Gaining Understanding

So, it was July 12th, when I shared that my life was about to change mightily.  God had been thoughtful enough to warn me about this happening back in May, when I had actually written that July post.  Before the last heart attack at the beginning of June, before so many changes occurred within me and about me; that heart attack was the sign of the beginning of the end for me, all was over and He was in charge - and I knew it at that time.  I was now just along for the ride.  But, what do you tell your friends and family, when all believe you are now quite insane?

And, just as with all such paranormal events in my life, I hold little emphasis for them.  Not going to help them along, not going to fight them.  Why?  Because if it is of God, then the impossible is going to come into being - if we are talking God's determinative Will.  Perhaps permissive Will is involved, but then it really does not matter to Him, so why should it matter to me?  Determinative Will, will come to pass no matter what ... so just sitting on my hands and waiting is perfectly acceptable.  But, I did take the step of severing as best I could my relationships so that everyone around me will be protected - because I only know change, not the content of the change and those I care for, I protect if I can.

I had to learn about contrasts, something I could not really understand, only we are talking heart knowledge - not head knowledge here, I know each of these but I had to experience them it seems.  To quote what God had told me, "I had to have my face rubbed in failure":

• God's ways are not my ways
• I can understand only partially
• What appears wrong can actually be right
• Conversely what appears right can actually be the wrong thing to do
• I had to understand Love, before I could understand God
• I had to fail before I could ever move forward
• I had to understand what being human meant, in tears and pain

And it all came together on this last Saturday night for me.

I have spent much time in bed due to my back being painfully out and still being forced to do all work around this house, since nobody else will.  And so, I returned to my unnamed ancestor's writings to work through his numerous meditations.  Mind  you, the 13th century mind is pretty rough to understand in places!  Their culture and thought processes were nothing like ours!

Anyway, my ancestor writes of one he knew in the Prussian campaign:

• Above conscience
• No sense of sin
• Whatever he did is right
• Killing meant nothing

And my ancestor had now caught my interest, he was writing about a sociopath ...  Though the term would have meant nothing to him, he was almost 600 years before this psychological aberration was to be barely understood!  It is interesting to note that this man, whomever he was, was the only one my Teutonic Knight ancestor had encountered like this!  But it was what he wrote next which actually stung:

• Unable to know right from wrong, he became his own god
• As a god he could do no wrong
• Therefore he was sinless in his own eyes
• And being sinless, condemned himself to hell

My ancestor continued, that to him, this unknown knight's failure was his inability to understand or know love.

I must have reread this a dozen times, working on the translation, was I doing this correctly?  Did he really say that?  This man, though of a different culture and time, I already knew was smart - he understood reading and writing in an age when it was rare.  His meditations might seem odd to us but given the state of Christian understanding in his day, he was probably right on, if not way ahead of his contemporaries, and I had to remind myself again he was no fool.  He wrote what he understood, much as the Apostle John did.  And his words this time spoke to me but I had to drop all of those cultural filters and look to what he was expressing within the context of what knowledge both of us possess.

Then I was suddenly reminded of May and what God had told me, and the humiliation I have lived with since.  It all fitted together - far too well.  Love is the missing key within me...

Across two years, God has brought me through each phase of Love to teach me what I needed to know, to understand Him, to now understand that the only way to truly know Him is through Love for Him.

So this is where I stand today.  Across the summer I have concluded the introduction to Love, in all of its sorrows, and my next step concludes the current lesson series.  Faith, real faith based upon a new man within me, unable to see clearly any longer - must purely in trust, hold fast to what I know - that He leads, that He has my back - as I take that first step into the great unknown called life.  Doing the wrong things to do the right thing - what He decides, not me nor logic.

Yeah, almost there ... almost human ...  Learning Love and a new type of faith ...  And yeah, I expect to fail.