Fullness

Injustice. I hate it.

Shayla had just called me to breakfast. I pulled on a shirt, grabbed my phone and started for the door when it buzzed. I glanced at the screen and my pleasant morning evaporated. My pulse went thready and then pounded wildly. My face flushed. My collar literally went hot. My appetite—gone in an instant. (unhandy, 90 seconds before arriving at the table)

The particulars aren’t so much the point. The point is it took less than 10 seconds. Peace, gone. Indignation, confusion, disappointment, pique very much home. 

I wrestled all day. Probably the hardest day I’ve had in over 3 years. Found it hard to pray for feelings of mercy between the endless round of month-end financials, staff questions, loan applications, meetings, and the daily tidal wave of emails and slacks (internal business communications platform). 

If I truly eschew tyranny, that means I must cherish liberality. But having a liberal (merciful) spirit towards those exercising injustice is all but impossible for this wretched soul. All day I struggled against exercising in my own heart the very sin I was decrying in others. 

24 hours later, still begging for mercy and peace, I started reading an article one of my brothers-in-law had sent 2 days previous as part of an unrelated and ongoing theological discussion amongst us. What I read literally saved me. 

“A fullness of humility precludes all pride; of meekness, precludes anger; of gentleness, all ferocity; of goodness, all evil; of justice, all injustice; of holiness, all sin; of mercy, all unkindness and revenge; of truth, all falsity and dissimulation; and where God is loved with all the heart, soul, mind and strength, there is no room for enmity or hatred to him, or to any thing connected with him; so, where a man loves his neighbor as himself, no ill shall be worked to that neighbor; but, on the contrary, every kind affection will exist toward him; and every kind action, so far as power and circumstances can permit, will be done to him.” Adam Clarke

I was missing the concept of fullness. Love being the heaviest element in the universe— no injustice or tyranny, conniving or maleficence can displace any portion of a vessel _filled_ with Love. 

It took 10 seconds to lose peace. 24 hours of wrestling over it. 30 seconds to have it restored.

_Thank You for Your Fullness_

“And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.”  Jn 1:16


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