I believe that God loves perfectly.
I believe in a fear beyond rote memorization.
I believe in Caedmon’s Call being good for the soul.
I believe God loves me in ways no one else could understand.
I believe I don’t have to write something down for it to be understood or say something for it to be heard.
I believe I am a terrible lover.
I believe that “they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love.”*
I believe “we have great power in hurting each other.”**
I believe we’re meant to anticipate one another.
I believe “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” (or it’s going away).***
I believe a lot of what Donald Miller has to say in Blue Like Jazz— but I’m still a traditionalist for the sheer reverance of a candlelit sanctuary.
I believe in that same splendor on the campus green in the afternoon.
And I believe in taking walks at night in the dark.
I believe that the best dark walks are chilly, and it should probably rain, to boot.
I believe we make getting caught in the rain a bad thing because it’s something we cannot control.
I believe God speaks softest and strongest when things are out of my hands.
I believe I don’t have to be so sophisticated, after all.
This I believe—
God makes the complex simple and embraces the unlovable. He adds to my lack, he forgives my flagrant grievances, and he knows me -intimately enough- to love me -intimately- beyond anything I will ever experience. He loves me for who I am in HIM. My sin is the limit of his love. Because God loved me from the beginning— he made an end to that limit with his son. I believe we all have the choice of letting God love us this way.
——
*Popular Hymn “One in the Spirit”
**From Fitzgerald’s -This Side of Paradise-
***From “Big Yellow Taxi”