December 22: Holy Love Wants Me Wholly
♫ Music:
WEEK FOUR INTRODUCTION
TITLE: CELEBRATING THE PURITY OF GOD’S LOVE: THE GREATEST GIFT
December 22-28
God’s pure, unconditional love is the most important part of the Christmas story. It is the purpose of and reason for the Advent season. His love, found in the person of Christ is what transforms us in unimaginable ways. It’s the boundless love of God that offers us the Holy Spirit infused hope, peace and joy that we all long for. Christmas is a time for forgiveness, a time of compassion and an occasion for extravagant acts of kindness. This week as we contemplate God’s deep, deep love for the human race may we learn from Him how to live life in such a way that Christ’s abundant love will overflow through us to a dark and suffering world!
Sunday, December 22
Title: THE MOST FAMOUS VERSE IN THE BIBLE
Scripture: John 3:16
For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Poetry:
Supernatural Love
By Gjertrud Schnackenberg
My father at the dictionary-stand
Touches the page to fully understand
The lamplit answer, tilting in his hand
His slowly scanning magnifying lens,
A blurry, glistening circle he suspends
Above the word “Carnation.” Then he bends
So near his eyes are magnified and blurred,
One finger on the miniature word,
As if he touched a single key and heard
A distant, plucked, infinitesimal string,
“The obligation due to every thing
That’s smaller than the universe.” I bring
My sewing needle close enough that I
Can watch my father through the needle’s eye,
As through a lens ground for a butterfly
Who peers down flower-hallways toward a room
Shadowed and fathomed as this study’s gloom
Where, as a scholar bends above a tomb
To read what’s buried there, he bends to pore
Over the Latin blossom. I am four,
I spill my pins and needles on the floor
Trying to stitch “Beloved” X by X.
My dangerous, bright needle’s point connects
Myself illiterate to this perfect text
I cannot read. My father puzzles why
It is my habit to identify
Carnations as “Christ’s flowers,” knowing I
Can give no explanation but “Because.”
Word-roots blossom in speechless messages
The way the thread behind my sampler does
Where following each X I awkward move
My needle through the word whose root is love.
He reads, “A pink variety of Clove,
Carnatio, the Latin, meaning flesh.”
As if the bud’s essential oils brush
Christ’s fragrance through the room, the iron-fresh
Odor carnations have floats up to me,
A drifted, secret, bitter ecstasy,
The stems squeak in my scissors, Child, it’s me,
He turns the page to “Clove” and reads aloud:
“The clove, a spice, dried from a flower-bud.”
Then twice, as if he hasn't understood,
He reads, “From French, for clou, meaning a nail.”
He gazes, motionless. “Meaning a nail.”
The incarnation blossoms, flesh and nail,
I twist my threads like stems into a knot
And smooth “Beloved,” but my needle caught
Within the threads, Thy blood so dearly bought,
The needle strikes my finger to the bone.
I lift my hand, it is myself I’ve sewn,
The flesh laid bare, the threads of blood my own,
I lift my hand in startled agony
And call upon his name, “Daddy daddy”—
My father’s hand touches the injury
As lightly as he touched the page before,
Where incarnation bloomed from roots that bore
The flowers I called Christ’s when I was four.
HOLY LOVE WANTS ME WHOLLY
What does the love of God mean to you? It is a question worth revisiting in any season of life.
The Cross of Jesus is viewed as the central reality for the paradigmatic image of God’s cosmically significant love. When we hear, “God gave His one and only Son . . .” we immediately think, “the cross.”
With Donald Jackson’s, “The Crucifixion,” we encounter a portrayal of the cross that radiates with a golden brilliance; light pierces darkness. Darkness becomes overwhelmed by light; the light of royalty. Jackson reminds us that something else is afoot than just gruesome death by crucifixion.
What do you notice about Jackson’s painting? How does it strike you as you ponder John 3:16?
The very incarnation – not only the cross – of Jesus reminds us that divine royalty sacrifices freely and so freely gives. No other royalty compares to the self-giving, superabundant generosity of God.
From the reasoning of our mere eyeballs, what a great risk to freely love a world that freely rejects God’s one-of-a-kind Son. Truly, outlandish in its extravagance. It does not at all pencil-in as a line-item in our sense of economy. Then again, God never appointed us as budget managers and accountants of his economy of love; yet certainly, stewards that participate in His movement of love.
When we come to the cross of Jesus, we come to a place of great discovery because of the reality that is unveiled. It is like (re)discovering Carnations as ‘Christ’s flowers’ in Gjertrud Schnackenberg’s poem; how “Word roots blossom in speechless messages” and why “The incarnation blossoms, flesh and nail.” Such poetry opens up a revelation, an insight.
At the foot of the cross, we discover what mere reasoning alone cannot begin to comprehend. At the cross, we know that we know we are truly loved. We discover that we are beloved in Christ. Our knowing steps by faith into a revelation that mere ‘common sense’ fails to compel.
The most reasonable response to the superabundant love of God is a trust that works itself out into a life-entrusting worthy-ship (Romans 12:1); not for the sake of proving that I am worthy to receive the love of God but for the sake of responding to who is worthy of my whole-life. Thus, “All my life, no conditions,” sings Bethel Music.
What person who knows they are perishing does not wholly trust and entrust themselves to a deliverer?
The vision of Jesus for a world-that-God-so-loves is a vision that disrupts a culture of meritocracy, which is often oriented around creating categories of people to exempt from the holy love of God. The ‘righteousness’ experts may exempt themselves from ‘the world’ in exchange for the cool, armchair diagnostics of determining the fate of the world; its merits or demerits before the face of God’s love. The ‘unrighteousness’ experts may exempt themselves from the unconditional love of God because they think themselves so horrendously skilled in evil as to not deserve divine love.
Both postures suffer from being “masters of self-justification” (Dallas Willard). The so-called ‘unrighteous’ may think he must first get cleaned-up to merit love. The ‘righteous’ - those “not that bad as ‘the world’” - see themselves as a kind of strident HR manager for the love of God.
Which posture do you tend to easily assume about your life?
The sacrificial and extravagant self-giving love of God assaults masters of self-justification. It is an earthquake threatening Babylon.
To earthly powers, the love of God is deemed foolish, weak, reckless, and preposterous. “You don’t give away your very best for the sake of your subjects!” they say. Political heresy! “For this is not how Empires get built,” say the-might-makes-right rulers of this age. Yet Herod is still frantically looking for the Christ child, even while Messiah's kingdom eludes him and dawns a new age. Divine shrewdness is under way.
God freely gives out of the superabundance of who He is, not a fickle expression, but born out of a genuine eternal “life without lack.” We so often love others out of our lack, even conditioned by the demands that others put on us. But God is generously and joyously agape!
There are no necessary background conditions to step into the light of God’s love. It is for the ‘whoever’ . . . are perishing. Are you perishing – even dying from a disappearing revelation of whose you are, most truly? Are there areas of your life that are lost, even to the point of being destroyed? Do you trust the love of God to anchor your life, even for the very world that your life inhabits, and which God dearly loves?
Prayer
Father, your love is unconditional and unrivaled. Show me where I put conditions on your love, whether in how I receive it or how I constrain others to receive it. In this season of Advent, grant me a renewed and expectant longing to know by faith, not by sight, how extravagantly generous is your love for the world that I inhabit. Fill me with the hope that you have toward your world. Teach me to love out of the generosity and hospitality that you have already superabundantly given.
Amen.
Joseph E. Gorra
Writer and Educator
Founder/Director of Veritas Life Center
Biola Alum
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About The Artwork:
Crucifixion
Donald Jackson
Copyright 2002
Illuminated manuscript on vellum with gold leaf, ink, and tempera
The Saint John's Bible
Saint John's University,
Collegeville, Minnesota, USA.
Used with Permission
All Rights Reserved
Rendered in raised and burnished gold, the cross and crucified figure of Christ dominate this composition. The liberal use of gold symbolizes God’s divine love for humanity. Luke's Gospel recounts that darkness covered the earth for three hours after the Crucifixion, as is indicated by the fragments of night sky in the painting, and that the curtain of the Temple was torn, as shown by the shreds of purple paint. The crucified figure of Christ is barely visible. Rather, we see other elements of the story breaking through the dazzling gold: on either side stand the crosses that represent the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus; on the left, the moon and stars represent the hours of darkness over the land that coincided with the event; on the right, there is a line of people who represent the procession of Christ and the cross to Golgotha.
About The Saint John's Bible:
The Saint John's Bible is the first completely handwritten and illuminated Bible commissioned since the invention of the printing press. After a Saint John’s University-sponsored calligraphy presentation in 1995, master calligrapher Donald Jackson proposed a handwritten Bible to Fr. Eric Hollas, OSB, the former executive director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at Saint John's University in Minnesota. The Saint John’s Bible, officially commissioned in 1998, was completed in 2011. During production, Artistic Director Donald Jackson oversaw a group of artists working in a scriptorium located in Monmouth, Wales. Using a mixture of the ancient techniques of calligraphy and illumination, the artists created illuminated manuscripts that were handwritten with quills on calfskin vellum decorated with gold and platinum leaf and hand-ground pigments. Gold leaf was used liberally to represent the divine, silver/platinum to reflect the principle of wisdom, and rainbows to show God’s faithful promises. A wide range of artistic styles, including iconography, abstraction, chrysography, and illustration, were incorporated to create a contemporary visual vocabulary for the sacred. Meanwhile at Saint John’s Abbey and University in Minnesota, a team of biblical scholars, art historians, and theologians gathered weekly to develop the theological content behind the illuminations. The Saint John’s Bible is divided into seven volumes and is two feet tall by three feet wide when open. It is made of vellum, with 160 illuminations on 1,165 pages. The Saint John’s Bible contains the text and notes of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation.
https://www.saintjohnsbible.org/
About the Artist:
Donald Jackson (b. 1938) is one of the world's leading calligraphers and the Artistic Director and Illuminator of The Saint John's Bible, a handwritten and illuminated Bible commissioned by the Benedictine Monastery of Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. At the age of 20, Jackson was appointed to be a visiting lecturer at the Camberwell College of Art, London. Within six years he became the youngest artist calligrapher chosen to take part in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s first International Calligraphy Show after the war and appointed a scribe to the Crown Office at the House of Lords. As a scribe to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, he was responsible for the creation of official state documents. In 1985, he received the Medal of The Royal Victorian Order (MVO). Jackson is an elected Fellow and past Chairman of the Society of Scribes and Illuminators and, in 1997, was named Master of the 600-year-old Guild of Scriveners of the city of London. He is the author of The Story of Writing and The Calligrapher's Art. Jackson and his wife Mabel live and work in the Hendre, a converted town hall and outbuildings in Monmouth, Wales.
https://www.saintjohnsbible.org/promotions/process/people_donald_jackson.htm
About the Music:
“Extravagant (Live) [Acoustic Bonus Track]” from the album Starlight (Live)
Lyrics:
You were a lover before time's beginning
And you gave Your love freely withholding nothing
Jesus, my Jesus
You carried the weight of the world on Your shoulders
And you stopped at nothing, to prove You were for us
Jesus, my Jesus
It's extravagant, it doesn't make sense
We'll never comprehend, the way You love us
It's unthinkable, only heaven knows
Just how far You'd go, to say You love us
To say You love us, to say you love us
You don't belittle our pain and our suffering
And You comfort us in our greatest unraveling
Jesus, my Jesus
You are the dawn that is breaking within me
And You are the sun that is rising around me
Jesus, my Jesus
Here is all my love
It's Yours, no conditions
When You pull me close
No, I won't resist it
About the Composers:
Amanda Cook, Ran Jackson, Sean Feucht, and Steffany Gretzinger
Amanda Lindsey Cook has been a part of the Bethel Music family since 2010 and currently ministers throughout the United States and internationally. Originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Cook has a dynamic history as a worship leader and songwriter. Her latest album House on a Hill was released March 2019. Amanda’s first solo project with Bethel Music, Brave New World, was released in September 2015 and won a GMA Dove Award for Inspirational Album of the Year. She has co-authored numerous songs with Steffany Gretzinger for Gretzinger’s solo project, The Undoing (2014). Amanda received three Covenant Awards from GMA Canada in 2014, including Female Vocalist of the Year, Song of the Year, and Worship Song of the Year for her song, “You Make Me Brave.” Amanda’s worship wraps words and images around what it is like to live honestly and passionately connected to God, discovering greater fullness and wonder in every season with Him.
https://bethelmusic.com/artists/amanda-lindsey-cook/
Ran Jackson is a Grammy award-winning songwriter/producer; he has toured the globe and shared stages with some of music's biggest hit makers. He has worked with Katy Perry, OneRepublic, David Foster, Linda Perry, Lecrae, Joy Williams, The GooGooDolls, Darrell Thorpe, Tim Palmer, Charlie Peacock, For King and Country, NeedtoBreathe, Bethel Music, Jeremy Riddle, Amanda Cook, Jesus Culture, United Pursuit, and many other talented people. Raised on old-time gospel and classical music, he founded the Indie rock trio, The Daylights. He's recently become enamored with film work, composing an original score for the sci-fi film Prodigal, featuring Academy Award-winning actor Kenneth Branagh, as well as soundtracks for a handful of documentary films. Having a steady stream of work on albums, commercials, and film & TV, Jackson currently divides time between writing, producing, and composing a wide spectrum of projects at his Richmond Park Studio in Los Angeles, California.
http://www.ranjackson.com/
Sean Feucht is a husband, father, missionary, musician, speaker, author, and founder of a grassroots global worship, prayer, and missions organization called Burn 24/7. His lifelong quest and dream is to witness a generation of burning hearts arise across the nations of the world with renewed faith, vision, and sacrificial pursuit after the Presence of God. He travels to around 20-30 nations per year planting “furnaces of worship and prayer,” training, mobilizing, leading worship, and speaking. Sean has produced, recorded, and released 20 music albums, co-authored 5 books and numerous teaching resources, and has ignited several global missional initiatives.
https://seanfeucht.com/
About the Performers:
Bethel Music, Steffany Gretzinger and Amanda Lindsey Cook
Bethel Music is a community of worshipers pursuing the presence of God. They exist to gather, inspire, and encourage the global church toward deeper intimacy with the Father. Bethel Music is a ministry of Bethel Church that facilitates and administers the creation and exportation of worship songs, events, teachings, resources, and technology. Bethel Music consists of four divisions that serve their mission, their record label, and the publishing of worship songs that carry God’s presence and bring Him glory. Their events department exists to bring God glory through authentic worship in cities throughout the world.
https://bethelmusic.com/
Steffany Gretzinger is a part of the Bethel Music family as a worship leader and songwriter. Steffany carries a powerful prophetic voice and pursues the Lord with raw passion, faith, and confidence in His presence. She has authored songs such as “Pieces,” “You Know Me,” “Letting Go,” “Be Still,” “Steady Heart,” “We Dance,” and many more. Steffany grew up in a musical home and has been involved in worship ministry since she was a child. She is featured on albums including: Have it All, You Make Me Brave, Tides, For the Sake of the World, The Loft Sessions, and Be Lifted High. Steffany lives in Redding, California, with her husband Stephen and daughter Wonder Grace, and ministers in the US and internationally.
https://bethelmusic.com/artists/steffany-gretzinger/
About the Poet:
Gjertrud Schnackenberg (b. 1953) is an American poet. She began writing poetry as a student at Mount Holyoke College and as an undergraduate earned a reputation as a poetic prodigy. Her poetry demonstrates a mastery of dense rhymed and metered lines on subjects ranging from classical philosophy to Christian theology and Russian poetry. Her book-length poem The Throne of Labdacus (2000), a retelling of the Oedipus myth from the points of view of Apollo and a slave, was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry. Schnackenberg’s many honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute. She is the recipient of the Rome Prize of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and Humanities and a Christensen Visiting Fellow at St. Catherine’s College in Oxford.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gjertrud-schnackenberg
About the Devotion Writer:
Joseph E. Gorra
Writer and Educator
Founder/Director of Veritas Life Center
Biola Alum
Joe Gorra is founder and director of Veritas Life Center, a California-based 501c3 religious nonprofit aimed at advancing the Christian tradition as a knowledge and wisdom tradition for the flourishing of human life and society. His writings have appeared at ChristianityToday.com, Patheos.com, EPSOCIETY.org, and various publications, including the Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care, the Christian Research Journal, and the Journal of Markets and Morality.