Passionate Grace

Tonight I dreamed.

In my dream my Dad, with whom I’m very close, was ill.  My family was gathered round to watch what we knew would be his last days.

Still, my Dad walked haltingly to sit with us and talk with us in the living room.

Then I got a call that I needed to go back to work.

I didn’t want to go, but decided I should.  But then my Dad looked at me and said, “Let’s walk down and get some Rocky Road ice cream at the end of the street before you go.”

“Ok Dad,” I said.

My dad stumbled with halting steps towards the door.  Then could walk no more.

“I guess you are going to have to carry me,” he said.

So I picked up my Dad’s frail body piggy-back style.  I could hear his breathing in my ear.  And I began to walk slowly down the street.

“I love you,” he said.  And I wept as thought back over the years together.

Then as I walked I heard his breath grow faint – then stop and my Dad was gone.

I awoke just now in tears.

The dream was vivid in my mind – the emotions real.

“Lord,” I cried “I know I should love you like I love my Dad. Help me.”

“No, ” the Lord said, “This is a picture of how you are loved.”

“I have carried you, sick and frail child, because I have loved you as a Father loves His own beloved son.”

“I have not just carried you to your death. No, I have taken your death in your place.  I have healed you with my love.”

“So the affection you feel towards your Dad is the start of the affection I feel for you, my Son.”

“Behold! What manner of love the Father has given to us – That we should be called the sons of God.”

I John 3:1-2 “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

Colossians 2:9-14: “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”