What fascinates your eyes when you travel throughout the countryside? Is it the beautiful foliage? Maybe it is the majestic hills or the cascading streams that set your mind aglow. Could it be the city skylines or quaint little artsy villages you pass through that excites your senses?
I may be a little strange (please no snide comments from the peanut gallery), but I am immensely fascinated by the tattered, broken down, abandoned structures that are scattered across the miles of the back roads of America. My mind has to ask the questions, and of course the questions will turn on the lights of the imagination...and if my imagination runs to God's Word then the story could turn upward, inside out and easily up-side-down.
Song of Solomon 8:7 Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned.
This is an awesome picture of the power of love to burn brightly through many torrential troubles, to resist dilution caused by many discouraging floods of separation, and to utterly abandon even sacred shelter for its singular focus...to love.
When I see the abandoned homes collapsing because of neglect and poor maintenance, at first I am irritated and then fascinated. What happened to cause such a sorrowful scene? After a few temporal and typical thought scenarios...my mind turns...
The Creator, embodied in flesh, stepped out of His heavenly dwelling place to offer an irresistible proposal of love to a race of...
ungrateful,
unloving,
unknowing,
in-seeking,
uncaring,
self-centered,
sex intoxicated,
violence proliferated,
vision eliminated,
hate elated,
and idols elevated beings...who could care less about His love offer.
Did Heaven start to feel the neglect of love focused man-ward? Did the streets of gold begin to tarnish due to the lack of Godly foot contact and the heaven sent tears of Jesus? Did the single pearl gates of the city begin to be clouded over by the dust of his departure? Was the celestial wonder beginning to collapse under the weight of Love's abandon? Did the winds of resistance to His love offer begin to ravage the beauty of holiness. Was Heaven all but boarded up for eternity when the Savior was "forsaken" on the cross by His Heavenly Father...for you and for me?
Jesus knew the cost...He knew that He would give it all up for the opportunity to offer enduring, everlasting love. Hmmm ...approximately thirty-three and a half years of potential neglect of Heaven.
3 days and 3 nights of total disappointing foreclosure and eviction. LOVE..
Trust His sacrifice for us and we LIVE.
Turn our backs on the cost of His love and we are abandoned forever.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life;
but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abideth on him. John 3:36
He abandoned Glory for us,
Now because He Arose from the dead, He Lives,
He prepares a place for us...Be Glad.
HLFA,
Jeff
I may be a little strange (please no snide comments from the peanut gallery), but I am immensely fascinated by the tattered, broken down, abandoned structures that are scattered across the miles of the back roads of America. My mind has to ask the questions, and of course the questions will turn on the lights of the imagination...and if my imagination runs to God's Word then the story could turn upward, inside out and easily up-side-down.
Song of Solomon 8:7 Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned.
This is an awesome picture of the power of love to burn brightly through many torrential troubles, to resist dilution caused by many discouraging floods of separation, and to utterly abandon even sacred shelter for its singular focus...to love.
When I see the abandoned homes collapsing because of neglect and poor maintenance, at first I am irritated and then fascinated. What happened to cause such a sorrowful scene? After a few temporal and typical thought scenarios...my mind turns...
The Creator, embodied in flesh, stepped out of His heavenly dwelling place to offer an irresistible proposal of love to a race of...
ungrateful,
unloving,
unknowing,
in-seeking,
uncaring,
self-centered,
sex intoxicated,
violence proliferated,
vision eliminated,
hate elated,
and idols elevated beings...who could care less about His love offer.
Did Heaven start to feel the neglect of love focused man-ward? Did the streets of gold begin to tarnish due to the lack of Godly foot contact and the heaven sent tears of Jesus? Did the single pearl gates of the city begin to be clouded over by the dust of his departure? Was the celestial wonder beginning to collapse under the weight of Love's abandon? Did the winds of resistance to His love offer begin to ravage the beauty of holiness. Was Heaven all but boarded up for eternity when the Savior was "forsaken" on the cross by His Heavenly Father...for you and for me?
Jesus knew the cost...He knew that He would give it all up for the opportunity to offer enduring, everlasting love. Hmmm ...approximately thirty-three and a half years of potential neglect of Heaven.
3 days and 3 nights of total disappointing foreclosure and eviction. LOVE..
Trust His sacrifice for us and we LIVE.
Turn our backs on the cost of His love and we are abandoned forever.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life;
but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abideth on him. John 3:36
He abandoned Glory for us,
Now because He Arose from the dead, He Lives,
He prepares a place for us...Be Glad.
HLFA,
Jeff