Broken Hearts

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Thanks Jeremy for this quote from C.S. Lewis:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one... Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

I saw this quote and it really touched me in a couple ways. As we plan and strategize how to move our family to Ethiopia, I am sometimes struck at the weight of what we are going to do. Certainly the Lord has called us to go and be Christ to the world, and to love. That outward act of love will be the cause for our heart to "be wrung and possibly broken". Stephen Seamands in his book Ministry in the Image of God describes this type of love as a model of the trinity. As each person of the trinity, Father Son and Spirit, indwells each other, we also indwell each other through service and intercessory prayer. We actually take on another's burden, their plight, and their pain onto our selves as we turn it toward God in prayer, and as we love them and serve them. This, as Lewis says, is not with out personal cost. But a broken heart is far better than an unbreakable heart.

The other way it touched me is in realizing that I will soon have a brand new baby in my life. A baby that I will love in a way I never new was possible. I will be truly vulnerable in this love. And this love will last the rest of my life, and I my heart will truly be exposed to being wrung. I am both excited and terrified by the idea of the task ahead, of fatherhood. Thank God for my wonderful wife who is my partner in this great adventure, and thank God for our amazing community of friends who have so much love and experience to share with us.

Pray for us this month! Pray for a healthy delivery of a healthy baby boy! Pray for our future, as we have now officially applied for service at Soddo Christian Hospital, and are trusting God that his will be done in the application process and the discussion and visioning to follow.

Comments

  1. Helen ErnstJanuary 5, 2013 at 1:34 AM

    I thought of you all today as I read this post from a nurse working at Soddo; it is 1 Cor. 13 contextualized for missionaries...gives you a fresh perspective. I'm excited that you all may be there soon!

    http://sophinafrica.com/2012/12/29/1-corinthians-13/

    ReplyDelete

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