in
and leave it like a skin upon the ground.
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