"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009 | |||
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The Measure of Love | |||
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I always carry a small tape measure in my pocket. My family
and friends are occasionally amused when I whip it out to see if a piece
of furniture will fit through a door or if an envelope I'm mailing meets
the new Post Office guidelines. It's probably just a sign of mild OCD,
but I like being able to measure the world around me when the occasion
demands it. Measurement is a way to get a handle on things, to understand
how they might fit into one's life and activities. As we move on in Ephesians this coming Sunday to the beautiful prayer recorded in Ephesians 3:14-21, we hear Paul inviting us to consider "the width and length and height and depth" of something much grander and glorious than a mailing parcel or a wastepaper basket we want to fit under the sink. In the end, he wants us to grasp, to get a handle on the love of Christ in such a way that we comprehend how it actually takes hold of us, how we fit into His life. I use my tape measure on some very fine things. Getting ready to hang a lovely picture of a flower painted for my wife by a dear friend, I might apply my tape to the frame. I haul it out when I hook a big, beautiful fish and want to to know its length. I've run it up the wall to pencil lines marking the heights of our daughters. It's a good thing, even a very good thing, to know those dimensions. Yet I would never imagine that I could, in terms of inches or feet, know all there was to know about the subjects of my measurement. Paul has this wonderful phrase "to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge" (a better translation than the NIV/TNIV which ties "love of Christ" directly to the 4 dimensions). Though the divine love goes far beyond our knowledge, we are still invited to know it, to plumb its dimensions and explore its depths with our minds. So here is the correction of a very common spiritual mistake. Just because God and His attributes are beyond our total comprehension does not mean that we simply quit trying to understand and know about God. Far from it. It means we have a marvelous, infinite intellectual playground in which to frolic for eternity, using our minds to their utmost as we seek to know more and more of that which ultimately surpasses all our knowing. And of course in our text the focus is Christ's love, which also surpasses knowing in that the dimensions of understanding love go beyond the intellectual and take up all our emotions and morality and daily living. To know love is to put it into practice. I may have measured how tall my daughters were, but I also found out who they were by living with and caring for them and loving them in dozens of other ways. Verse 21 says, "to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. . ." We may begin taking the measure of Christ's love with our minds, but that quickly turns to discovering its dimensions in worship and service, as we find that the measurements of Christ's love are best learned in the community of His Church. | |||
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I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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Beth Amen! Further in and further out! (07/22/09)