Chased By Love
(Please Don't Run Too Fast)
Wow. This chapter does a great job of explaining God's love -- of shedding light in just the right angle to help make sense of it more. He tells the story about how he (McManus, the author of Soul Cravings) was in the Middle East once giving a talk about the history of Christianity. He found himself in a spot where he couldn't avoid a question that his audience had put to him. They wanted to know the meaning behind the coming of Jesus. Speaking through a translator, he began with: "I once met a girl named Kim..."
The translator looked at him, puzzled as to why he'd answer the question this way. He went on to tell of how he persued this Kim with his love and asked her to marry him. She said no. McManus said he could feel their empathy due to the story, if not their pity. Finally, he resolved the tension and told of how he kept persuing Kim and finally won her over and she did marry him. The room felt the relief of tension. He followed that up with the statement that he did not send his brother, nor a friend.
"For in issues of love, you must go yourself."
Isn't that a beautiful way of describing why God came to earth in the form of a man (named Jesus)? What's cool is how McManus describes how this went over with a Muslim audience.
"In that moment the story of Jesus was not about who is right and who is wrong, what God's Name is and Who His prophet is, but what exactly God's motivation toward humanity is. If the message that God wants to get across to us is just about getting our beliefs right, then He didn't need to come Himself. If God's entire intent was to clarify right from wrong, no personal visitation was necessary. If the ultimate end was simply to overhwelm us with the miraculous so that we would finally believe, then even God taking on flesh and blood and walking among us was far from necessary. There is only one reason for God to come Himself, because in issues of love, you just can't have someone else stand in for you."
Isn't that awesome?
Posted by Doug Van Pelt at August 20, 2007 12:48 PM