Hope In Love

i was watching Dr House MD the other day – i love me some Gregory House -> season 4 episode 12. in the show there is a Hasidic Jewish couple who just got married…like the chick fell over at her wedding and ends up at the hospital and yada yada and a lot happens and she gets healed in the end and that’s not what this post is about. one of the doctors questioned the marriage of the couple cos they’d only met like 3 times or something before they got married – it was sort of an arranged marriage thing – and the husband asked the doctor if he was still in love with his wife whom he’d been married to for years and the doctor said he loved her today just as much as on the day they got married and the husband said something like “shouldn’t your love grow the more you know her?”…i liked that. anyway…

earlier on that day i walked past a synagogue and i stood there for a while just admiring it’s beauty. it stands out. even though stellenbosch has soooo many beautiful buildings, the synagogue still stood out…and i know that God is everywhere and doesn’t live “in temples build by human hands” (acts) but it did make me think of the book of exodus- i just recently read about the construction of the temple and it is so detailed and so very…i don’t know what the word i’m looking for is…but the whole time i kept thinking, i’m sure this would be amazing for an architect or interior designer or whatever, but i’m just not getting anything out of it. but looking at that synagogue it suddenly hit me that God is a God of beauty and awe-ness-ness. like, he created the mountains and the oceans and flowers and sunsets…he digs beauty…he digs us sitting in awe…i think if he did live in a building he’d live in one that would cause us to stop and look at it like wow! – like the one that was being constructed in exodus.

ok, then later i went and watched that episode of house and thought “i dig Jews…and i dig Muslims”. and i’m not sure how accurate the portrayal of the Hasidic Jews was on the show, but it just hit me that – although i’m sure that there are Jews and Muslims who just go through the motions of religion as well – a lot of Jews and Muslims follow a lot of rules and regulations because of their love for God…their need to just know him more and understand him more and revel in him more and be in communication with him more…and then we Christians sneer at it and call it “religion” (cos we have relationship, not religion). but you look at a Jew or Muslim studying the Torah or the Qu’ran and they do it with reverence and they really study it…they don’t do it just so that they can check the “quiet time” item off their to do list…they honestly want to know what God/Allah wants to say to them. i think we tend to use relationship as an excuse, we are lazy to put in all the work that goes into a maintaining the relationship (and yes, relationships need to be maintained and require some work) so we classify all that work as religion.

but you know, I want that – a yearning to want to do the work. I wanna fall in love with Jesus so hard that I can’t go a minute, a second, without thinking about him. I wanna do things – like praying more regularly and living out his commands and reading my bible, not because I get something out of it or it makes me feel good or whatever other reason, but because i wanna know God…i wanna know him intimately, know the details, know everything about him. like you know when you fall in love with someone and every little thing about them is just fascinating…like that. like…i want him to be the first thought in my head in the morning and the last when i fall asleep. i wanna chill with him in quiet and just listen to his heartbeat. i want my heart to break everytime his does. i wanna be in sync with him and his will. i want him…so bad.

i wanna fall madly, head over heels in love with my saviour. as jonathan butler said “falling in love with Jesus was the best thing i’ve ever done”