Last call

Almost let today get away from me... it's only been a week.  Can't falter now.
Last night I dreamed I was a werewolf, teaming up with a vampire and a skeleton to explore a mysterious dungeon.  I have to say, that is quite a bit more like it.

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I'm still learning what it means to be selfless. It's not intuitive yet... I have to think about it. I have to work it out, like a puzzle box with my true soul inside. I don't imagine I am special in this. We are all of us still in progress.
It's so amazing when I reach it; the humbling power of it. I learned about it watching Pastor Mark preach through the Song of Solomon last year. The ideas were so audacious, truth I had never heard before... ideas that were so primal that they preceded instinct.
Relationships as they are taught by the world are inherently selfish. 'No, no', the married man says, and even this rarely: 'if she came to me and asked me to change something, I'd do it'. Selfish. That you would make her risk rejection, or you becoming defensive, or countering with your own criticism. The Christian man does not wait in spiritual cowardice for his wife to find the courage to come to him; he pursues her bravely. He seeks her, "Please finish for me the following sentence - 'I am attracted to you, but I would be more attracted to you if...'". The power and dignity in those words... And he does this not once in a lifetime, but once every three months. And then he carries it out. Not because he is her slave, because he loves Jesus more than her. His happiness comes through obedience to God, which means loving her as commissioned by God, through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.  He trusts that she will not hoard her happiness selfishly, but that likewise loving Christ more than him, she will in the same way lay herself out. It's not even about 'fair'.  God's love for us teaches that fairness is not a necessity for our relationships. The Christian man knows that pursuing her happiness will ultimately accomplish his own. It is the only place where true intimacy exists. Vulnerable. Selfless. 

- J